All Stories

Once upon a time in a workplace, a high achiever found themselves in a repulsive situation with their manager. It evolved slowly. She thought at first well that behavior is odd. Or did that just happen? It’s not something you typically see in the workplace. Decades in the workforce. Many conversations with other employees on conduct at work and awareness. It happened, right up to the day of departure. As a professional, you would think that I should be able to address it. I

Once upon a time in a workplace, lived a relatively normal professional manager at first sight. Although relatively new to the company herself, about three years, it was filled with drama. Lots of drama. Lots of whispers. Lots of stories that didn’t make sense. Then lots of very odd behaviors. In a family-owned company; where the siblings didn’t get along, it was an interesting place to work. The face of the business literally had almost no say in the business. Which was inte

Once upon a time at a workplace, someone hired an exceptionally bizarre manager and then promoted her. It was that promotion. That moment of bad judgement on her hiring manager’s side. Foundational information presented by various departments from legal, audit, a questionable personnel file, and security all against it – Kathy was hired in the corporate office. She didn’t have quirks; those sound positive and happy. Kathy was bitter, conniving, and entitled. Her hobby was eat

Once upon a time in a workplace, of a medium-size financial institution, a newly recruited department manager inherited the three employees literally no one wanted. Literally, no one in the entire organization wanted them. Whispers had it that the multi-department reorganization that happened, by the existing managers, to get rid of the trio. Speaks to how infamous they were - decades at the organization. This is a Survivor's Story. The Manager Survived. The Trio of Monsters

Once upon a time at the workplace in Colorado, a New York State transplant, had a new experience. When you move from a ‘known’ to a new ‘unknown’ there are things that don’t come up in research. In the 90s, Denver and surrounding area was in a building boom. Lots of talent from California and New York and tons of new business. As an HR Manager, I’m responsible for the human population at my organization. I was working in Golden, at the base of the Rocky Mountains. It was summ

Once upon an time at the workplace in Colorado. At a large company I was working for with a lot of new employees to Colorado, some from other states and other countries. I would set up lunch-n-learns with experts. One of those sessions was with group of Forest Rangers. I think this is one of those careers that is overlooked because a lot of people don’t know what they do. To be fair, unless you are an avid outdoors person, you generally would think about the critical role the

Once upon a time at the workplace, at staffing agency. Manufacturing was a major client base and had regular needs and high turnover. A kid walks in dressed up for the interview. Dress shirt and slacks. Articulate. Comfortable. Asked great questions. No work experience, fully understood the role, hours, and pay rate. Hired and gave him his assignment for the next morning. He no-showed. I called in the afternoon to discuss what had happened. Given this was his first job, trave

Once upon a time at the workplace, a large credit union. On a project that had some big walls to climb, money and firm deadline constraints and a technology problem. It was assigned to be lead by specific manager because - well a SVP and stakeholder wanted them to fail and be on record for failing. It's corporate BS at it's finest. The project team members where hand selected; with the lowest and long time technical engineer being Mark. He was known for not knowing and can't

Once upon a time at the workplace, at a satellite office for a staffing agency in one of the worst areas of the city. Very industrial section of the city. High crime area. For perspective, every morning I was greeted by a prostitute’s last customer on the side of the building and a drunk c-shift worker from the factory next door that made a famous pasta sauce who would urinate on my large picture window. His form of saying good morning. My office in was in the same building a