Real-life hiring horror stories

July 22, 2008
COMMERCIAL, RETAIL, AUTO, FABRICATION : HUMAN RESOURCES, BUSINESS, MANAGEMENT

This is a sidebar to the article, "Hiring horror."

Weight discrimination
"After three face-to-face interviews, two with me and a third with one of my location managers, we hired a female technician/CSR. She had the right skill set but we quickly discovered she didn't have the right attitude toward work. On her first Monday reporting in, she called in sick saying she had to take her moving materials, boxes to the landfill. OK, we thought, that's a little odd, but things happen. She showed up Tuesday through Friday and did a good job. The next Monday, she called in sick again, this time the reason was her kids were sick.

My manager called me. 'I don't like this one bit. It's not a good start; she has the skills but this Monday calling in sick thing won't work.' So I asked him what he wanted to do and he said, 'fire her' before it goes any further. I agreed. Four weeks later, I received a letter from the [U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Federal agency that enforces the federal employment discrimination laws]. The woman was claiming weight discrimination.

I have an EPL, Employment Practices Liability Policy, or EPL with a deductible of $20,000. We called the attorney that the EPLI mandates we call, which is very expensive. Now, she was indeed a heavyset woman, but we hired her in the first place! How we could be accused of weight discrimination, I don't know, but it still cost me $8,000 in legal fees, plus a lot of wasted time. A representative from the state agency or equivalent of the EEOC cross-examined me and my staff."

Bad timing
“We’ve had some disappointments. The one that really sticks out is this one really good guy who relocated with his wife. The job worked out great, the marriage didn’t. And he moved back. That was the toughest one. Really good, skilled guy, hard to find, but worked out great with the company. But, his personal situation changed in a way that couldn’t be helped.”

Have your own hiring horror stories to share? E-mail them to kdevlin@glass.org and they will be posted anonymously on GlassMagazine.com. The best entry will run in the next issue of Glass Magazine.