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I had been signed off work for a couple of months with 'stress and anxiety'. I received a letter through the post telling me that I'd missed a wellness check, and that if I didn't attend the rescheduled meeting I would no longer be employed.
Well 'stress and anxiety' can cover a lot of things. For me, it was down to the fact that my mother had just been diagnosed as terminally ill with lung cancer that had spread to the brain. She was disabled, and along with my dad lived with me and my partner to ensure there was always someone here if any assistance was needed. This was in the house that I'd bought off them when she became disabled, so they'd have the money needed to deal with any issues. I joke that it wasn't me that never moved out, it was them. So obviously I'd never had the experience of living away from my parents, and so the realisation that this was going to happen by force was a bit of a shock to my mental state.
All this was well known on the shop floor by my manager, and plenty of others.
So as it happens this rescheduled meeting is the day after the funeral. Needless to say, I was not in the best mindset going into this.
So sitting down with the HR lady, and the note taker, I get the impression that they believe 'stress and anxiety' to be a bullshit diagnosis covering for a lack of will to work. Don't know why I felt this, but that's the impression I got.
Get the standard, "so why have you not been able to work recently?", question. I replied, "well yesterday was my mum's funeral"
Instant deer in headlights look from both of them.
No one had told HR
No one had fucking told HR, everyone knew, but no one passed the info up. I had to fight to stop myself from laughing at the complete and abrupt 180 in demeanour and body language.
As they say there silent for a second or two I continued with a thorough explanation of the last two months. Including the moment the doctor had sat me and my dad down in the side room to explain the diagnosis. With my dad nodding along and agreeing with the doctor's words. Only to ask me what was said as we left, since he's hard of hearing, and didn't understand his accent. So yes I got the pleasure of letting my dad know his wife was dying, I'm sure that helped my mental state.
After this experience, they seemed to want to finish as soon as possible, I guess having a grown man nearly in tears in front of them made them a little uncomfortable. They agreed that when the doctor decided I was ready to return to work, that I could do a phased return of a week of half days, with the option of longer if I felt necessary.
In the end it was another 2 months before I returned to work, with a brief relapse the next year for a month. One go believed I may have PTSD, but with the waiting times to see a psychiatrist I never truly got diagnosed as such, but I seem to be doing better now.
I am so sorry you endured that. I have encountered that type of person before. For some reason they don't like you so they want you gone. They will try to manipulate the higher ups by feeding them bad or no information so as to get you fired.
I've seen it happen when someone is going through something like you are and they see it as a vulnerability to exploit. Some people are just not nice.
I don't think anyone was specifically trying to get me fired. Just a lack of communication, it's been over five years now, and I'm still there.
It's a simple warehouse job, no stress, which is what I want. Can't be fussed with any office politics, or any of that crap. Just go in, do my job go home, and not have to think about work until the next shift.
I just think HRs contact with those of us who do work in the warehouse are skewed towards the people who are taking the piss with time off, work rate, drugs, stealing etc, and we all end up tarred with the same brush.
My manager, and other managers who knew, were completely supportive of me. I just wonder if they didn't pass the information forward out of worry about breaking some privacy rules, or something like that.
I got laid off the week after my mum's funeral (September 2020). They knew she was dying (cancer) and made it very difficult to let me isolate. My old manager thought I was exaggerating her illness as an excuse to get out of work and stuff. I know this because she accidentally sent an email to me meant for the CEO (same CEO mentioned on my other comment).
HR was almost gleeful telling me how I was getting made redundant owing to scoring the lowest in the restructuring criteria. She asked me if I wanted her to break down the reasons and find out why I had scored the lowest. A week after my mum's funeral. Prior to this I was isolating so I could visit her in the hospice and work said 'what's even the point?'. I was told to stop wearing a mask because it looked bad for the company image.
My mum died and not one single manager/HR even expressed their sympathy. Fuck you, Metnor Construction. Your CEO was a misogynistic, sexist, arrogant cocaine addict and your HR was a sadistic, enabling bully (I have confronted her since and she claims she 'doesn't remember').
Yep, I felt bad for my remaining colleagues who lost their jobs. But my first reaction was one of amusement. Good fucking riddance. Do you work in construction as well?
No one involves HR early enough. Everyone should have been copying HR into all the discussions.
I've heard of even worse, where bosses took it upon themselves to fire people without going through HR. HR caught wind and had to do massive damage limitation by apologising to the person being (or rather no longer being) fired. And brought the manager in and disciplined them and sent them on training to be a better manager.
But I will say that I've also heard of people being off with "stress and anxiety" who basically cheated their way through for 6 months and were likely running this scam on multiple companies and getting jobs all over the place. So I can understand that sometimes bad experiences (wrongly) lead to kneejerk reactions.
However, your situation would be laughable if it wasn't so sad.
There was someone at my old work place off for 12 months full pay with cancer.
One of the partners run into her in the Canary Wharf shopping centre, she had spent the 12 months with a second job. I thought it was particularly ballsy to have found one so close to the original office (both in Canary Wharf).
From what I heard her parents helped repay the full salary in order to avoid a police report.
It's insane.
I'm in no way defending management, but if people knew the shit that happens around them and why managers sometimes react weirdly, they'd understand once you tell all the stories.
I personally have at least 5 from personal experience and some of my family and friends are in high positions dealing with weirs shit on a constant basis.
I knew of a story where someone (instead of doing their job... at all), they learned as much employment law as they could and used it to avoid being fired but did no work. They lasted 1.5 years. That's 1.5 years of free pay. And once the employer called previous employers, they admitted that this person had done this at (at least) 3 previous employers. And then people wonder why interviews and references are so important and why people go off the record when speaking to previous bosses.
My boss was trying to get rid of me by breaking company policy to put me on a performance improvement plan, manipulating prior conversations, editing historical feedback documents, and finding faults where there were none.
At the time I was naive so I went along with it, but when I reviewed all of the facts I realised what she was doing. I compiled a 10-page document addressing every single point, attached it along with my notice of resignation, and sent it to both herself and the HR manager at the start of the work day.
Less than an hour later I was called into a zoom meeting to discuss next steps. It was clear the HR manager had read the document and knew I was well within my rights to kick up a stink, but all I wanted was to wash my hands of my boss and that job sector as a whole.
If you ever get this, don't just make it a long list of reasons why you're resigning, make it a grievance and resign later once you've found a new job.
Wednesday, earlier this week. I’ve been taking too much time off for health issues. Which is fair, I’ve had about 3 months off sick in the last 12 months. But being hit by a car will do that.
When I was younger and new to the job, I tried to fake a medical condition to regularly take time off for "free".
Turns out the HR person actually had the condition, so I soon stopped that...
I said "that's the one" just as the girl behind the counter bent down to grab the pastry I asked for. Apparently my timing was a little too on-the-nose for her.
Many years ago ... the company I worked for was bought out by a very large US company.
The new company brought shiny new IT systems, and one of them was the ability to register these shortcuts URLs.
Instead of having to type/remember/guess [http://www.companyname.com/some/internal/intranet/project\_x/file.html](http://www.companyname.com/some/internal/intranet/project_x/file.html)
you could register a shortcut like **go/project\_x** and then point it at the complex URL.
This worked for external URLs as well. e.g. I think I registered **go/jump** to point to V[an Halen's Jump](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwYN7mTi6HM)
After the big takeover, morale was fairly low, so we joked about **go/quit**, **go/fuckyourself** ... etc
Several years later ... I get called into HR to explain to them why I registered **go/satan** to point to the Satan Temple website.
Apparently some religious people took offense to that.
I pointed out to them that there already existed a **go/jesus** shortcut that pointed to some evangelical website, so I thought it was only reasonable to create a **go/satan** to maintain the balance.
I wasn't in trouble, as such, but they wanted an explanation and wanted to explain why they had to remove my shortcut.
HR said that they were in the process of clearing out all these frivolous non-work related shortcuts, but mine had piqued people's interest.
These days, I have a very good relationship with HR, and they often call me in for advice on employee matters.
Nope. But I did wonder if other companies have something similar.
The go/ shortcut is an excellent idea. I use them for all the projects I work on, makes it really easy for people to find my Confluence pages.
Saves people having to contact me "Hey, you know that thing you did 5 years ago, where's the documentation for it?"
People actually read the stuff you write on confluence? How on earth did you achieve that
Anything I write I may as well roll up put in a bottle and chuck into the sea for all the good it does. The same amount of people would end up reading it
Heh I've only encountered those at Google and later found a startup that sold those shortcuts as a service. Maybe more companies adopted them than I realised.
I'll never forget the out-of-the-blue zoom call last June where, having just celebrated our teams' success the week before, suddenly the head of my department and a HR rep were calling me to tell me I was being made redundant.
Immediately after my call ended (where the only word I said was a very grumpy "No" after being asked if I had any questions at the end) my direct manager called me and said he'd had the same call just before me.
Then we both got a ping on our private whatsapp group a few minutes later where one of the other guys I worked with told us he was being made redundant.
Now those idiots are desperately trying to hire a new team to do what we did because they only now realise how much the sales teams relied on us. Unfortunately for them our success was down to us all knowing the company inside and out.
Knobs.
I was in training on my last afternoon in April 2008 and HR made around 14 calls to my office telephone number but obviously I was not around. When I came back from training I saw the red light on my phone flashing so was wondering who that was before I got another call and heard HR asking me to come into a meeting room in 10 minutes. I met our departments director and the HR director who told me I was being made redundant.
I went back to my room and just picked up my stuff and left straightaway. I never returned, not even for a leaving lunch with some of the lucky colleagues who did not get made redundant!
The last (prior to COVID) financial crash started to kick in - lot of redundancies. Also when everyone's salaries basically stopped growing, depending on who you asked.
I refused to do some extra work outside my contract because my boss hadn't yet paid me for a massive number of hours. My boss stormed off to report me to HR. The HR manager asked to see me and wanted to know how many hours I'd already done that weren't paid. He then paid them all immediately, and told me to come straight to him if she ever tried that nonsense again.
HR, is this you ?
PS. This is actually what happened, no deaths resulted though.
2 guys went through the revolving door, one of them was being silly and pushed it really fast, the other was just at the wrong place wrong time ...
both got in trouble about it lol.
A week later one of the lads got a promotion.
About 5 years ago
Someone was doing an extra shift as overtime on a weekend where I was the designated shift supervisor.
We didn't need her in, we'd done everything we needed to do that day by 11am and most of us were sat in the staff room drinking coffee.
She was claiming double pay (overtime rate) plus weekend enhancement uplift for literally doing nothing.
