It shouldn't come to this

Imagine yourself in this scenario:

You are a sales manager. Your boss comes to you and says you are not keeping your company car clean enough.

What do you do? Apologize profusely, run out at lunch/after work that day (whichever is sooner) and get it cleaned, then make a appointment on your calendar to get it cleaned say every week or two? That seems logical to me. After all, you get reimbursed for having it cleaned, so you're just out a bit of time, and your boss has made it clear that this is important to him.

Not one of our managers. Apparently his boss has had this conversatiom with him more than once to no avail. Now the guy's car is nearing 100K miles, the normal trade in point for our company. It was determined last week that the guy is getting a formal letter stating that if his car isn't kept up to snuff, his company car will be taken away. Instead he will get a car allowance and have to furnish his own wheels.

I can't imagine not getting this. Your boss tell you to clean it up, DO IT. It wasn't an idle suggestion. We'll see how this works out.

That's just stupid

This morning I did a contractor safety orientation. I normally don't do these anymore, but the person who normally does was busy, so I stepped in. The guys were really nice. They asked after viewing the video if they need to tie off in a scissor lift. I told them yes as it's our facility rule (this is not an OSHA requirement. Anyone who tells you that is WRONG.) At the end they asked if they'd see me again. I said if they need me to ask and someone would find me. I also told them that if they saw me involuntarily it wouldn't be pleasant.

Later in the morning, I took some cardboard out into the plant for recycling. While I was out there I felt like I needed to do a safety walk through. I've learned to trust these feelings. I got back to where the contractors were working, and what do I see? One of the guys has his lanyard hooked to his harness. Yeah, that does NO good. I asked him what he was hooked to. He grabbed his lanyard and followed it to the end where it was connected to his harness. Let me tell you, he knew good and well it wasn't hooked to anything. I did not hatch out of my egg last night. His buddy in the lift starts laughing because he knows the guy's in trouble.

I told guy #1 he had to tie off. What's he do? Ties the lanyard back on itself around the railing of the lift. No and no. You can only tie specially made lanyards back on themselves. This wasn't one of them. You can't tie off to the railing as they aren't rated to take the kind of force a fall would generate. I told him to look on the floor for tie offs. They are marked as such. He found one but the hook on his lanyard wouldn't fit. That's because it wasn't a tie off point. Grr. I told them to lower the lift so I could look at it and point out the proper anchor points. When they do, I notice that guy #2 (who'd been laughing at his friend for getting busted) wasn't tied off either. Double grr. At this point I was majorly not happy. I said "Didn't we just discuss this?". I then said "If I see this again, you're ejected from the job site". I also included "I told you if I saw you involuntarily it wouldn't be pleasant." I of course then e-mailed a summary of this incident to the appropriate internal people. The person whose contractor this is will also be contacting the company to tell them about it.

I went back and told my coworker (and backup safety person) about this. I told her how dumb this was. She said it wasn't dumb. "Dumb is like ignorant. You can fix it. This is just stupid." I have to concur.

This is a set up

I want you to put on your HR hat for a moment. What does it look like? Well, it's a crown as any HR practitioner would tell you. The specific design is up to you.

Why would you hire a candidate with the following characteristics?

1. Brings his girlfriend to the interview
2. One of his degrees is from a known diploma mill (per our background screening firm)
3. Called back to tell us the phone number on his resume is out of date

I'd also like to add, this guy is an HR person. And yes, we are hiring him. In normal circumstances, any one of these should be an enormous red flag. Taken together, the klaxons are blaring.

The answer came to me. The hiring manager (the company HR manager) WANTS this guy to fail. He didn't want to hire someone for this position.  He was made to by senior management. His go-to strategy is being passive aggressive. In fact, he recently told us that it's HR's job to be passive aggressive. It dawned on me (I'm claiming divine guidance) that the guy is being set up to fail so that the manager (my boss) can say "I told you so". The candidate starts tomorrow, and my boss has conveniently arranged to be out of town for 3 days. He's left us no instructions on what to tell the new guy when he's not undergoing company orientation. This should be fun. 

