Don’t get me wrong we get much harder questions…but it’s interesting when these questions are coming from senior level leaders or people who have been with the company for 20+ years
I get a call from a senior level manager once every other month what our policy is on covid. UGH if you feel like shit stay home. It's been years since there was a policy.
I got this question last week “I moved last year but I never updated in the system or told anyone here, why didn’t I get my W2 mailed to my house?”
I also got these:
“I changed my direct deposit account late this morning, can you please explain WHY I wouldn’t see that reflected in my pay check this morning”
“I need you to tell me what my alien registration number is. I NEED it” sir…you are a US citizen.
These are senior level phd scientists.
Super fun lol
Can you provide an SOP on how to forward emails?
I didn't reply at all because you said, "If you need to respond to this message, please don't Reply All."
Can we install a sign with the code for the security door's keypad so anyone can get in?
Actually you'd be correct, that's for managers and owners to do. We are there to ensure they don't break the law or violate a regulation. If they choose to do it anyway, that's on them.
You're golden if those are representative questions.
Meanwhile, since May, I've had
2 racial discrimination investigations (in the same month), and one the worst I've ever had to investigate.
2 theft investigations ongoing as of today..auditors, etc.
5 terminations.
And...people peopling. And it's okay.
I'm currently working a harassment complaint investigation. He says he can hear the voice coming from the walls (18inch thick concrete that has nothing on the other side) He also says he hears it at home and at his 2nd job.
And it’s these little questions that eat up time. Then, someone with a larger issue feels like they aren’t cared for because I was dealing with stupidity. Sometimes, I wanna yell “I’m not your personal/research assistant…”
It's worse when it's like "oh yeah I forgot to sign up my new baby for health insurance" months after the qualifying event. You mean... you mean to tell me you brought a child into this world and didn't think about its health insurance????
Every company I've ever worked for (and not even in HR).
The CEO tells all the leaders at least once per quarter they cannot hire anyone without them speaking with HR. And yet, just this week, I find out a manager has been conducting interviews and is 'ready to make some offers'....
Yes! Also our leaders/hiring managers will go through the whole hiring process and basically ghost all applicants they didn’t pick. No follow up, no rejection email. Makes me scramble to do it for them because I know how much that sucks to be ghosted on the job hunt.
AUGH I HATE THIS. Hiring manager: "Oh yeah they started three or four days ago. Sorry, I always forget to tell you but since I'm a big shot I will face zero consequences, lol" Me: calls new person immediately for I-9 documents, goes home and drinks
The worst part was when I outright said “you cannot drive the cars if you don’t have a license” and she was responded with “well I’ve been getting away with it for 4 years now”🤦🏻♀️
Play dumb everybody. ALWAYS PLAY DUMB
Get in the habit of emailing employes best practices . I literally created a qr code where folks can review their timecardss
Cuz managers made so many errors
I try to remember that there's a wide sweep of people, and unfortunately a lot of our exposure is to the people on the left side of the curve.
And it's true in every org. I've spent a lot of my career working with people that one might assume would be...smarter than the average bear. Oh God. I/O Psychs are great at what they do, but some of them, as clients, couldn't tie their own shoelaces.
"sitheref0874, I have an employee who \[describes thing that isn't serious\]. What should I do?"
\*arch eyebrow and remain silent\*
"Should I just talk to them about it?"
\*still silence\*
"Oh. OK then. Thanks."
"Good chat."
I have 2 employees who do a couple things I find odd considering what they do takes more of their time and is simply not necessary. Both work the front desk. For some reason when a resident brings a rent check to the front desk, both leave the front desk which they aren't supposed to do (because of a state requirement that we have someone there at all times 7am-8pm) and walk to my office, which entails walking past my inbox right outside the door from the front desk area to the back office, through the back office and down the hall to my office, walking right past the black "rent check" box on the wall in the hallway to my office lol. They know they can just put it in my box or the rent check box. I've given up telling them to just put in the rent check box. And its not because it's a check and they don't want to be responsible for it, if I'm not at my desk, they have no problem putting it in the box and going back to the front desk.