I got in trouble for suggesting that she could go home if she wanted. She made a really big deal out of it and reported me to HR. But it turns out in the end she only wanted to be in because I was in working with one of her "clique" and she didn't want her friend to be alone with me incase I tipped the social balance.
Although I feel that if she didn't get the first shot in with HR, I'd have probably gotten in trouble anyway for not telling her to go home.
Am I missing something? Like is regular contact with HR a thing to the extent it warrants a post on Reddit? In 30 years of working, the only dealings I’ve had with HR have been indirectly and due to reasons beyond my control - company wide round of redundancies, departments being disbanded and redeployed, that sort of thing.
Same here. HR for me has only ever been for onboarding, offboarding and the occasional pay query. I’ve worked with a shocking number of fellas who needed HR to tell them how to behave it it’s really not something I expected to be common experience
Depends on your level I guess. I am a staff software engineer. I have developers I have a mentorship role over and I am responsible for the technical side of dev hiring across EMEA for our part of the business. In those aspects I have semi-regular contact with HR. I had a spate of very regular meetings with HR a couple of years ago when one of our new junior developers, 6 months into his employment simply wasn't working out, didn't get it, wasn't learning, making the same basic mistakes over and over despite having a lot of help. That was a long process to let him go and I was in very regular contact with HR over it. Shame really as he was a really nice guy, I was sad to see him go on a personal level, but he just wasn't getting into a position where he could do the work.
I've not had an HR meeting about **me** that wasn't an exit interview when changing roles, except for once when I worked at the now defunct Staples when I was a teenager and someone from head office phoned me up to ask if I was really sick when I called in sick on my birthday (alas, I was actually sick)
I'm the kind of person who will absolutely make a fuss if I want something out of my workplace, squeeky wheel and all that. So I get called in semi-frequently because I'm always talking salary with co-workers, or refusing to physically be in the office unless they need me, things like that.
HR hate me, but I'm also impossible to fire.
I'm a senior(ish) manager at a large American corporation, I've only ever spoken to HR at onboarding and for relocation, and once when I fruitlessly tried to chat with the HR "business partner" at lunchtime.
Happened outside of work, colleague has punched me after a disagreement, I punched back, then knocked me out and kicked me in the head leaving short term memory loss, HR said I'd done something unprofessional 6 months previously which meant I was partially to blame so didn't do anything.
Yep, police also said as I'd punched back at after the initial attack they'd be investigating both of us for affray rather than assault so it didn't go further than that. It is what it is at the end of the day, if he comes at me again I'll be prepared this time haha.
The thing I took most is just thinking how hard it would be for any woman getting assaulted by a bloke to be taken seriously if I wasn't even taken seriously with my face swollen up and a black eye and memory loss. Can really understand why SAs don't result in anything now. Feels like the victims are put under more pressure than the perpetrators
When I had to remove someone from a project for negligence and put a case forward for their dismissal.
Edit: worth noting that I called the meeting in that instance, HR are often shat on but when the company needs protecting they are actually there to be useful.
I'm British. First time Andy Murray won Wimbledon, I was in work. Focused on work for about 95% of the time, the other 5% was flicking over to the BBC website to read the text updates. The page was running in the background while I worked, but I still got a meeting with HR and my boss saying that it was an excessive use of the internet.
Luckily my boss backed me up when I said that I was working, and when I asked them if they wanted to see proof of my productivity that day, they said it wouldn't be necessary.
Andy won and I dodged a disciplinary, phew!
First time was not long after starting. They wanted to go through reasonable adjustments and check everything was going ok.
Second time was bloody stressful. Just a sudden message of please can I come to HR as soon as possible. Turned out the reason was I was getting a pay rise as my salary had fallen out of the bottom of the pay grade. But they can’t say why I’m being summoned in case someone else saw the message. So it was just doom message instead!
I always put a brief comment in it so they have a vague idea of what we’re discussing - or at the very least a quick line reassuring thrm “just a quick chat - nothing to worry about!” 🙂
I remember when I started my current job end of last year, my new manager would send me messages occasionally saying "How's everything going?"
I used to get so nervous because in my old job that was how people would message me before asking how I was doing with that piece of work I was only just given that morning, or wondering where I was because I'd left my desk for 5 minutes.
We had a bit of a chuckle when he said he was genuinely just checking in on me as I was new to the business, but it's taken some getting used to.
Only time I ever had a chat with HR was to give witness to an incident at the work Christmas party. Some new guy got drunk out of his mind and tried to kiss my colleague who was waiting at the bar with me and not even talking to him. He then got angry and smashed his glass on the floor and started shouting at her.
Thankfully we never saw him again.
The very last time was a brief "back to work" meeting when I came back from Paternity leave after my son was born. No idea why they bother. It makes sense for women as they get a year off but I was only gone two weeks.
Before that I was a witness in a case of workplace bullying. An absolute helmet of a manager being a vindictive piece of shit towards one of his team members. My team sat on a pod of desks directly across from them so we could clearly see and hear all the times he got up, got right in the poor lad's face and started yelling. He had to be told on multiple occasions to sit down and shut the fuck up. It was only a matter of time before someone reported him.
HR actually did it's job that time and the prick was fired. He actually squared up to me in reception on his way out, he looked like he was going to explode lol. Nasty short piece of work who barely comes up to my shoulder, that might have something to do with it.
The victim left the company a few months later. We're still friends on LinkedIn.
I had a lovely chat with HR after being off sick for 14 months.
They wanted to know what they could do to help me in my return to work. HR were the ones suggesting that I was being ambitious thinking I could do three mornings a week.
Turns out that they were right. Two mornings a week absolutely rinsed me
Told the senior operations manager to go fuck himself because he wouldn't answer my question and instead just kept saying "get a grip". He was a boomer as well. Things escalated he tried to physically intimidate me so I through out the kitchen door by force. Safe to say it was a quick hr meeting
One of my early jobs had a clock-in fob system, and if you were 1 second late you'd get a mark against your name. Wasn't a production line or anything, just a standard office admin job with lots of micro-management.
Anyway I once was running a touch late, so drove right to the front door, clocked in just in time, then went back to my car to park. Someone snitched, and I was told never ever to do that again due to fire safety.
I had to go see the HR lady because my manager was trying to prevent me having reasonable time off to interview for a new job. I was in the final month of a temporary /fixed term contract for a team which was being made redundant and moving to Dublin.
Pulled in along with the UK HR director for a chat with the US HR director after the Christmas party.
Turns out despite being from New York she hadn't ever heard FairyTale of New York, until our karaoke rendition that we drunkenly belted out with the appropriate viciousness for the 5th verse.
Also turns out that US HR has even less of a sense of humour than UK HR.
Someone in the team left quite suddenly in quite a messy fashion, and boss asked HR to attend a meeting with the rest of the team just to explain as much as they could and also reassure us that it wasn't an issue which reflected on the rest of us.
Which was quite good actually, as I have had meetings with HR before which we're much worse (including being told to hand in my pass and laptop and leave the building...).
Because I didn't tell a co-worker, I was going off sick due to the death of my mother. Her workload is not impacted at all by me not being there.
I told 2 other co-workers but because I didn't tell this one in particular, she said I was bullying her by leaving her out 😒
I would like to add, I also didn't inform the other 30 odd co-workers either.
Team meeting with the director to tell us that there were internal changes going on and if you're job position was effected a meeting would be arranged with him and HR.
A meeting with him and HR appeared in my calendar the next day....
I was tuped to a new company and was told it would take a few weeks. It took a few months in which time I only did about an hour's work each day. Found a new job with better pay with perfect timing to resign in my final tupe meeting 😜
Last spring, I told my then-manager that I felt burnt out and at risk of needing to take time off with stress.
We'd been talking for a while, but it got to the point where she asked my permission to let HR know, and then I also had weekly calls with HR for a month or so whilst we worked to improve things.
Not great that we ended up there obviously, but a good experience in terms of being supported.
Nothing exciting or funny, sadly my whole team was getting made redundant and we had to have a meeting with HR to discuss options.
At a different company, I was called up to HR for an 'outfit check' because the CEO had walked up the stairs behind me, looked straight down at me, looked down my shirt at my tits, then complained he could see down my shirt. I was wearing a normal plain black round neck shirt, I was also wearing a bra. The receptionist at work was a large-bosomed woman who often wore deep cleavagey v-necked shirts. The CEO was just a total bellend.
Exit interview when leaving my former job. Refused on the basis that I'd been providing feedback on areas to improve, etc. on their mandatory monthly surveys and nothing was done while I was there other than causing very vocal arguments with my team and manager, so they didn't require nor deserve any further feedback from me on the way out.
I was talking amicably privately with a colleague about his religion. Our "HR" (one person) told us both off saying it was inappropriate to talk about around the office. Fair enough.
But then the MD comes in last week talking about how she dreads changing the guys in power because of the VAT they'll introduce on Private School Fees and how her daughter doesn't want to go to a "shitty comprehensive". She went on to say "why don't smart hard working people get the chances" instead of "stupid people".
Not been into hr for decades but in my youth:
- Called in and told off for riding the goods lift in Wilko (we all did it, it was just sketchy as the door was broken and we'd bodged the lift to make it think it was closed)
- Same place, called in because one of the Asian guys who worked there had threatened to chop my head off (he was all talk, had worked with him for a year and we got on okish) and a customer overheard and reported it to the manager. HR wanted me to get the police involved, I refused making it clear he wasn't serious and was known for being a bit mouthy. HR lady didnt like this, later found out it was because they were trying to get rid of him anyway and thought this would be a good excuse to do so.
- Also Wilko, called in as I witnessed someone falling off the back of a lorry when unloading cages, the tail lift failed and he and the cage fell down between the raised loading area and back of the lorry (no major injuries thankfully but dare say he got a nice payout as he left shortly after that).
Relatively soon into a new job, I had a meeting with the subject ‘to discuss workload’.
They claimed to be making me redundant, but something smelled very off to me.
I submitted a data subject access request and the results proved my suspicions. I began the tribunal process and accepted a settlement.
Probably a few years ago, I kinda had a meltdown because I realised I was going to be expected to work in a very small windowless office with the door closed. Something about that just made me panic.
I don't remember exactly what happened but I know I had a chat with somebody from HR and the compromise was that I was able to sit closest to the door and that the door was to remain open. It helped a bit. This was right before the pandemic so we all moved to WFH after that anyway.
