Hello witches and wizards,

‘Tis the week of Halloween and I want to have some fun!!!

But before we get to the fun and scary part of Halloween, a few things:

🖥️ Safe Space Summit is coming to your computer screen in March of 2027. RSVP here so you can get all the deets on speakers, topics and more! Interested in being a speaker? Drop a note here and we’ll be in touch!

🎧 I’m just a girl, standing in front of corporate America, asking it to train its managers!!!! Ashley Herd jumps on the pod this week to talk about all things managers. We drop wtf is going on and how HR can help or hinder managers. Listen here!

👻 Okay hot off the presses, HR Horror Stories Vol. 4. 👻

For weeks I have been asking for your spookiest HR stories and Y’ALL DELIVERED.

Below you’ll find 5 stories and next Monday the pod is dropping a special edition where I read a few more…

Without further ado prepare to be terrified, horrified and maybe even disgusted??

Submitted for the approval of the Hater Society…

SPECIAL EDITION

The Tale of the Haunted Office Chair:Copy anchor linkCopied

I used to work in an old building in downtown Detroit, and the owner had a habit of keeping every piece of old office furniture imaginable in the basement. It was essentially a maze of old desks, chairs, and other furniture that had accumulated over the years.

One day, I took a new employee down to the basement to look for a comfortable office chair for her. As we walked down one of the corridors, there were chairs stacked and lined up everywhere, on both sides of the hallway.

I spotted one that looked like it might work for her, but it was buried at least three chairs deep. It would have taken quite a bit of time to dig it out, so we decided to keep looking. There was another room farther down with more furniture, so we continued on to see if we could find something else.

When we came back down the corridor a few minutes later, that same chair was sitting right in the middle of the walkway.

We both stopped and looked at each other.

“We didn't move that chair out, did we?”

Neither of us had touched it.

We just stared at each other in disbelief, grabbed each other's hands, and ran out of that basement as fast as we could.

To this day, I have no explanation for how that chair went from being buried at least three chairs deep to sitting in the middle of the hallway.

It was, without a doubt, the scariest thing I have ever experienced.

The Tale of the Grievance Goblin:Copy anchor linkCopied

We hired a new HR Executive, and he met with my team, the labor relations team.

He told us that we were spending too much time on investigations. Further, he said that if an employee was accused of wrongdoing, they probably did it.

He said we shouldn't worry so much about investigating; we should just fire them.

Sure, there would be grievances, but we'll deal with that later.

The Tale of the Code Blue Company Meeting:Copy anchor linkCopied

An employee had a heart attack during an all staff gathering (with outside investors there too!)

Amazingly and luckily he was fine but paramedics and a whole fire truck showing up while one of our executives gave him CPR was traumatizing for everyone.

His emergency contact was.... his ex wife.

Also he was kinda squatting/living in a van on our property!

The Tale of the Camera-On Catastrophe:Copy anchor linkCopied

When I was doing a lot of hiring and virtual interviews, multiple times I had people join the video call without shirts on.

Yes, I was flashed at least three separate times, one of which, the manager still demanded that I hire that person.

I didn’t.

The Tale of the Longest Last Week:Copy anchor linkCopied

I was a senior HR leader at a mid-sized nonprofit. I was on week three of a four week resignation notice when another senior leader came into my office to tell me she had just spoken with a former client who told her that they were living with someone who works there.

Unbeknownst to the former client, that person was the CEO.

The other senior leader was afraid to go to the board of directors because the CEO was known to retaliate both inside the workplace and in the community.

So my last week at this job was spent dealing with attorneys and being interviewed by the board. The board decided to try to bury it but fortunately, a whistleblower notified the local paper.

The CEO ended up getting a fat severance check and I spent the subsequent month doing interviews with CPS, the police, and their internal investigator.

Two years later, it's still in the local news cycle and more and more information is coming out about his abuse of power, fiscal mismanagement, and general organizational mismanagement.

You can see why I was desperate to leave!!

(HUMAN) RESOURCES

• No signs of AI payout outside of tech?
• When someone hates work but doesn’t quit
• Udemy’s findings suggest in my new article that your AI rollout skipped the humans*
• Amazon recruits 300,000 in first holiday hiring jump in 3 years
• Airbnb CEO warns about 2 types of people who won’t survive the AI era

*This one is brought to you by one of my amazing brand partners

WORK-LIFE BALANCE

• 📚 What I’m reading: Our Dark Incantations by Wanda Hellmund. A dark academia with dark magic and an enemies to lovers situation, sign me up! BTW did I mention this was originally a Dramoine? IYKYK
• 📺 What I’m watching: War. This show on HBO has me hooooked. A messy divorce between a tech CEO and an actress and all that entails.
• ☕ What I’m obsessing over: We’re approaching my fave time of year - holiday treats and drinks! I’m trying to find new coffee recipes so if you got them send them my way!

SONG OF THE WEEK

🎧 Zombie, The CranberriesCopy anchor linkCopied

I did not know what this song was about until I did some research. I always found this song haunting and beautiful and oftentimes would get stuck in my hour for hourssss.

I hope you enjoyed this, please let me know what you think and what other topics you'd love for me to cover. I'm allll ears.

Reminder: Take care of yourself and know that I support you.