It’s Friday… When I worked in an office, Friday was my favorite day of the work week.
I’ve decided that instead of having post about things that are actually useful and helpful to growing a business… I’m going to tell a story about one of my former employees, former employers or former clients.
If you are currently one of my clients, no worries… I’m not going to tell any stories about you until you’re not my client anymore…
I’ll change up their names to protect identities… Other than that, these are going to be no holds barred stories.
My first story happened about 5 years ago… I still laugh every time I think about it.
Harry
I remember when we hired Harry… Harry had an impressive resume and came with some solid references. He was in his late 40s and he was mild mannered.
Harry worked the 6am to 3pm shift Monday through Friday. He had been there for 3 weeks and was really promising.
Then it happened.
I get a call from one of my female employees at around 6:30am.
Rochelle was very upset and she said she didn’t feel safe in the office because of Harry and asked me to please come in as soon as possible.
Rochelle worked with Harry and shared an office with him and 2 other people. The 2 other people worked 9am-6pm, so they were alone for 3 hours together every morning.
I told her to go hang out with the guys on the sales floor until I got there.
I only lived 6 miles from my office, I ran out the door and I was there right before 7am.
Harry was sleeping under his desk when I arrived. He was in the same clothes he was wearing the day before and reeked of booze. Actually, their whole office reeked of booze.
The Phone Call
Rochelle told me Harry had called her around 5:15am on her cell while she was getting ready for work. Harry asked her if she was still in bed, asked her if she wanted some company and some other “descriptive” sexually harassing stuff.
Then when he came in the office (around 6:15am) he was smiling and grunting at her in a sexual manner.
Rochelle was a 20-21 year old little girl with a princess complex. I guess she could have been considered cute in a pound puppy kind of way…
I called the owners of the company and told them to get to hurry up and get in the office.
There were 4 partners, but 2 of them, Hal (the narcissist) and Hubert (the doormat) pretty much handled all of the day-to-day operations.
Hal was almost to the office already and Hubert wasn’t far behind him.
We let him sleep under his desk while we were in the hall laughing…
Yeah, the phone call and grunts were just creepy… But the entire situation was pretty comical…
We obviously had to fire him at a minimum because of the phone call and grunts; but the crazy girl who cut checks wasn’t in yet (there will be a few stories about that nut job). And we couldn’t let him leave the office and get in his car drunk.
This was in California, so one of our main concerns was to reduce our liabilities so we wouldn’t get sued.
Hubert was able to cut the manual check… While he was off doing that, Hal called a taxi and we had one of the admins call the police just so everything was documented.
I stood in the doorway and watch Harry peacefully sleep drunk under his desk.
Harry woke up.
It was close to 7:45am when Harry looked up at us from the floor and said, “Well, my break is over.”
He then climbed up into his chair and tried to log onto his computer.
He was kind of wobbly while sitting and his words were very slurred.
I asked him, “Harry, did you do a little drinking last night?”
He responded, “I’m a grown man, if I want to have a drink I can… Who in the hell are you to question what I do at night?”
When I was young I worked as a bouncer at several bars, I learned how to talk a drunk person back from the edge. NEVER in a million years did I think I’d be using those skills in an office environment.
Harry was growing more belligerent by the minute and he absolutely denied he was drunk.
He did admit to calling Rochelle but insisted he was “complimentely professsionanal.”
After a good 10-15 minutes we got him into Hal’s office (which was right by the front door) and handed him his final check.
He then threw a fit about there not being enough money on it and that we were robbing him.
The Taxi
In the middle of his fit the taxi pulled up and we told Hal we got the taxi for him and we weren’t able to let him get in his car to leave.
He started yelling and screaming that he wasn’t drunk while he was stumbling around the sidewalk in front of our office. Other employees were arriving, I can only imagine what they were thinking.
Once he realized we weren’t letting him take his car he started yelling that he didn’t have enough money to get a cab home….
So Hal handed the cab driver around $60-80 and gave the driver his card and said if it was more to give him a call and he’d handle it.
Harry reluctantly got in the cab. As the cab drove off Harry yelled…
“Fuck you assholes for firing me on my Birthday.”
Hal, Hubert and I all laughed so hard that tears were coming out of our eyes as the taxi pulled away… I’d like to think Harry didn’t see that, but… I’m pretty sure he did.
Harry must have told the taxi driver to drop him off around the corner, because not 30 minutes later Harry’s car was gone out of the parking lot.
We never saw or heard from Harry again.
The Birthday Cake
When Hal, Hubert and I walked through the doors back in the office, Hal said… “So what are we supposed to do with the fucking birthday cake we bought this asshole…”
We laughed some more… Cut it up and set it out in the kitchen for everyone.
The cake was actually really good… I still remember, it was white cake with vanilla pudding and white frosting…
The police?
Oh yeah, the police station was 300 meters from our office, so it only took them 2 hours to respond. Go Carlsbad PD.