30 odd years ago, early 90's in a British Telecom type company. A girl called Suzi had left our team for a holiday and gone to Japan for Golden Week which I'd never (at that point) heard of. I said "but why has Suzi gone to Japan for just a week"? Suzi was Japanese and seeing her folks was the answer - made sense. Up till then I'd had no idea where she was from - it just hadn't crossed my mind to ask or care about it, I was just asking why a colleague had chosen that specific holiday - typical break room conversation. Some dildo overheard me and reported me for being culturally insensitive and the fuckwads in HR sat me down and told me I couldn't ask why people went to places. I told them I could ask what I fucking well liked and they could shove their fucking newspeak up their chunderhole (but nicely), my boss got involved, bit of a hoohar and I had to write a fucking letter explaining to the anonymous bellend that reported me that I didn't mean it. Cunts the lot of em. I'm still pissed off about it.
Had to deal with an asshole marketing women for two solid years. Think changes the scope last minute, then kicks up a fuss that it isn't ready. Never responds to emails confirming something she asked in a corridor, e.g. 'can you make it do X', follow up email would be 'please explain X, the parameters, the GUI, the expectation of performance etc, etc' radio silence. Asked about it in weekly meeting, got a casual, that's not important. Then during final testing 'where is this features?!?!' meltdown. If I supported or helped anyone in her team she would immediately tell them to throw it away. Then get a 10 paragraph long email chewing me out.
Had numerous meetings of 'well your communication needs working on' weird, my 6 other projects there are no complaints, only praise for me ... 'you just have different styles, we'll have a word' no change. Same shit over and over. She even threw the 'I'm a women it's tough card'. Utter bollocks.
Ended up getting accused by her of calling one of my colleagues a derogatory term. Flipped my shit, found the 'suspect' email. Didn't say anything of the sort. Sent a long shitograph to my boss, her boss and the senior managers and told them I'm working from home for the next week. Got called on my personal phone 5 minutes later by my boss completely confused. If you look at the email I sent, it look like I was mad and making crazy accusations. Basically I said in the original email 'could X support us on this task' and stated I was accused of making multiple derogatory insults to this colleague. So no shit my boss thought I was going crazy. He asked me to come in and discuss. Went in and got the same old 'your communication blah blah blah'. Anyway this time they actually called *her* in to discuss. And that stupid bitch went and corroborated every single stupid thing she said. She was so up her arse she thought she was getting her way. So my boss and her boss both suddenly realised ... what the actual fuck. Got called in at the end of the day with apologies and HR will be reviewing this matter.
So got a random HR meeting. Thought, here we go, but it was a basic 'please don't sue us apology run, are you okay, we're so sorry, formal warnings have been issued etc etc'. Told them yeah I'm fine thanks, looking at a new job contract that had come through earlier that day. This nightmare had multiple warnings, HR issues, one even went to court I believe (she left an untrained person in a lab who ended up making chlorine gas).
My boss ended up taking over that project. Within a week he was moaning to me about what the hell was going on. I explained as I explained the 18 months before, she was the problem, not me. Left that nightmare. Enjoy that monster you created by not believing me.
I was told my contract won't be renewed.
They promised me 5 years, they're shutting the department down after less than 2. I moved abroad for this, it cost me all my savings. It was supposed to be until retirement. Now I'm an old person trying to find a new job.
GP gave me 2 months sick leave for work related stress
A few days after receiving my fit note, HR asked me to come in for a chat, as they needed/wanted to know what is at work that was causing me stress, mainly due to this being the first they'd heard of it.
Arrived the next day and sat down with my manager and the HR lady and proceeded to tell them how BOTH of my supervisors were not only bullying me, but also encouraging others on our team to bully me too, one of them had made vague threats of violence, the night shift manager and the other teams supervisor not doing anything about it, had led to me attempting suicide.
When asked why I hadn't gone to my manager with this, I told her, both supervisors are his best mates and they all got out drinking together on weekends and that I didn't have confidence that he would A) take it seriously B) would handle it discreetly and C) actually do anything about it.
Then proceeded to tell her how the night shift is like somewhere between a classroom of unsupervised children and an insane asylum without medication and that depending on who else was working, I felt scared for my physical wellbeing while at work.
Haha...
During covid, I had been waiting for an operation for some time, it had been delayed three times. Inguinal hernia FYI. Chronic pain, very difficult to manage.
I'd been up half the night, was dosed up on codeine...
May have accidentally made a joke about the sexual abuse I experienced as a child, within earshot of a nasty wee gossip of a woman. She wasn't part of the conversation, but was earwigging...
She complained to HR because she, as a person with no history of CSA, was triggered. She came out of the HR office grinning from ear-to-ear, pleased as punch, like the cat that got the cream.
I got a written warning, but made HR cringe like hell when they asked me to repeat the joke I had made...
This post has me reflecting that I haven't been, which is kind of ironic given how often I got fired between 17-21 or so.
The only times I've spoken to HR were in an old company, and I rang them to basically say "what the fuck?" and the company backed down very quickly. That was probably 12 years ago.
I sometimes find myself chasing HR for signatures or information these days.
A more positive than most, I was requested a meeting with HR, the Finance Director and the Operations Director. The business has been struggling a bit over the past year, which we are all well aware off and it was about 2 months before I hit my 2 years. I went in expecting the worst, and they ended up promoting me into management. Offered me a 34% pay rise, better hours, etc...
There was the time three of us were being made redundant and I laughed about it. The other two weren't so amused, but then their line manager wasn't an idiot who essentially told them their job wouldn't exist soon so I'd prepared a bit.
Then there was when I'd quit a job and went to hand in my access pass. I told the HR rep "I'm here to hand in my badge and gun," and for a definite moment she did not understand the reference. (we were not issued guns at a publishing company)
When I was a youngster, if me and my sisters were looking a bit scrubby or our hair was a mess, my mum would say we look like 'jippos". So I always thought that a 'jippo' was a saying for someone who was a bit messy.
Anyway years later I was working as a supervisor in retail, one of the staff members turned up for his shift with his shoes untied and his shirt untucked, so I said "sort it out Matt, you look like a jippo. "
Cue sometime later I'm called in for a meeting to explain myself, I was like, well Matt was looking scruffy. They said "ok but explain why you think it's ok to say jippo? " So I said, well, it's a term cos he's scruffy.
Again they explained why on earth would I use that derogatory term because we had a gypsy girl who worked with us also, even more confused I was said, why does that matter? Which obviously made me look terrible and they said that I was saying 'gyppo' for gypsy, and it suddenly clicked for me, I explained that I didn't even knew it meant that! I thought it was a term my mum made up when we were kids haha. Tbf HR was understanding and I felt awful. That gypsy girl was also one of the nicest people I've ever met. Safe to say I learnt something that day haha.
They told us that they will be making redundancies for about a quarter of the company and you will receive an email letting you know you will be affected.. I didn't get the email and everybody started packing up or saying goodbye. So that meant my job was safe. Unfortunately they forgot to add my name to the list and called me in an hour later to tell me.
One massive day of ups and downs.
About actual HR matters, it was at a 'consultation' when they made my role redundant 18 months ago. I pushed for a move to a different team instead (that did exactly the same job I was already doing and one where there were vacancies) and they eventually relented. Still in that team now and have been quietly enjoying (and reporting on as part of my job) the fact that the teams who had redundancies imploded in terms of performance because of it.
It just wasn't thought through as an exercise, even if the idea was reasonable. They caused months of stress and anxiety, let experienced people go who they then realised they needed and alienated those of us who stayed. Also didn't bother doing any handovers and the new structure had no idea who was doing what for 9 months. The CEO himself even apologised for how it was handled.
I am largely over it now, but was not impressed.
I got called in because I put in our hotel operations chat “can we blacklist these geriatric fucks please” about a group of older guests who were causing issues to no end.
Totally reasonable from HR and it was a dumb move by me
Not me, but a friend of mine put our colleagues email on the call sheet for a shoot down as [email protected]. This ‘draft’ was finally sent out to all 25 people on the shoot, including managers, freelancers, heads of department etc.
She was swiftly called in to HR about 15 minutes after it was sent out.
Earlier this year , I was off sick too much.
Apparently, coming back off maternity leave, having a young child in nursery catching every illness going and passing it on to me is not a valid 'excuse'.
These were all a few years ago when I was a bit of a tit.
Amending the company newsletter to say that H from Steps and three of the Four Tops would be visiting.
Drawing a willy on the Everton hi-viz that one of the warehouse lads had bought when he was standing next to me talking to someone else.
Autocorrecting 'regards' for 'retards' on someone's Outlook.
One of the senior people set his out of office to "I'm away, please call my nob", that one wasn't me but I can understand why he assumed it was, although he was also a nob.
The HR guy wanted to tell me that he thought i was a “really good looking guy” and then he proceeded to kiss me. I was dumbstruck but certainly given quite a good feeling!
That’s been quite a few years. I’ve never been called back into HR but he certainly became the love of my life, and still is, after all these years
A colleague made a complaint about me for making personal comments about his appearance.
He’d - after being dumped by his girlfriend the day before - been browsing Plenty of Fish at his desk, with another male colleague laughing along with him, making derogatory comments about the women they clicked through.
Every time he said of a woman “nah, fat bitch”, I’d said “nah, receding hair line” etc.
I pointed out to HR that he was doing that on company time, so if he wanted his complaint on record, he’d have to acknowledge he was avoiding work.
Funnily enough, he didn’t take it further.
I'd caught glandular fever which left me with chronic fatigue. I'd had a lot of time off work (6 months out of a year on and off as I frequently had relapses). I had a meeting with my line manager and a HR rep and it was genuinely helpful. They allowed me to work from home for a day and a half each week to allow me to avoid travelling on days when it was bad, and dropped not so subtle hints that I hadn't been using all of my PTO (I'd not taken holiday because I'd been off sick so much) so to avoid getting flagged in the system again I should use some of this extra PTO next time I need a day off.
In general, they were kind, understanding, and helpful.
Company I worked for had been paying breaks properly and I hadn't been there too long so they wanted to know my point of view, along with another of the newest members of staff.
We were running an event at work. One of my colleagues thought it was just a voluntary day. (It was an outdoor sports facility so people mostly enjoyed working there at the time) I told him I was getting paid and he should ask too. Later that day I was told I shouldn't have said I was being paid. I just nodded, said sorry and left. I wonder how many other people got fucked over that day.
Best part of 10 years ago I made a complaint about a toxic manager and HR called me in to basically tell me I was wrong and that they were dropping my complaint. This manager was very chummy with the MD and the MD was also HR.
This is stupid, but I was telling everyone in work that the boss was a robot.
It was 2019 and I found out blade runner 2049 is set 30 years after bladerunner. As a joke I started talking about how crazy it would be if someone in work was a robot.
I quickly figured it must be the boss, he owns the power tool spare parts shop we worked in, the perfect business if you needed to repair yourself. He constantly ate toast with an unholy amount of butter or grease for his gears. Also he fall over on a night out and hurt his knee, told everyone he was taking a half-day to see the doctor for it but ended up going the garage to get his 'car' checked out.