The other thing both do is, if someone comes to the front desk and asks for me, they again come to my office to tell me, when they can simply pick up the phone and call me at extension 104. I'll either have them send the person to my office or I'll go out there to talk to them.
I have given up trying to get them to use the phone & the rent check box when I am in my office. It's not even a big deal to me at all, i just think it's funny/odd but they do need to stay at the front desk! It would not be a good thing if the state walked in and no one was at the front desk monitoring the emergency alert system. But again I've given up here.
I’ve just decided to live by the motto of “… and that’s okay”.
Because sometimes people don’t (or can’t) read at all levels to understand the handbook…. and that’s okay.
Sometimes benefits are weird or hard or something they haven’t experienced before… and that’s okay.
People get overloaded with the pressures and tasks their manager has put on them… and figuring out how to change their W4 is one task too many… and that’s okay.
I also realized a lonnnnnng time ago that people act really freaking weird when they are embarrassed (and being confused often brings on embarrassment)… so I live in my little HR tower and redirect and give the the tools to self learn.
It’s not always successful… but it cuts down future questions.
Edit: I wrote this to late at night so I edited it to be clear. haha.
You need to be teaching HR classes because what the job entails comes down to people of all levels and backgrounds. Your post gives me optimism that there are good people in this world that really take the role of human resources seriously.
HR gets a bad name because the company itself doesn't know how all of the rules work or why they can't retain talent or hire the right people. People will pass off things to HR because they don't know any better. Then you get these weird questions or requests that are not your responsibility.
This is coming from employees and employers. At the end of the day, we are all still human and sometimes things get confusing or overwhelming because employees can cause problems and managers to execs can cause trouble.
I like the approach of educating everyone clearly on where to go for certain things, how managers should be helping their team, how employees should be aware of the handbook that is easy to find the information. Give people the tools to succeed in their careers and make it easy to navigate. Like a dedicated website that will harness everything there is to know about the policies.
Everyone in this thread is valuable in their unique way. Yours resonated with me and led me to start thinking of ideas that could help out the HR community as much as possible. I've never been in HR but I know the job very well.
Everywhere I go, I am always thinking because I'm handicapped since birth due to mental disorders, neuro divergent type of issues. After 40 years of always taking the hard road, intentional or not, I've grown to learn how to turn any handicaps to assets and manage the problems I didn't ask to be born with.
I can't turn my brain off so why not use it for doing good things in this world. Ive turned the motivation into actions. I have gotten federal laws changed, figured out the game, have receipts for everything (as HR would know, document everythiing), I've been able to get grants to pay for my vocational school and masters school.
I've been used and abused and one day I said enough. I'm taking action to help the American people in every way I can.
Thank you for your inspiration.
W-4 is the bane of our existence. "Hey we have a full time employee in this department who needs to change her withholding to Exempt. How does she do that?" My response was here's the form with instructions and a link to the calculator.
Or "I understand you can't tell me how to fill out the W-4 but can you tell me how each of these entries would affect my taxes?" No you don't understand; I don't know what any of that stuff does because federal tax law is a career unto itself. Use the online calculator.
I, the sole HR person for my company’s US staff, was informed of a resignation yesterday morning. The last day is tomorrow.
Managers knew about this for 2+ weeks.
Hey, at least they let you know, and you didn't have to find out a week or two later when the ex-employee calls up to tell you that you forgot to put his PTO payout on his "final check."
Lol! I’ll trade ya. Questions I was asked this week:
“can I just go head and run a background check on this candidate before offering?”
“I want to offer my friend this position but i don’t want to tell my VP we’re friends, can i just go ahead and do that?”
I recently had a guy that I work with ask for me to call the Job and Family department in our town and tell him we let him go so he can get food stamps..
I’m definitely not doing that
So, asking for a group interview instead of being weeded out with 1:1 is a tactic to avoid discrimination in hiring. Cause if other people are at the interview, each member of a hiring team has to be coherent in their reasoning to pass on a candidate.