Sound like a set up to you?

Interview garb

A recent post on Ask A Manager's website featured an awesome graphic from Get Hired about interview garb. We had a lady yesterday who should have read this. She came to an interview in a tank top. No, not a nice sleeveless blouse, a ribbed cotton tank top. Oh my. Several people not in the interview noticed it, and let me assure you the hiring supervisor did too and mentioned that he was not impressed. Yes, it was a warehouse job, but this is still not have you show up to interview. My goodness.

This link will take you to the rest of the Get Hired list. It's very good reading for anyone who's interviewing. It's also quite entertaining.

You aren't that good

Recently we received a 13 page resume from a candidate. Yes, 13. If you didn't already know, there is no one, I repeat no one, whose career warrants a resume that long. Most people's should be not more than 2 pages, 3 at the max. This guy's was nothing special, so 1.5 pages would have been plenty.

No-knead foccacia tiles

During one of my recent spates of cleaning and organizing, I came across this recipe that I'd copied from an issue of Better Homes and Gardens over 2 years ago. I decided to make it last week. It was SO easy. Almost no effort at all really. Behold the finished product:

Toppings are (clockwise from upper right): blue cheese, parmesan cheese, pepperoni, roasted red peppers, green olives, and limes. Yum yum. I'd recommend pizza or spaghetti sauce for dipping. I think the tiles would also be great cut into smaller strips as an accompaniment for soup.

You can't make this stuff up

Recently my friend's coworker, Y.U., sent me two posts from this blog via my friend. Y.U. thought I'd like them. She was right. I now share them with you, along with my thoughts.

Story #1
1. LOVE the peep picture that accompanies the story. How awesome is that?
2. I have a purple glitter pen. It's great. I wouldn't use it on a job application personally, but I wouldn't get too bent out of shape if someone else did.
3. How on earth do you spell your own name wrong, TWICE?
4. My teammate's favorite part was the person can't work weekends "cuz" she's hung over. Nice command of the English language. (also note the person referred to Friday and Saturday as weekends. Last time I checked weekends were Saturday and Sunday.)
4. Can you imagine watching the fake nail fly off and hit the person in the eye? It would be hilarious as long as you weren't the recipient.
5. My  teammate asked what job this person would be qualified for. "I'm serious" she said. I think probably one similar to that illustrated in the peep photo.

Story #2
1. Completely agree with the concluding sentence. I'd also add "your spouse, significant other, aunt, uncle, grandparent, etc.". Unless you are so sick you can't make the call yourself, no one but you needs to be having work related conversations with your boss. Period.
2. Does this lady not get that part of the reason he's the way he is could stare her in the mirror every day? Hello.
3. If he'd driving you crazy, kick him out. It's your house. He's an adult. Tell him it's time to figure it out.
4. A point about discrimination: people oftentimes fail to understand this term. Discriminate means to differentiate. If you don't believe me, google it. We all discriminate every day.  I discriminate when I stop at the red light and go when it turns green. You can do the same with people. For example, you can say "I'm not hiring anyone under 30". That is not illegal. However, you can't say "I'm not hiring anyone over 30." That is an illegal form of discrimination- age. Note that it only applies to people 40 and over. Crazy, yes, but true.

I hope you enjoyed these stories as much as I did. Thanks to Y.U. for sending them to me. As I told my mom and one of the commenters noted, you can't make this stuff up. Before I would worked in HR, I would never have believed these stories were true. I do now.

A bonus story from today: A person being interviewed spent most of the time tell his prospective boss the things she should be doing. This made one of other attendees so nervous she later said she felt like she was having a panic attack. Finally the manager got so mad she said "I'm the X Manager. You don't need to tell me how to do my job". With that, she got up and walked out of the room.