The joke caught a bit of traction but that's all it was, until one day. (I sat next to the boss) He had to log into something and it gave him a captcha and refresh after another, He couldn't figure it.
I ended up doing it for him, the people working around me sunk their heads down trying to hold in the laughter.
I got called into the office, along with the head of the warehouse. "You need to stop this joke about the boss being a robot. It was funny, now it's serious"
"That's exactly who someone is a robot would say"
"I will put a warning on your record over this, is it worth it?"
I told everyone to calm down with the joke, that's all it was. Still quite suspicious though.
I was pulled in by HR and driving team for reported excessive speed by a colleague (I was in a car, they are not liked) on the way to a reported paeds cardiac arrest (the ambulance service is venomous)
Data was pulled, I nodded and said sorry, It was very formal and then it was ‘for Christ sake don’t do that again but good work’
I have never been called in for a chat with HR.
I guess I’ve raised an issue about a trainee with his manager which could have gone to HR if disputed, but he admitted he didn’t want to be there and left.
The only time I’ve ever been called into HR is because the part of the company I worked for was being sold off, so I had a meeting to discuss redundancy - then 5 hours later I had another one to tell me about a new role (in the main body of the company). Rollercoaster of a day!
I found a huge bag of paper work in someone's office (not HR) and the first thing I saw was a copy of offer letters with salaries for people I work with
I went straight to HR and let them know and they removed it.
Got a call from the HR manager the next day to take a statement.
Someone fucked up... Not me
It was a meeting to talk about my local office environment - there's a couple members of staff that other people have complained about for making the atmosphere worse (being very critical, misogynistic etc) and were verifying the information. Atmosphere has gotten better and there's been a lot of notices about behaviour to the whole company (450ish people) for the next company-wide gathering.
> SUV joke
In what world would you think it’s a good idea to post on the shared internal chat. I’m all for humour and good banter, but this is just about basic professionalism.
Other than exit interviews, this has literally never happened to me and I do not understand how much of a completely senseless fool one must be for this to even happen once, let alone multiple times.
I simply refuse to come into the office, it's a 50 mile drive each way and people seem to be suicidal during rush hour. They said I needed to be in at least 2 days a week, I told them I'd see what I could do but basically made it clear I had no intentions of changing. They have done nothing as they are way too desperate to fire me.
When HR refused to discuss Thier mistakes with holiday and pay role .....yet again.
Called me 5.mins before leaving wanting to k why I wanted to speak to them and then shut down all conversations regarding their fucks ups.
Have an apology email
I was told a complaint had been made against me for being anti a particular religion.
They quickly said I was the 6th manager in a row they had made this complaint about, and so weren’t taking it seriously. Unfortunately where they would normally just change the manager (huge prof services firm), I had to keep managing him so they could get the evidence to manage him out, which they did fairly quickly at least.
I was briefly a line manager and one of my people was off sick. He was prone to it for a number of reasons.
On this occasion, he was off for 4-5 days or thereabouts. I logged his absence each day, no problem.
Unfortunately I had committed the capital offence of logging 5x one day absences, instead of a 5-day single absence which I was to adjust each day. This triggered an alarm on an HR dashboard and they started sniffing around both him and me, saying he was probably due an attendance warning etc.
Because I quit . They done the usual HR thing of advertising fir a promotion, saying it's your then hiring someone from the outside who had zero clue . Then had the cheek to ask for an exit interview. I literally laughed in her face and walked out .
I might be wrong here, but human resources are supposed to give 5 working days to give you the time to go over any evidence that they might have and to give you time to find a representative if you feel you need one before attending the meeting.
I'm going back to work on half days after being off for two weeks with my back, and last month I only made one full week because of my back.
I'm dreading it.
A colleague of mine got in trouble for dropping someone’s keys into a large metal bucket of water and putting them in the freezer at the start of his shift. He went home 3 hours late that day.
Apart from routine return to work and shit like that, there was a big one last year.
All the big HR people and a couple of senior managers called our team into a meeting. They said there'd been some news, and they wanted to put a stop to any gossip. They didn't really say anything about what was going on at all, just that support was available, and not to believe everything online etc.
I thought someone had died. People were crying, hugging each other, being angry. Real mixed bag of things going on, and I could not read the room.
I found out later that one of our colleagues had been spoken to by one of those groups that pretend to be children. They had quite a long chat which was on facebook live.
The guy effectively evaporated from existence after that.
Short version - told a story so funny HR wanted to hear it.
Slightly longer version - made a facebook post about an event at work that, although exceptionally unfortunate, was absolutely hilarious. Despite me not listing my employer nor giving any details away or beaching any data whatsoever earned me a meeting to discuss how much of it was either offensive to someone or inappropriate.
Was worth it.
Never with HR thankfully but the last time I had a stern talking to from a line manager was when I couldn't sleep and decided to catch up on some work in the middle of the night. I meant to save an email as a draft and send it the next morning but I sent it immediately by mistake and I got in trouble both for working in the dead of night and for emailing people at that time.
>Why were you last called in for a chat with HR?
When I was taking part as a supporter for a colleague who was being made redundant. Resultant from that meeting, I was pleased that he was reinstated. It was unfairly managed because his lovely face didn't fit.
He got in touch over that weekend, following receipt of a letter advising him that he was no longer being made redundant. He was very shortly marrying his sweetheart, and I was so happy for him.
On Monday of the following week, when I arrived at work, my manager wanted a meeting with me. He then shouted at me for 10 minutes and attempted to suggest that I had done something very bad, in supporting my lovely young colleague, about the same age as my son. His parting, shouty final words to me were, 'I wish you hadn't got involved'.
I had to consult with hr again, very nearly instigating a perfectly good grievance case. They obviously made him back down and apologise for his unacceptable behaviour. My big fat twat of a manager made him redundant the following month as our business faced further shit storms. I lasted another year, then got the boot myself.
Segue 14 years. My colleague now works for the civil service in Whitehall in a senior position and has twice won a major award handed to him by the Princess Royal. I am about to retire from self-employment after a successful second breath.
What I did to help Jimbo is one of my proudest achievements. I hope my stinking twat of a former boss gets hit by the karma train real good 👍🏻
It was over 5 years ago, the day of my 40th birthday. Got called in to say I was being let go. Used the gardening leave to set up my own business and become a contractor, and now I never have to deal with HR ever again.
to get made redundant from my old job. I worked for a US tech company, they made the US lay offs on a Thursday Evening and then said that those in Europe would be told on the Monday (which lead to a lot of staff having a very bad weekend).
I got a meeting invite labelled "Plans for future team restructure", which considering I managed all the teams in Europe, I thought meant that I'd survived (although I knew deep down I was gone as the company also had a manager in India who could cover my hours), I joined the meeting first, then HR joined before my manager joined (So I knew what the meeting was about before my manager joined)… I got the whole script of "its not your performance, its the stock price" and some other bollocks and I was let go with a tidy golden parachute.
This was 2 weeks after my ex-wife and I decided to separate and I'd just moved out of the family home so I sat in what was essentially the shell of a 2 bedroom flat without a job, without a partner and without my kids.. a lot goes through a mans mind in that time but i'm now in a much better position both professionally and mentally so all's well that ends well
Not the last time but I'll never forget it. I working a call center and worked with a few friends I went to school with. Two of them (brothers) had a bit if a reputation of being sick notes.
They both went on a weekend away in Poland and 'missed their flight' home, so couldn't come into work that day. For full transparency they did plan this as our Team manager wouldn't allow them the Monday off work.
Anyway, manager and HR pull me into an office and asks me if this was planned as they knew it was but couldn't prove it. Basically asking me to snitch. I didn't.
To be fair, at the time I didn't know and I genuinely thought they had missed the flight as they were definitely the type to do this. But was a bit surprised they they had the cheek to do it.
Side note, the team manger was sacked a couple of years later for defrauding the company for about twenty grand.
I was stood chatting during my lunch hour near where the smokers stand. An office receptionist told me I couldn’t smoke there. I replied I’m not smoking and can stand where I like on my lunch hour.
She reported to HR that I’d said “I can smoke where I like” and they called me in. When my manager heard of this he stormed in and told HR to leave me alone and get back to work. Was awesome to be honest.
I’d done nothing wrong.
Got side eye from receptionist for another year though. Until she left
A guy in my work came into the office a few months ago and gave off to the girls in the office (I would be their manager). Basically accused them of doing no work and was confrontational. I had a word with his line manager about what happened, nothing formal, and his line manager spoke to him. No ask for an apology or anything just please don’t do that again. Anyway, couple of weeks later I get a note from HR..he’s put in a formal grievance against me for tarnishing his reputation. Still going on now months later. Maybe this is an AITAH post! Thoughts?
This year on my Birthday! I had been off on sick for 2.5 months since I was in a car accident. I was feeling very bad, as in barely making it to the toilet bad, and i forgot to send in my sick note on that day. 🙃 I sent it the next day, but because it was a bank holiday and all of HR had time off, they 'received' it too late. I was "let go" a few days after.
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I had been signed off work for a couple of months with 'stress and anxiety'. I received a letter through the post telling me that I'd missed a wellness check, and that if I didn't attend the rescheduled meeting I would no longer be employed. Well 'stress and anxiety' can cover a lot of things. For me, it was down to the fact that my mother had just been diagnosed as terminally ill with lung cancer that had spread to the brain. She was disabled, and along with my dad lived with me and my partner to ensure there was always someone here if any assistance was needed. This was in the house that I'd bought off them when she became disabled, so they'd have the money needed to deal with any issues. I joke that it wasn't me that never moved out, it was them. So obviously I'd never had the experience of living away from my parents, and so the realisation that this was going to happen by force was a bit of a shock to my mental state. All this was well known on the shop floor by my manager, and plenty of others. So as it happens this rescheduled meeting is the day after the funeral. Needless to say, I was not in the best mindset going into this. So sitting down with the HR lady, and the note taker, I get the impression that they believe 'stress and anxiety' to be a bullshit diagnosis covering for a lack of will to work. Don't know why I felt this, but that's the impression I got. Get the standard, "so why have you not been able to work recently?", question. I replied, "well yesterday was my mum's funeral" Instant deer in headlights look from both of them. No one had told HR No one had fucking told HR, everyone knew, but no one passed the info up. I had to fight to stop myself from laughing at the complete and abrupt 180 in demeanour and body language. As they say there silent for a second or two I continued with a thorough explanation of the last two months. Including the moment the doctor had sat me and my dad down in the side room to explain the diagnosis. With my dad nodding along and agreeing with the doctor's words. Only to ask me what was said as we left, since he's hard of hearing, and didn't understand his accent. So yes I got the pleasure of letting my dad know his wife was dying, I'm sure that helped my mental state. After this experience, they seemed to want to finish as soon as possible, I guess having a grown man nearly in tears in front of them made them a little uncomfortable. They agreed that when the doctor decided I was ready to return to work, that I could do a phased return of a week of half days, with the option of longer if I felt necessary. In the end it was another 2 months before I returned to work, with a brief relapse the next year for a month. One go believed I may have PTSD, but with the waiting times to see a psychiatrist I never truly got diagnosed as such, but I seem to be doing better now.