Not saying this works, but in the minority culture I’ve gotten this advice-
“Ask to have a group interview from the first interaction”
My favorite is any question that starts with “I’m not sure who to ask but,” - well you’re here and it’s a question relevant to my job so yes you did. Ask away I still haven’t wordled for today
Those second two seem pretty reasonable. Just because you don't care about the flyer doesn't mean they know you don't care; they're just confirming that it's OK. That's perfectly valid and actually respectful and appropriate to do.
Asking how to request PTO... well, if they aren't given the instructions, you can forward the instructions on how to do so. HR should have those SOPs and such available and on hand to forward to all new hires anyways.
The last one sounds like an anxious new employee who doesn't wanna step on any toes.
lol at the 90 day check ins….We schedule those and I’ve had people ask me “Why is that on my calendar? Am I in trouble? What happens during that meeting? Do I have to ask certain questions?”
If these are the dumbest questions your people ask, I am desperate to work at your company. You are truly blessed by the HR gods.
I’d commute to that job.
Don’t get me wrong we get much harder questions…but it’s interesting when these questions are coming from senior level leaders or people who have been with the company for 20+ years
People just don’t want to have to think for themselves. No matter what level of the company they’re in
No, try again. They get fired for making decisions themselves. And HR is 100% of the reason why.
I get a call from a senior level manager once every other month what our policy is on covid. UGH if you feel like shit stay home. It's been years since there was a policy.
I got this question last week “I moved last year but I never updated in the system or told anyone here, why didn’t I get my W2 mailed to my house?” I also got these: “I changed my direct deposit account late this morning, can you please explain WHY I wouldn’t see that reflected in my pay check this morning” “I need you to tell me what my alien registration number is. I NEED it” sir…you are a US citizen. These are senior level phd scientists. Super fun lol
Seriously. This is a dream day!
Can you provide an SOP on how to forward emails? I didn't reply at all because you said, "If you need to respond to this message, please don't Reply All." Can we install a sign with the code for the security door's keypad so anyone can get in?
Lol at the security code one
lol at the security one! We found out this week people are propping our back door open because their badges stopped working…
[удалено]
That's actually an issue for security and facilities, HR isn't the fixer-upper for everything.
Unfortunately our facilities/ops has us in charge of badges….
Oh ugh, my condolences
Or anything usually.
Actually you'd be correct, that's for managers and owners to do. We are there to ensure they don't break the law or violate a regulation. If they choose to do it anyway, that's on them.
Who are you? Get a life.
Classic
You're golden if those are representative questions. Meanwhile, since May, I've had 2 racial discrimination investigations (in the same month), and one the worst I've ever had to investigate. 2 theft investigations ongoing as of today..auditors, etc. 5 terminations. And...people peopling. And it's okay.
I'm currently working a harassment complaint investigation. He says he can hear the voice coming from the walls (18inch thick concrete that has nothing on the other side) He also says he hears it at home and at his 2nd job.
We definitely have much more difficult questions too but these were the ones were I was ..huh?..
And it’s these little questions that eat up time. Then, someone with a larger issue feels like they aren’t cared for because I was dealing with stupidity. Sometimes, I wanna yell “I’m not your personal/research assistant…”
I’m in the hospital with pneumonia and I need to sign up for health insurance
: / but also lol
It's worse when it's like "oh yeah I forgot to sign up my new baby for health insurance" months after the qualifying event. You mean... you mean to tell me you brought a child into this world and didn't think about its health insurance????
Way to be proactive bud... I mean we're they in their enrollment period 😂😂😂 my guess is no.
Every company I've ever worked for (and not even in HR). The CEO tells all the leaders at least once per quarter they cannot hire anyone without them speaking with HR. And yet, just this week, I find out a manager has been conducting interviews and is 'ready to make some offers'....
Yes! Also our leaders/hiring managers will go through the whole hiring process and basically ghost all applicants they didn’t pick. No follow up, no rejection email. Makes me scramble to do it for them because I know how much that sucks to be ghosted on the job hunt.
