When employees do the darndest things — here’s how to handle them

FORT COLLINS — Employees can be unpredictable, but fortunately, there can be an HR solution to most of the stunts employees may pull.

At the Fort Collins Startup Week Panel, “Crazy Sh** Employees Do and What You Can Do About It,” Nikki Larchar and Tina Todd, co-founders of SimplyHR, shared some of the most humorous situations clients had and recommendations on how to handle them. (None of the occurrences took place in Fort Collins.)

The situation: A home-care employee was stealing items around the house, including a door knob.

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The solution: “My HR advice is to know who we’re hiring,” Larchar said. “Do background checks, reference checks. That’s how you know if she’s stolen from past places before. Then, document the whole thing. Document what the client is saying and that we’re moving forward with whatever we think the right disciplinary action is.”

The situation: An employee was sporadically disappearing for periods of time. Using video surveillance (audio is not legal) it was discovered he was going into the cooler to drink cooking wine and huff whipped cream canisters.

The solution: That employee lost their job. “It was easy to make that determination,” Todd said. “There were clear drug and alcohol abuse policies, especially with regard to the premises. An interesting thing in this scenario is this person got hired by someone else to manage health and safety. No one called and asked us about background on this person. If they had, I would have mentioned they were not rehirable and the red flags. So do those background and reference checks.”

The situation: An employee asked their employer for time off due to the death of a pet. The employer, feeling pets are family, told the employee to take some time off and give a call when they were ready to come back to work. The employer heard from the employee seven months later asking for their job.

The solution: The employer wasn’t sure if they had to let the employee come back, because they never specified they expected the employee to take the weekend to recover, not multiple months. Ultimately, they were able to lean on the expectations laid out in their attendance policy and they thought the employee abandoned their job. A better solution, Larchar said, is to get these agreements in writing before the employee leaves. “With bereavement, unpaid leave, pregnancy, anything, set the expectation of how long they will need and get it in writing,” she said. “And there’s no job protection for pets, yet.”

The situation: Two employees struck up a relationship and began having relations in the conference room. It was becoming a distraction and wasn’t sure if they could speak to the employees about it.

The solution: “The answer is yes!,” Todd said. “Talk to your employees about this.” Because office relationships can be common, many workplaces set up a policy regarding it and request that employees disclose when they’ve entered into a relationship. Employees are often separated by departments so one isn’t subordinate to another and employers are allowed to talk to them about productivity if it’s becoming an issue, as it was in this situation.

The situation: An employer was getting multiple complaints from employees and clients about the side business of one employee. The employee would conduct the side business using the company-branded vehicle and outside the homes of clients. It turned out the side business the employee had was dealing drugs.

The solution: “Even if you don’t have a drug policy, you’re OK to tell an employee they can’t do that using your company name and logo,” Larchar said. “Because this person had multiple complaints seeing these transactions happen, there was lots of documented evidence and they were able to move forward with termination as a clear violation of their drug- and alcohol-free policy.”

The situation: An employer was having their office remodeled and repainted and to remedy the smell, they had windows open and fans placed throughout the office. One older female employee (two protected classes) was upset by the smell of the paint, so she started bringing raw onions and a pressure cooker to cook seafood dumplings at her desk. When the employer spoke to the employee about the smell of her food, the employee told the employer they were targeting her because she was Asian. The employer didn’t know what to do.

The solution: In this case, Todd said it’s best to be proactive. Have an equal opportunity statement clear and right up front. There can also be workplace policies regarding hygiene, cleanliness and even strong fragrances. Todd said many employers have started requesting employees don’t wear perfume, because of other employees’ sensitivities to strong fragrances. In this particular case, it was maintenance that came to the rescue: Because they were in an historical building, the pressure cooker at the desk was deemed electrically unsafe. A way the employer could have prevented the situation would be to offer temporarily moving the employee during the painting to an area where her fragrance sensitivities wouldn’t be bothered. And in the meantime, Larchar recommends documenting every complaint regarding the employee and that the employee made.

The situation: I just found out my employee is pregnant and I want to fire her.

The solution: “Obviously, this isn’t a crazy employee,” Larchar said. “When a woman is pregnant there are a lot of regulations that protect her. Under Colorado protection, you have to work with that employee.” Larchar recommends rather than firing the employee, which you can’t do, accommodate her. If she needs to stand for long periods of time, get her a chair. Give her breaks. The requests for accommodations she makes have to be reasonable and not cause undue hardship on the business, however. If you would be essentially creating a new job for the employee, it’s OK to say that accommodation won’t work and offer other solutions.

The situation: One of the major job requirements of a gym manager was to keep the gym secure. The manager realized she left something in her car and went to get it, but locked the gym before she left, with people inside, to keep it secure. When she retrieved the item from her car, she returned to the gym but realized she had locked her gym keys inside her car. By then, panicked gym members started to realize what was happening. There were no other emergency exits beyond the locked door. People were locked inside for hours and ultimately the fire department came. The employer wasn’t sure if they could fire the employee based on this one major incident.

The solution: The employee was ultimately terminated, even though there wasn’t a specific policy about not locking people inside the building. Todd recommended listing in the employee handbook a list of expectations and what merits disciplinary action, and include that the list is not a comprehensive one. “Employees will always think of more ways to do crazy things,” Todd said.