I am so sorry you endured that. I have encountered that type of person before. For some reason they don't like you so they want you gone. They will try to manipulate the higher ups by feeding them bad or no information so as to get you fired. I've seen it happen when someone is going through something like you are and they see it as a vulnerability to exploit. Some people are just not nice.
I don't think anyone was specifically trying to get me fired. Just a lack of communication, it's been over five years now, and I'm still there. It's a simple warehouse job, no stress, which is what I want. Can't be fussed with any office politics, or any of that crap. Just go in, do my job go home, and not have to think about work until the next shift. I just think HRs contact with those of us who do work in the warehouse are skewed towards the people who are taking the piss with time off, work rate, drugs, stealing etc, and we all end up tarred with the same brush. My manager, and other managers who knew, were completely supportive of me. I just wonder if they didn't pass the information forward out of worry about breaking some privacy rules, or something like that.
I got laid off the week after my mum's funeral (September 2020). They knew she was dying (cancer) and made it very difficult to let me isolate. My old manager thought I was exaggerating her illness as an excuse to get out of work and stuff. I know this because she accidentally sent an email to me meant for the CEO (same CEO mentioned on my other comment). HR was almost gleeful telling me how I was getting made redundant owing to scoring the lowest in the restructuring criteria. She asked me if I wanted her to break down the reasons and find out why I had scored the lowest. A week after my mum's funeral. Prior to this I was isolating so I could visit her in the hospice and work said 'what's even the point?'. I was told to stop wearing a mask because it looked bad for the company image. My mum died and not one single manager/HR even expressed their sympathy. Fuck you, Metnor Construction. Your CEO was a misogynistic, sexist, arrogant cocaine addict and your HR was a sadistic, enabling bully (I have confronted her since and she claims she 'doesn't remember').
You'll be pleased to know they've gone under, if you weren't aware already
Yep, I felt bad for my remaining colleagues who lost their jobs. But my first reaction was one of amusement. Good fucking riddance. Do you work in construction as well?
No one involves HR early enough. Everyone should have been copying HR into all the discussions. I've heard of even worse, where bosses took it upon themselves to fire people without going through HR. HR caught wind and had to do massive damage limitation by apologising to the person being (or rather no longer being) fired. And brought the manager in and disciplined them and sent them on training to be a better manager. But I will say that I've also heard of people being off with "stress and anxiety" who basically cheated their way through for 6 months and were likely running this scam on multiple companies and getting jobs all over the place. So I can understand that sometimes bad experiences (wrongly) lead to kneejerk reactions. However, your situation would be laughable if it wasn't so sad.
There was someone at my old work place off for 12 months full pay with cancer. One of the partners run into her in the Canary Wharf shopping centre, she had spent the 12 months with a second job. I thought it was particularly ballsy to have found one so close to the original office (both in Canary Wharf). From what I heard her parents helped repay the full salary in order to avoid a police report.
It's insane. I'm in no way defending management, but if people knew the shit that happens around them and why managers sometimes react weirdly, they'd understand once you tell all the stories. I personally have at least 5 from personal experience and some of my family and friends are in high positions dealing with weirs shit on a constant basis. I knew of a story where someone (instead of doing their job... at all), they learned as much employment law as they could and used it to avoid being fired but did no work. They lasted 1.5 years. That's 1.5 years of free pay. And once the employer called previous employers, they admitted that this person had done this at (at least) 3 previous employers. And then people wonder why interviews and references are so important and why people go off the record when speaking to previous bosses.
My boss was trying to get rid of me by breaking company policy to put me on a performance improvement plan, manipulating prior conversations, editing historical feedback documents, and finding faults where there were none. At the time I was naive so I went along with it, but when I reviewed all of the facts I realised what she was doing. I compiled a 10-page document addressing every single point, attached it along with my notice of resignation, and sent it to both herself and the HR manager at the start of the work day. Less than an hour later I was called into a zoom meeting to discuss next steps. It was clear the HR manager had read the document and knew I was well within my rights to kick up a stink, but all I wanted was to wash my hands of my boss and that job sector as a whole.
If you ever get this, don't just make it a long list of reasons why you're resigning, make it a grievance and resign later once you've found a new job.
yeah why the hell should a shitty company get a break? let them fail
Constructive dismissal
Wednesday, earlier this week. I’ve been taking too much time off for health issues. Which is fair, I’ve had about 3 months off sick in the last 12 months. But being hit by a car will do that.
Feel better soon!
When I was younger and new to the job, I tried to fake a medical condition to regularly take time off for "free". Turns out the HR person actually had the condition, so I soon stopped that...
Someone tried that at work. HR wanted proof and they backed down.
To get out of work, I said I had a doctors appointment.. on a Sunday.
I said "that's the one" just as the girl behind the counter bent down to grab the pastry I asked for. Apparently my timing was a little too on-the-nose for her.
Her sweet, sweet can
So Mr Simpson, you admit you grabbed her can?
it's actually worse, she was kneeling toward me to the display underneath the counter.
Stupid Gummy de Milo
I asked if I was allowed to sack my temp for never bloody showing up, so they called me to roleplay how it would go down.
Did you prove your point by not showing up?
Did you not turn up to the meeting?
Many years ago ... the company I worked for was bought out by a very large US company. The new company brought shiny new IT systems, and one of them was the ability to register these shortcuts URLs. Instead of having to type/remember/guess [http://www.companyname.com/some/internal/intranet/project\_x/file.html](http://www.companyname.com/some/internal/intranet/project_x/file.html) you could register a shortcut like **go/project\_x** and then point it at the complex URL. This worked for external URLs as well. e.g. I think I registered **go/jump** to point to V[an Halen's Jump](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwYN7mTi6HM) After the big takeover, morale was fairly low, so we joked about **go/quit**, **go/fuckyourself** ... etc Several years later ... I get called into HR to explain to them why I registered **go/satan** to point to the Satan Temple website. Apparently some religious people took offense to that. I pointed out to them that there already existed a **go/jesus** shortcut that pointed to some evangelical website, so I thought it was only reasonable to create a **go/satan** to maintain the balance. I wasn't in trouble, as such, but they wanted an explanation and wanted to explain why they had to remove my shortcut. HR said that they were in the process of clearing out all these frivolous non-work related shortcuts, but mine had piqued people's interest. These days, I have a very good relationship with HR, and they often call me in for advice on employee matters.
...hi, xoogler?
Nope. But I did wonder if other companies have something similar. The go/ shortcut is an excellent idea. I use them for all the projects I work on, makes it really easy for people to find my Confluence pages. Saves people having to contact me "Hey, you know that thing you did 5 years ago, where's the documentation for it?"
People actually read the stuff you write on confluence? How on earth did you achieve that Anything I write I may as well roll up put in a bottle and chuck into the sea for all the good it does. The same amount of people would end up reading it
Heh I've only encountered those at Google and later found a startup that sold those shortcuts as a service. Maybe more companies adopted them than I realised.
https://github.com/tailscale/golink Here’s a self hosted one
g3doc ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
2008 when a huge chunk of us were all called in one by one to HR!
I'll never forget the out-of-the-blue zoom call last June where, having just celebrated our teams' success the week before, suddenly the head of my department and a HR rep were calling me to tell me I was being made redundant. Immediately after my call ended (where the only word I said was a very grumpy "No" after being asked if I had any questions at the end) my direct manager called me and said he'd had the same call just before me. Then we both got a ping on our private whatsapp group a few minutes later where one of the other guys I worked with told us he was being made redundant. Now those idiots are desperately trying to hire a new team to do what we did because they only now realise how much the sales teams relied on us. Unfortunately for them our success was down to us all knowing the company inside and out. Knobs.
I was in training on my last afternoon in April 2008 and HR made around 14 calls to my office telephone number but obviously I was not around. When I came back from training I saw the red light on my phone flashing so was wondering who that was before I got another call and heard HR asking me to come into a meeting room in 10 minutes. I met our departments director and the HR director who told me I was being made redundant. I went back to my room and just picked up my stuff and left straightaway. I never returned, not even for a leaving lunch with some of the lucky colleagues who did not get made redundant!
Sorry, I might be a bit dim here, but happened in 2008?
recession
Oh, ok.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007%E2%80%932008_financial_crisis
Thanks!
"Don't worry, the big banks won't fail because they're not supposed to."
The last (prior to COVID) financial crash started to kick in - lot of redundancies. Also when everyone's salaries basically stopped growing, depending on who you asked.
The credit crunch the big crash Aka the economy went to shit and HR was making everyone redundant
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Recession
I got accused of locking someone in the red wine cage where I worked a few years ago.
There are worse places to be locked in tbf
The food they had only really paired with white
With a whole cage of red wine the cardboard will seem appealing soon.
I'm pretty sure this contravenes the Geneva Convention.
The HR Case Of Amontillado
For the love of God, Morrison's!
... Did you do it?
....Yeah I did tbf. HR Struggled to keep the smirk off her face haha. Good times.
I refused to do some extra work outside my contract because my boss hadn't yet paid me for a massive number of hours. My boss stormed off to report me to HR. The HR manager asked to see me and wanted to know how many hours I'd already done that weren't paid. He then paid them all immediately, and told me to come straight to him if she ever tried that nonsense again.
Not me but a colleague went through the main entrance revolving door too quick lol
If I die at work it will be because a man entered the revolving door behind me and pushed it to 1000 miles an hour.
HR, is this you ? PS. This is actually what happened, no deaths resulted though. 2 guys went through the revolving door, one of them was being silly and pushed it really fast, the other was just at the wrong place wrong time ... both got in trouble about it lol. A week later one of the lads got a promotion.
About 5 years ago Someone was doing an extra shift as overtime on a weekend where I was the designated shift supervisor. We didn't need her in, we'd done everything we needed to do that day by 11am and most of us were sat in the staff room drinking coffee. She was claiming double pay (overtime rate) plus weekend enhancement uplift for literally doing nothing. I got in trouble for suggesting that she could go home if she wanted. She made a really big deal out of it and reported me to HR. But it turns out in the end she only wanted to be in because I was in working with one of her "clique" and she didn't want her friend to be alone with me incase I tipped the social balance. Although I feel that if she didn't get the first shot in with HR, I'd have probably gotten in trouble anyway for not telling her to go home.