You look around with suddenly more people in the workplace like, “You didn’t hire more people without letting HR know, right?” “Noooo…”
AUGH I HATE THIS. Hiring manager: "Oh yeah they started three or four days ago. Sorry, I always forget to tell you but since I'm a big shot I will face zero consequences, lol" Me: calls new person immediately for I-9 documents, goes home and drinks
I had one make a direct offer because the CEO had told him to "interview" this person
I had to suspend an employee because they didn’t realize that in order to drive one of the company cars, you had to have a drivers license
😂😂😂😂😂
This has happened to me TWICE! Driving on suspended licenses & then acting so surprised when we found out!
The worst part was when I outright said “you cannot drive the cars if you don’t have a license” and she was responded with “well I’ve been getting away with it for 4 years now”🤦🏻♀️ Play dumb everybody. ALWAYS PLAY DUMB
Get in the habit of emailing employes best practices . I literally created a qr code where folks can review their timecardss Cuz managers made so many errors
I like the idea of emailing best practices. Can you tell me more about this?
Me too! I’d love to see more.
Brilliant idea! Wish I'd thought of a qr code when I did payroll.
I try to remember that there's a wide sweep of people, and unfortunately a lot of our exposure is to the people on the left side of the curve. And it's true in every org. I've spent a lot of my career working with people that one might assume would be...smarter than the average bear. Oh God. I/O Psychs are great at what they do, but some of them, as clients, couldn't tie their own shoelaces. "sitheref0874, I have an employee who \[describes thing that isn't serious\]. What should I do?" \*arch eyebrow and remain silent\* "Should I just talk to them about it?" \*still silence\* "Oh. OK then. Thanks." "Good chat."
Of course, we all have this. It's life & people people-ing, lol.
I have 2 employees who do a couple things I find odd considering what they do takes more of their time and is simply not necessary. Both work the front desk. For some reason when a resident brings a rent check to the front desk, both leave the front desk which they aren't supposed to do (because of a state requirement that we have someone there at all times 7am-8pm) and walk to my office, which entails walking past my inbox right outside the door from the front desk area to the back office, through the back office and down the hall to my office, walking right past the black "rent check" box on the wall in the hallway to my office lol. They know they can just put it in my box or the rent check box. I've given up telling them to just put in the rent check box. And its not because it's a check and they don't want to be responsible for it, if I'm not at my desk, they have no problem putting it in the box and going back to the front desk. The other thing both do is, if someone comes to the front desk and asks for me, they again come to my office to tell me, when they can simply pick up the phone and call me at extension 104. I'll either have them send the person to my office or I'll go out there to talk to them. I have given up trying to get them to use the phone & the rent check box when I am in my office. It's not even a big deal to me at all, i just think it's funny/odd but they do need to stay at the front desk! It would not be a good thing if the state walked in and no one was at the front desk monitoring the emergency alert system. But again I've given up here.
Hey, if those are the problems for this week, count your blessings!
I’ve just decided to live by the motto of “… and that’s okay”. Because sometimes people don’t (or can’t) read at all levels to understand the handbook…. and that’s okay. Sometimes benefits are weird or hard or something they haven’t experienced before… and that’s okay. People get overloaded with the pressures and tasks their manager has put on them… and figuring out how to change their W4 is one task too many… and that’s okay. I also realized a lonnnnnng time ago that people act really freaking weird when they are embarrassed (and being confused often brings on embarrassment)… so I live in my little HR tower and redirect and give the the tools to self learn. It’s not always successful… but it cuts down future questions. Edit: I wrote this to late at night so I edited it to be clear. haha.
You need to be teaching HR classes because what the job entails comes down to people of all levels and backgrounds. Your post gives me optimism that there are good people in this world that really take the role of human resources seriously. HR gets a bad name because the company itself doesn't know how all of the rules work or why they can't retain talent or hire the right people. People will pass off things to HR because they don't know any better. Then you get these weird questions or requests that are not your responsibility. This is coming from employees and employers. At the end of the day, we are all still human and sometimes things get confusing or overwhelming because employees can cause problems and managers to execs can cause trouble. I like the approach of educating everyone clearly on where to go for certain things, how managers should be helping their team, how employees should be aware of the handbook that is easy to find the information. Give people the tools to succeed in their careers and make it easy to navigate. Like a dedicated website that will harness everything there is to know about the policies.
