HR Horror Stories

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Below are just a couple of examples. The writers have asked to remain anonymous, but are all solution providers.

Be Careful Who You Hire
About four years ago we added a gentleman to our sales team. He was brought on-board like all of our other employees with a verbal agreement regarding salary and compensation.

Well, the first couple years went by and he made some sales. He was learning the products and the marketplace. Everything was progressing, so he was even given a raise to his base salary. In the third year, sales began to slow down and his attitude seemed to change. It became very apparent that he was not happy in his position. He complained a lot about other staff members and other departments. He began losing almost every sale he was on, but of course he had an excuse. It was either the software was not a fit or the consultant did not do the demo well or something else.

During this time, some of the managers began to talk with him about the issues, but he did not see it as his problem. Management finally made some phone calls to the deals he lost and confirmed that he was not following up or really even trying to make the sales. After almost a year of no sales, the decision was made to let him go.

All of the accounts that he was working were turned over to other members of the sales team, and within 60 days eight new deals were closed. Somehow the fired salesperson learned about the deals and felt that he had helped with those deals and deserved to be compensated for them.

He filed a claim for unpaid commissions with the state labor board. In researching to defend against his claim, we discovered that he had been looking for a new job for over a year. He had been using his company e-mail to send out resumes and correspond with recruiters. He was also attempting to start his own business with his family and had many documents and e-mails on the corporate network. We even located e-mails where he sent leads to other companies that he was interviewing with.

During the time of the hearings, he also began calling into the customers that purchased after he left in an attempt to get them to testify for him. Obviously this was very disturbing to the customers.

Finally, because of the e-mails and other documents we were able to locate, we were able to successfully defend the claim, but it cost us not only attorney fees but countless hours of management time doing research and attending hearings.

Editor's Note: When asked about how many hours it took to defend against this action, this solution provider estimated 100 hours, including three hearings at the labor board, meetings with the attorney and research.

NEXT: A Midwest VAR learns the hard way the importance of clear job descriptions.

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