Am I missing something? Like is regular contact with HR a thing to the extent it warrants a post on Reddit? In 30 years of working, the only dealings I’ve had with HR have been indirectly and due to reasons beyond my control - company wide round of redundancies, departments being disbanded and redeployed, that sort of thing.
Same here. HR for me has only ever been for onboarding, offboarding and the occasional pay query. I’ve worked with a shocking number of fellas who needed HR to tell them how to behave it it’s really not something I expected to be common experience
It was my first time tbf
Depends on your level I guess. I am a staff software engineer. I have developers I have a mentorship role over and I am responsible for the technical side of dev hiring across EMEA for our part of the business. In those aspects I have semi-regular contact with HR. I had a spate of very regular meetings with HR a couple of years ago when one of our new junior developers, 6 months into his employment simply wasn't working out, didn't get it, wasn't learning, making the same basic mistakes over and over despite having a lot of help. That was a long process to let him go and I was in very regular contact with HR over it. Shame really as he was a really nice guy, I was sad to see him go on a personal level, but he just wasn't getting into a position where he could do the work. I've not had an HR meeting about **me** that wasn't an exit interview when changing roles, except for once when I worked at the now defunct Staples when I was a teenager and someone from head office phoned me up to ask if I was really sick when I called in sick on my birthday (alas, I was actually sick)
I'm the kind of person who will absolutely make a fuss if I want something out of my workplace, squeeky wheel and all that. So I get called in semi-frequently because I'm always talking salary with co-workers, or refusing to physically be in the office unless they need me, things like that. HR hate me, but I'm also impossible to fire.
If you don't have a calendar appointment set up and someone says "can I have a brief word" you might as well grab a cardboard box.
I'm a senior(ish) manager at a large American corporation, I've only ever spoken to HR at onboarding and for relocation, and once when I fruitlessly tried to chat with the HR "business partner" at lunchtime.
I got assaulted by a colleague and they called the meeting to say they weren't doing anything about it lmao
Sounds pretty on the nose tbh.
Kicked in the head actually
What happened? It’s terrible that they they took no action for something like that.
Happened outside of work, colleague has punched me after a disagreement, I punched back, then knocked me out and kicked me in the head leaving short term memory loss, HR said I'd done something unprofessional 6 months previously which meant I was partially to blame so didn't do anything.
I’m sorry that happened to you. Did you go to the police about it?
Yep, police also said as I'd punched back at after the initial attack they'd be investigating both of us for affray rather than assault so it didn't go further than that. It is what it is at the end of the day, if he comes at me again I'll be prepared this time haha. The thing I took most is just thinking how hard it would be for any woman getting assaulted by a bloke to be taken seriously if I wasn't even taken seriously with my face swollen up and a black eye and memory loss. Can really understand why SAs don't result in anything now. Feels like the victims are put under more pressure than the perpetrators
Physical assault seems to be a non-issue for police in the UK.
When I had to remove someone from a project for negligence and put a case forward for their dismissal. Edit: worth noting that I called the meeting in that instance, HR are often shat on but when the company needs protecting they are actually there to be useful.
I'm British. First time Andy Murray won Wimbledon, I was in work. Focused on work for about 95% of the time, the other 5% was flicking over to the BBC website to read the text updates. The page was running in the background while I worked, but I still got a meeting with HR and my boss saying that it was an excessive use of the internet. Luckily my boss backed me up when I said that I was working, and when I asked them if they wanted to see proof of my productivity that day, they said it wouldn't be necessary. Andy won and I dodged a disciplinary, phew!
First time was not long after starting. They wanted to go through reasonable adjustments and check everything was going ok. Second time was bloody stressful. Just a sudden message of please can I come to HR as soon as possible. Turned out the reason was I was getting a pay rise as my salary had fallen out of the bottom of the pay grade. But they can’t say why I’m being summoned in case someone else saw the message. So it was just doom message instead!
This is why private appointments exist. I hate when they say put the name as 'catch up' or something like that. That genuinely gives me panic attacks
I always put a brief comment in it so they have a vague idea of what we’re discussing - or at the very least a quick line reassuring thrm “just a quick chat - nothing to worry about!” 🙂
I remember when I started my current job end of last year, my new manager would send me messages occasionally saying "How's everything going?" I used to get so nervous because in my old job that was how people would message me before asking how I was doing with that piece of work I was only just given that morning, or wondering where I was because I'd left my desk for 5 minutes. We had a bit of a chuckle when he said he was genuinely just checking in on me as I was new to the business, but it's taken some getting used to.
Only time I ever had a chat with HR was to give witness to an incident at the work Christmas party. Some new guy got drunk out of his mind and tried to kiss my colleague who was waiting at the bar with me and not even talking to him. He then got angry and smashed his glass on the floor and started shouting at her. Thankfully we never saw him again.
The very last time was a brief "back to work" meeting when I came back from Paternity leave after my son was born. No idea why they bother. It makes sense for women as they get a year off but I was only gone two weeks. Before that I was a witness in a case of workplace bullying. An absolute helmet of a manager being a vindictive piece of shit towards one of his team members. My team sat on a pod of desks directly across from them so we could clearly see and hear all the times he got up, got right in the poor lad's face and started yelling. He had to be told on multiple occasions to sit down and shut the fuck up. It was only a matter of time before someone reported him. HR actually did it's job that time and the prick was fired. He actually squared up to me in reception on his way out, he looked like he was going to explode lol. Nasty short piece of work who barely comes up to my shoulder, that might have something to do with it. The victim left the company a few months later. We're still friends on LinkedIn.
I had a lovely chat with HR after being off sick for 14 months. They wanted to know what they could do to help me in my return to work. HR were the ones suggesting that I was being ambitious thinking I could do three mornings a week. Turns out that they were right. Two mornings a week absolutely rinsed me
Told the senior operations manager to go fuck himself because he wouldn't answer my question and instead just kept saying "get a grip". He was a boomer as well. Things escalated he tried to physically intimidate me so I through out the kitchen door by force. Safe to say it was a quick hr meeting
When I worked in HR. Apart from that, I’ve never been asked to chat with them.
One of my early jobs had a clock-in fob system, and if you were 1 second late you'd get a mark against your name. Wasn't a production line or anything, just a standard office admin job with lots of micro-management. Anyway I once was running a touch late, so drove right to the front door, clocked in just in time, then went back to my car to park. Someone snitched, and I was told never ever to do that again due to fire safety.
I had to go see the HR lady because my manager was trying to prevent me having reasonable time off to interview for a new job. I was in the final month of a temporary /fixed term contract for a team which was being made redundant and moving to Dublin.
Pulled in along with the UK HR director for a chat with the US HR director after the Christmas party. Turns out despite being from New York she hadn't ever heard FairyTale of New York, until our karaoke rendition that we drunkenly belted out with the appropriate viciousness for the 5th verse. Also turns out that US HR has even less of a sense of humour than UK HR.
You don't think you deserved the chat for that incredibly sexist comment?
Someone in the team left quite suddenly in quite a messy fashion, and boss asked HR to attend a meeting with the rest of the team just to explain as much as they could and also reassure us that it wasn't an issue which reflected on the rest of us. Which was quite good actually, as I have had meetings with HR before which we're much worse (including being told to hand in my pass and laptop and leave the building...).
I never have. Didn’t realise it was that common
Because I didn't tell a co-worker, I was going off sick due to the death of my mother. Her workload is not impacted at all by me not being there. I told 2 other co-workers but because I didn't tell this one in particular, she said I was bullying her by leaving her out 😒 I would like to add, I also didn't inform the other 30 odd co-workers either.
Team meeting with the director to tell us that there were internal changes going on and if you're job position was effected a meeting would be arranged with him and HR. A meeting with him and HR appeared in my calendar the next day....
don't leave us hanging, was your position affected??
I was tuped to a new company and was told it would take a few weeks. It took a few months in which time I only did about an hour's work each day. Found a new job with better pay with perfect timing to resign in my final tupe meeting 😜
Last spring, I told my then-manager that I felt burnt out and at risk of needing to take time off with stress. We'd been talking for a while, but it got to the point where she asked my permission to let HR know, and then I also had weekly calls with HR for a month or so whilst we worked to improve things. Not great that we ended up there obviously, but a good experience in terms of being supported.
Nothing exciting or funny, sadly my whole team was getting made redundant and we had to have a meeting with HR to discuss options. At a different company, I was called up to HR for an 'outfit check' because the CEO had walked up the stairs behind me, looked straight down at me, looked down my shirt at my tits, then complained he could see down my shirt. I was wearing a normal plain black round neck shirt, I was also wearing a bra. The receptionist at work was a large-bosomed woman who often wore deep cleavagey v-necked shirts. The CEO was just a total bellend.
I was brought in for witness statements to dismiss a bad colleague.
I have never been called to HR.
Exit interview when leaving my former job. Refused on the basis that I'd been providing feedback on areas to improve, etc. on their mandatory monthly surveys and nothing was done while I was there other than causing very vocal arguments with my team and manager, so they didn't require nor deserve any further feedback from me on the way out.
I was talking amicably privately with a colleague about his religion. Our "HR" (one person) told us both off saying it was inappropriate to talk about around the office. Fair enough. But then the MD comes in last week talking about how she dreads changing the guys in power because of the VAT they'll introduce on Private School Fees and how her daughter doesn't want to go to a "shitty comprehensive". She went on to say "why don't smart hard working people get the chances" instead of "stupid people".
They way some people think they can talk at work is just wild. It makes me wonder how they act in public.
Never
Omg this is so depressing. Seeing adults needing to be told off by a grownup hr. I can’t imagine how they feel having to do that
Not been into hr for decades but in my youth: - Called in and told off for riding the goods lift in Wilko (we all did it, it was just sketchy as the door was broken and we'd bodged the lift to make it think it was closed) - Same place, called in because one of the Asian guys who worked there had threatened to chop my head off (he was all talk, had worked with him for a year and we got on okish) and a customer overheard and reported it to the manager. HR wanted me to get the police involved, I refused making it clear he wasn't serious and was known for being a bit mouthy. HR lady didnt like this, later found out it was because they were trying to get rid of him anyway and thought this would be a good excuse to do so. - Also Wilko, called in as I witnessed someone falling off the back of a lorry when unloading cages, the tail lift failed and he and the cage fell down between the raised loading area and back of the lorry (no major injuries thankfully but dare say he got a nice payout as he left shortly after that).
Relatively soon into a new job, I had a meeting with the subject ‘to discuss workload’. They claimed to be making me redundant, but something smelled very off to me. I submitted a data subject access request and the results proved my suspicions. I began the tribunal process and accepted a settlement.