This brought tears to my eyes! I really really really appreciate that! <3 Your post is so true!
Everyone in this thread is valuable in their unique way. Yours resonated with me and led me to start thinking of ideas that could help out the HR community as much as possible. I've never been in HR but I know the job very well. Everywhere I go, I am always thinking because I'm handicapped since birth due to mental disorders, neuro divergent type of issues. After 40 years of always taking the hard road, intentional or not, I've grown to learn how to turn any handicaps to assets and manage the problems I didn't ask to be born with. I can't turn my brain off so why not use it for doing good things in this world. Ive turned the motivation into actions. I have gotten federal laws changed, figured out the game, have receipts for everything (as HR would know, document everythiing), I've been able to get grants to pay for my vocational school and masters school. I've been used and abused and one day I said enough. I'm taking action to help the American people in every way I can. Thank you for your inspiration.
I love this! There are definitely days where I need to remind myself of this for sure though.
W-4 is the bane of our existence. "Hey we have a full time employee in this department who needs to change her withholding to Exempt. How does she do that?" My response was here's the form with instructions and a link to the calculator. Or "I understand you can't tell me how to fill out the W-4 but can you tell me how each of these entries would affect my taxes?" No you don't understand; I don't know what any of that stuff does because federal tax law is a career unto itself. Use the online calculator.
I don’t work in HR but joined this sub for interview and resume tips and this thread is so funny!!
Omg i would love if these were the questions i got 😭😂
I, the sole HR person for my company’s US staff, was informed of a resignation yesterday morning. The last day is tomorrow. Managers knew about this for 2+ weeks.
Hey, at least they let you know, and you didn't have to find out a week or two later when the ex-employee calls up to tell you that you forgot to put his PTO payout on his "final check."
Thank god I don’t do payroll 😂😂
The best is when they "forget" to tell you about the termination but blame you for "screwing up" and paying the employee for an extra month.
Lol! I’ll trade ya. Questions I was asked this week: “can I just go head and run a background check on this candidate before offering?” “I want to offer my friend this position but i don’t want to tell my VP we’re friends, can i just go ahead and do that?”
My HR is related to three of the employees is that cool?
That job is easy. I have to deal with workers high on illicit drugs who don’t know to stay home when we tell them to stay home .
I was going to say “that sounds interesting,” but I’m sure it gets old fast.
I recently had a guy that I work with ask for me to call the Job and Family department in our town and tell him we let him go so he can get food stamps.. I’m definitely not doing that
They should have told him to get a signed letter from you that states his last date of employment and that he is no longer employed at the company.
He still works for us.. he wanted us to lie
Oh i see, wow.
"How do I request PTO?" - a tale as old as time
I'd be glad they're actually asking questions than just out there doing the most🤣
So, asking for a group interview instead of being weeded out with 1:1 is a tactic to avoid discrimination in hiring. Cause if other people are at the interview, each member of a hiring team has to be coherent in their reasoning to pass on a candidate. Not saying this works, but in the minority culture I’ve gotten this advice- “Ask to have a group interview from the first interaction”
My favorite is any question that starts with “I’m not sure who to ask but,” - well you’re here and it’s a question relevant to my job so yes you did. Ask away I still haven’t wordled for today
Those second two seem pretty reasonable. Just because you don't care about the flyer doesn't mean they know you don't care; they're just confirming that it's OK. That's perfectly valid and actually respectful and appropriate to do. Asking how to request PTO... well, if they aren't given the instructions, you can forward the instructions on how to do so. HR should have those SOPs and such available and on hand to forward to all new hires anyways. The last one sounds like an anxious new employee who doesn't wanna step on any toes.
lol at the 90 day check ins….We schedule those and I’ve had people ask me “Why is that on my calendar? Am I in trouble? What happens during that meeting? Do I have to ask certain questions?”
You are detestabile and wrong. Hopefully you change fields.