I used to work in HR (in a factory), but I didn’t have to confront or fire anyone. (Thankfully.)
A friend did though, and and the worst was this poor old guy who used to have “accidents” in his pants. He’d just keep working. Either he was too embarrassed to ask to be relieved (unfortunate pun) or he didn’t know it happened. He would refuse to go home, and we couldn’t force him. The plant nurse would help him wash up, we’d find him something clean to wear, and he’d go back to the line.
The plant nurse finally convinced him that he needed to see a doctor. Turns out he had cancerous polyps. He retired and died a couple of years later.
Well, I’m not an HR person per se, but as the manager of my department, I’m the one called on to deal with typical HR problems like:
The school bus driver that told a bunch of junior high school boys as he drove past a cornfield that whenever he sees that certain cornfield that wonders how ling it would take for a body to decompose if he buried it there, then in the next breath tall them that however long it was, his wife would take twice as long because of her size. I should say ex-bus driver.
And the employee about 15 years ago that we all thought had a flatulence problem, but as it turned out, had a spastic colon.
Once I got called down to the conference room. When I got there, the big boss from California was on a surprise visit, with a major customer. We all decided to take a tour of the server room, and I lead the way. I pass the office of a coworker…
We were your normal tech people, who pretty much had fun, and didn’t give much of a crap about office procedure. Our local boss was cool with that and often joined in with the gang. Well aparently while I was gone the conversation among the gang in the coworker’s office had turned to circumcision somehow. The coworker was a girl from Vietnam, whose family never spoke of such things I guess, and she was incredulus that it existed. So as I walk by the office she sees me and yells out “Wolfman, are you circumcised?” Right as big boss and customer walk by. :smack:
So at big boss’s order we all got a lecture about inappropriate office topics. The poor girl was blushing like she wanted to die, and the HR chick wasn’t much more than 22 and not doing much better. It didn’t help anyone that I was struggling as hard as I could not to bust a gut, and not succeeding very well.
Well, as an IT person, the worst thing I had to confront an HR person about was forwarding explicit pornography to an employee.
This idiot, Cat-bertte, was playing with our new spam filter. She was going through and replying to the pornagraphic spam, including the pics in the reply! If that were not bad enough, she was replying to the ones that appeared to be coming from empoyees and adding nasty, threatening notes! These messages were caught in our spam filter, they would not have reached anyone, but she took it upon herself to not only let the spammers know that they had a live one, but sent very explicit split wet beaver shots to young male employees along with threatening notes. This was post Klez, so every spammer knew how to make things look like they were from someone real in your address book.