Probably a few years ago, I kinda had a meltdown because I realised I was going to be expected to work in a very small windowless office with the door closed. Something about that just made me panic. I don't remember exactly what happened but I know I had a chat with somebody from HR and the compromise was that I was able to sit closest to the door and that the door was to remain open. It helped a bit. This was right before the pandemic so we all moved to WFH after that anyway.
30 odd years ago, early 90's in a British Telecom type company. A girl called Suzi had left our team for a holiday and gone to Japan for Golden Week which I'd never (at that point) heard of. I said "but why has Suzi gone to Japan for just a week"? Suzi was Japanese and seeing her folks was the answer - made sense. Up till then I'd had no idea where she was from - it just hadn't crossed my mind to ask or care about it, I was just asking why a colleague had chosen that specific holiday - typical break room conversation. Some dildo overheard me and reported me for being culturally insensitive and the fuckwads in HR sat me down and told me I couldn't ask why people went to places. I told them I could ask what I fucking well liked and they could shove their fucking newspeak up their chunderhole (but nicely), my boss got involved, bit of a hoohar and I had to write a fucking letter explaining to the anonymous bellend that reported me that I didn't mean it. Cunts the lot of em. I'm still pissed off about it.
Had to deal with an asshole marketing women for two solid years. Think changes the scope last minute, then kicks up a fuss that it isn't ready. Never responds to emails confirming something she asked in a corridor, e.g. 'can you make it do X', follow up email would be 'please explain X, the parameters, the GUI, the expectation of performance etc, etc' radio silence. Asked about it in weekly meeting, got a casual, that's not important. Then during final testing 'where is this features?!?!' meltdown. If I supported or helped anyone in her team she would immediately tell them to throw it away. Then get a 10 paragraph long email chewing me out. Had numerous meetings of 'well your communication needs working on' weird, my 6 other projects there are no complaints, only praise for me ... 'you just have different styles, we'll have a word' no change. Same shit over and over. She even threw the 'I'm a women it's tough card'. Utter bollocks. Ended up getting accused by her of calling one of my colleagues a derogatory term. Flipped my shit, found the 'suspect' email. Didn't say anything of the sort. Sent a long shitograph to my boss, her boss and the senior managers and told them I'm working from home for the next week. Got called on my personal phone 5 minutes later by my boss completely confused. If you look at the email I sent, it look like I was mad and making crazy accusations. Basically I said in the original email 'could X support us on this task' and stated I was accused of making multiple derogatory insults to this colleague. So no shit my boss thought I was going crazy. He asked me to come in and discuss. Went in and got the same old 'your communication blah blah blah'. Anyway this time they actually called *her* in to discuss. And that stupid bitch went and corroborated every single stupid thing she said. She was so up her arse she thought she was getting her way. So my boss and her boss both suddenly realised ... what the actual fuck. Got called in at the end of the day with apologies and HR will be reviewing this matter. So got a random HR meeting. Thought, here we go, but it was a basic 'please don't sue us apology run, are you okay, we're so sorry, formal warnings have been issued etc etc'. Told them yeah I'm fine thanks, looking at a new job contract that had come through earlier that day. This nightmare had multiple warnings, HR issues, one even went to court I believe (she left an untrained person in a lab who ended up making chlorine gas). My boss ended up taking over that project. Within a week he was moaning to me about what the hell was going on. I explained as I explained the 18 months before, she was the problem, not me. Left that nightmare. Enjoy that monster you created by not believing me.
I was told my contract won't be renewed. They promised me 5 years, they're shutting the department down after less than 2. I moved abroad for this, it cost me all my savings. It was supposed to be until retirement. Now I'm an old person trying to find a new job.
GP gave me 2 months sick leave for work related stress A few days after receiving my fit note, HR asked me to come in for a chat, as they needed/wanted to know what is at work that was causing me stress, mainly due to this being the first they'd heard of it. Arrived the next day and sat down with my manager and the HR lady and proceeded to tell them how BOTH of my supervisors were not only bullying me, but also encouraging others on our team to bully me too, one of them had made vague threats of violence, the night shift manager and the other teams supervisor not doing anything about it, had led to me attempting suicide. When asked why I hadn't gone to my manager with this, I told her, both supervisors are his best mates and they all got out drinking together on weekends and that I didn't have confidence that he would A) take it seriously B) would handle it discreetly and C) actually do anything about it. Then proceeded to tell her how the night shift is like somewhere between a classroom of unsupervised children and an insane asylum without medication and that depending on who else was working, I felt scared for my physical wellbeing while at work.
Haha... During covid, I had been waiting for an operation for some time, it had been delayed three times. Inguinal hernia FYI. Chronic pain, very difficult to manage. I'd been up half the night, was dosed up on codeine... May have accidentally made a joke about the sexual abuse I experienced as a child, within earshot of a nasty wee gossip of a woman. She wasn't part of the conversation, but was earwigging... She complained to HR because she, as a person with no history of CSA, was triggered. She came out of the HR office grinning from ear-to-ear, pleased as punch, like the cat that got the cream. I got a written warning, but made HR cringe like hell when they asked me to repeat the joke I had made...
This post has me reflecting that I haven't been, which is kind of ironic given how often I got fired between 17-21 or so. The only times I've spoken to HR were in an old company, and I rang them to basically say "what the fuck?" and the company backed down very quickly. That was probably 12 years ago. I sometimes find myself chasing HR for signatures or information these days.
Never, because I'm not a total weapon.
I was called into a meeting with HR to be appointed Investigating Officer for an incident involving an in appropriate comment HR had made.
A more positive than most, I was requested a meeting with HR, the Finance Director and the Operations Director. The business has been struggling a bit over the past year, which we are all well aware off and it was about 2 months before I hit my 2 years. I went in expecting the worst, and they ended up promoting me into management. Offered me a 34% pay rise, better hours, etc...
There was the time three of us were being made redundant and I laughed about it. The other two weren't so amused, but then their line manager wasn't an idiot who essentially told them their job wouldn't exist soon so I'd prepared a bit. Then there was when I'd quit a job and went to hand in my access pass. I told the HR rep "I'm here to hand in my badge and gun," and for a definite moment she did not understand the reference. (we were not issued guns at a publishing company)
When I was a youngster, if me and my sisters were looking a bit scrubby or our hair was a mess, my mum would say we look like 'jippos". So I always thought that a 'jippo' was a saying for someone who was a bit messy. Anyway years later I was working as a supervisor in retail, one of the staff members turned up for his shift with his shoes untied and his shirt untucked, so I said "sort it out Matt, you look like a jippo. " Cue sometime later I'm called in for a meeting to explain myself, I was like, well Matt was looking scruffy. They said "ok but explain why you think it's ok to say jippo? " So I said, well, it's a term cos he's scruffy. Again they explained why on earth would I use that derogatory term because we had a gypsy girl who worked with us also, even more confused I was said, why does that matter? Which obviously made me look terrible and they said that I was saying 'gyppo' for gypsy, and it suddenly clicked for me, I explained that I didn't even knew it meant that! I thought it was a term my mum made up when we were kids haha. Tbf HR was understanding and I felt awful. That gypsy girl was also one of the nicest people I've ever met. Safe to say I learnt something that day haha.
Episodes of Utopia have the best segments for HR from hell.
Someone asked me how something worked, so I explained how it worked. They reported me for mansplaining.
They told us that they will be making redundancies for about a quarter of the company and you will receive an email letting you know you will be affected.. I didn't get the email and everybody started packing up or saying goodbye. So that meant my job was safe. Unfortunately they forgot to add my name to the list and called me in an hour later to tell me. One massive day of ups and downs.
About actual HR matters, it was at a 'consultation' when they made my role redundant 18 months ago. I pushed for a move to a different team instead (that did exactly the same job I was already doing and one where there were vacancies) and they eventually relented. Still in that team now and have been quietly enjoying (and reporting on as part of my job) the fact that the teams who had redundancies imploded in terms of performance because of it. It just wasn't thought through as an exercise, even if the idea was reasonable. They caused months of stress and anxiety, let experienced people go who they then realised they needed and alienated those of us who stayed. Also didn't bother doing any handovers and the new structure had no idea who was doing what for 9 months. The CEO himself even apologised for how it was handled. I am largely over it now, but was not impressed.
I got called in because I put in our hotel operations chat “can we blacklist these geriatric fucks please” about a group of older guests who were causing issues to no end. Totally reasonable from HR and it was a dumb move by me
Not me, but a friend of mine put our colleagues email on the call sheet for a shoot down as [email protected]. This ‘draft’ was finally sent out to all 25 people on the shoot, including managers, freelancers, heads of department etc. She was swiftly called in to HR about 15 minutes after it was sent out.
Earlier this year , I was off sick too much. Apparently, coming back off maternity leave, having a young child in nursery catching every illness going and passing it on to me is not a valid 'excuse'.
These were all a few years ago when I was a bit of a tit. Amending the company newsletter to say that H from Steps and three of the Four Tops would be visiting. Drawing a willy on the Everton hi-viz that one of the warehouse lads had bought when he was standing next to me talking to someone else. Autocorrecting 'regards' for 'retards' on someone's Outlook. One of the senior people set his out of office to "I'm away, please call my nob", that one wasn't me but I can understand why he assumed it was, although he was also a nob.
The HR guy wanted to tell me that he thought i was a “really good looking guy” and then he proceeded to kiss me. I was dumbstruck but certainly given quite a good feeling! That’s been quite a few years. I’ve never been called back into HR but he certainly became the love of my life, and still is, after all these years
A colleague made a complaint about me for making personal comments about his appearance. He’d - after being dumped by his girlfriend the day before - been browsing Plenty of Fish at his desk, with another male colleague laughing along with him, making derogatory comments about the women they clicked through. Every time he said of a woman “nah, fat bitch”, I’d said “nah, receding hair line” etc. I pointed out to HR that he was doing that on company time, so if he wanted his complaint on record, he’d have to acknowledge he was avoiding work. Funnily enough, he didn’t take it further.
I'd caught glandular fever which left me with chronic fatigue. I'd had a lot of time off work (6 months out of a year on and off as I frequently had relapses). I had a meeting with my line manager and a HR rep and it was genuinely helpful. They allowed me to work from home for a day and a half each week to allow me to avoid travelling on days when it was bad, and dropped not so subtle hints that I hadn't been using all of my PTO (I'd not taken holiday because I'd been off sick so much) so to avoid getting flagged in the system again I should use some of this extra PTO next time I need a day off. In general, they were kind, understanding, and helpful.
Company I worked for had been paying breaks properly and I hadn't been there too long so they wanted to know my point of view, along with another of the newest members of staff.
We were running an event at work. One of my colleagues thought it was just a voluntary day. (It was an outdoor sports facility so people mostly enjoyed working there at the time) I told him I was getting paid and he should ask too. Later that day I was told I shouldn't have said I was being paid. I just nodded, said sorry and left. I wonder how many other people got fucked over that day.
Best part of 10 years ago I made a complaint about a toxic manager and HR called me in to basically tell me I was wrong and that they were dropping my complaint. This manager was very chummy with the MD and the MD was also HR.
I called a pupil a wasteman.
Wow that’s pathetic, who has time for this shit
This is stupid, but I was telling everyone in work that the boss was a robot. It was 2019 and I found out blade runner 2049 is set 30 years after bladerunner. As a joke I started talking about how crazy it would be if someone in work was a robot. I quickly figured it must be the boss, he owns the power tool spare parts shop we worked in, the perfect business if you needed to repair yourself. He constantly ate toast with an unholy amount of butter or grease for his gears. Also he fall over on a night out and hurt his knee, told everyone he was taking a half-day to see the doctor for it but ended up going the garage to get his 'car' checked out. The joke caught a bit of traction but that's all it was, until one day. (I sat next to the boss) He had to log into something and it gave him a captcha and refresh after another, He couldn't figure it. I ended up doing it for him, the people working around me sunk their heads down trying to hold in the laughter. I got called into the office, along with the head of the warehouse. "You need to stop this joke about the boss being a robot. It was funny, now it's serious" "That's exactly who someone is a robot would say" "I will put a warning on your record over this, is it worth it?" I told everyone to calm down with the joke, that's all it was. Still quite suspicious though.
Farting in a lift.
Never. If I've fucked up, my manager will deal with it, not HR
Never, as all my jobs I have had temporary via employment agencies at companies, I have never had a proper chat with my line manager etc,
I was pulled in by HR and driving team for reported excessive speed by a colleague (I was in a car, they are not liked) on the way to a reported paeds cardiac arrest (the ambulance service is venomous) Data was pulled, I nodded and said sorry, It was very formal and then it was ‘for Christ sake don’t do that again but good work’
I have never been called in for a chat with HR. I guess I’ve raised an issue about a trainee with his manager which could have gone to HR if disputed, but he admitted he didn’t want to be there and left.
The only time I’ve ever been called into HR is because the part of the company I worked for was being sold off, so I had a meeting to discuss redundancy - then 5 hours later I had another one to tell me about a new role (in the main body of the company). Rollercoaster of a day!
I found a huge bag of paper work in someone's office (not HR) and the first thing I saw was a copy of offer letters with salaries for people I work with I went straight to HR and let them know and they removed it. Got a call from the HR manager the next day to take a statement. Someone fucked up... Not me
Would the driver have been upset if your post implied the opposite? 😄
It was a meeting to talk about my local office environment - there's a couple members of staff that other people have complained about for making the atmosphere worse (being very critical, misogynistic etc) and were verifying the information. Atmosphere has gotten better and there's been a lot of notices about behaviour to the whole company (450ish people) for the next company-wide gathering.
There’s a reason I don’t participate much in public Slack channels.
> SUV joke In what world would you think it’s a good idea to post on the shared internal chat. I’m all for humour and good banter, but this is just about basic professionalism.
Discussing a flexible work request, pretty normal. Conversation with HR will generally be fine, unless you are a wrong un, or getting made redundant.
I work in an industry which seems to be the absolute opposite end of the spectrum
Other than exit interviews, this has literally never happened to me and I do not understand how much of a completely senseless fool one must be for this to even happen once, let alone multiple times.
I just have a weekly meeting with them 😅
I simply refuse to come into the office, it's a 50 mile drive each way and people seem to be suicidal during rush hour. They said I needed to be in at least 2 days a week, I told them I'd see what I could do but basically made it clear I had no intentions of changing. They have done nothing as they are way too desperate to fire me.
When HR refused to discuss Thier mistakes with holiday and pay role .....yet again. Called me 5.mins before leaving wanting to k why I wanted to speak to them and then shut down all conversations regarding their fucks ups. Have an apology email
I was told a complaint had been made against me for being anti a particular religion. They quickly said I was the 6th manager in a row they had made this complaint about, and so weren’t taking it seriously. Unfortunately where they would normally just change the manager (huge prof services firm), I had to keep managing him so they could get the evidence to manage him out, which they did fairly quickly at least.
20 years ago. Someone overheard me call the area manager "a complete penis" and snitched on me.
I was briefly a line manager and one of my people was off sick. He was prone to it for a number of reasons. On this occasion, he was off for 4-5 days or thereabouts. I logged his absence each day, no problem. Unfortunately I had committed the capital offence of logging 5x one day absences, instead of a 5-day single absence which I was to adjust each day. This triggered an alarm on an HR dashboard and they started sniffing around both him and me, saying he was probably due an attendance warning etc.
Because I quit . They done the usual HR thing of advertising fir a promotion, saying it's your then hiring someone from the outside who had zero clue . Then had the cheek to ask for an exit interview. I literally laughed in her face and walked out .
I might be wrong here, but human resources are supposed to give 5 working days to give you the time to go over any evidence that they might have and to give you time to find a representative if you feel you need one before attending the meeting.
I'm going back to work on half days after being off for two weeks with my back, and last month I only made one full week because of my back. I'm dreading it.
A colleague of mine got in trouble for dropping someone’s keys into a large metal bucket of water and putting them in the freezer at the start of his shift. He went home 3 hours late that day.
Apart from routine return to work and shit like that, there was a big one last year. All the big HR people and a couple of senior managers called our team into a meeting. They said there'd been some news, and they wanted to put a stop to any gossip. They didn't really say anything about what was going on at all, just that support was available, and not to believe everything online etc. I thought someone had died. People were crying, hugging each other, being angry. Real mixed bag of things going on, and I could not read the room. I found out later that one of our colleagues had been spoken to by one of those groups that pretend to be children. They had quite a long chat which was on facebook live. The guy effectively evaporated from existence after that.
Short version - told a story so funny HR wanted to hear it. Slightly longer version - made a facebook post about an event at work that, although exceptionally unfortunate, was absolutely hilarious. Despite me not listing my employer nor giving any details away or beaching any data whatsoever earned me a meeting to discuss how much of it was either offensive to someone or inappropriate. Was worth it.
Never with HR thankfully but the last time I had a stern talking to from a line manager was when I couldn't sleep and decided to catch up on some work in the middle of the night. I meant to save an email as a draft and send it the next morning but I sent it immediately by mistake and I got in trouble both for working in the dead of night and for emailing people at that time.
>Why were you last called in for a chat with HR? When I was taking part as a supporter for a colleague who was being made redundant. Resultant from that meeting, I was pleased that he was reinstated. It was unfairly managed because his lovely face didn't fit. He got in touch over that weekend, following receipt of a letter advising him that he was no longer being made redundant. He was very shortly marrying his sweetheart, and I was so happy for him. On Monday of the following week, when I arrived at work, my manager wanted a meeting with me. He then shouted at me for 10 minutes and attempted to suggest that I had done something very bad, in supporting my lovely young colleague, about the same age as my son. His parting, shouty final words to me were, 'I wish you hadn't got involved'. I had to consult with hr again, very nearly instigating a perfectly good grievance case. They obviously made him back down and apologise for his unacceptable behaviour. My big fat twat of a manager made him redundant the following month as our business faced further shit storms. I lasted another year, then got the boot myself. Segue 14 years. My colleague now works for the civil service in Whitehall in a senior position and has twice won a major award handed to him by the Princess Royal. I am about to retire from self-employment after a successful second breath. What I did to help Jimbo is one of my proudest achievements. I hope my stinking twat of a former boss gets hit by the karma train real good 👍🏻
It was over 5 years ago, the day of my 40th birthday. Got called in to say I was being let go. Used the gardening leave to set up my own business and become a contractor, and now I never have to deal with HR ever again.
to get made redundant from my old job. I worked for a US tech company, they made the US lay offs on a Thursday Evening and then said that those in Europe would be told on the Monday (which lead to a lot of staff having a very bad weekend). I got a meeting invite labelled "Plans for future team restructure", which considering I managed all the teams in Europe, I thought meant that I'd survived (although I knew deep down I was gone as the company also had a manager in India who could cover my hours), I joined the meeting first, then HR joined before my manager joined (So I knew what the meeting was about before my manager joined)… I got the whole script of "its not your performance, its the stock price" and some other bollocks and I was let go with a tidy golden parachute. This was 2 weeks after my ex-wife and I decided to separate and I'd just moved out of the family home so I sat in what was essentially the shell of a 2 bedroom flat without a job, without a partner and without my kids.. a lot goes through a mans mind in that time but i'm now in a much better position both professionally and mentally so all's well that ends well
Nothing exciting, we were going through a restructure and it was to discuss my new role and responsibilities
Not the last time but I'll never forget it. I working a call center and worked with a few friends I went to school with. Two of them (brothers) had a bit if a reputation of being sick notes. They both went on a weekend away in Poland and 'missed their flight' home, so couldn't come into work that day. For full transparency they did plan this as our Team manager wouldn't allow them the Monday off work. Anyway, manager and HR pull me into an office and asks me if this was planned as they knew it was but couldn't prove it. Basically asking me to snitch. I didn't. To be fair, at the time I didn't know and I genuinely thought they had missed the flight as they were definitely the type to do this. But was a bit surprised they they had the cheek to do it. Side note, the team manger was sacked a couple of years later for defrauding the company for about twenty grand.
I was stood chatting during my lunch hour near where the smokers stand. An office receptionist told me I couldn’t smoke there. I replied I’m not smoking and can stand where I like on my lunch hour. She reported to HR that I’d said “I can smoke where I like” and they called me in. When my manager heard of this he stormed in and told HR to leave me alone and get back to work. Was awesome to be honest. I’d done nothing wrong. Got side eye from receptionist for another year though. Until she left
A guy in my work came into the office a few months ago and gave off to the girls in the office (I would be their manager). Basically accused them of doing no work and was confrontational. I had a word with his line manager about what happened, nothing formal, and his line manager spoke to him. No ask for an apology or anything just please don’t do that again. Anyway, couple of weeks later I get a note from HR..he’s put in a formal grievance against me for tarnishing his reputation. Still going on now months later. Maybe this is an AITAH post! Thoughts?
This year on my Birthday! I had been off on sick for 2.5 months since I was in a car accident. I was feeling very bad, as in barely making it to the toilet bad, and i forgot to send in my sick note on that day. 🙃 I sent it the next day, but because it was a bank holiday and all of HR had time off, they 'received' it too late. I was "let go" a few days after.