Brain Injury Or Bad Liar?
We recently hired someone who made a great impression during the interview and had all the experience we needed. He was made to seem even better by the utter failure of the lady before him who at one point literally said, “I know I have the job, so why are we doing this?” He gave two weeks’ notice at his old job, our Human Resources confirmed the Friday before that he was still good, and then Monday morning came around.
[New Hire] did not come in. I talked with HR, who tried to get hold of him, but nothing. We figured we’d give him until the next morning before wiping him out of the system. He ended up calling back at 5:25; our offices close at 5:30. He was in the hospital all weekend with a serious injury! Well, obviously, there were extenuating circumstances, but he was being released so he could be in the next day.
Tuesday morning, he did not come in. More phone calls went unanswered, and again, he didn’t get back to us until just before closing. Apparently, while he had been released from the hospital, the pain pills he was on had knocked him out for the whole day to where he thought he had called in but never did. He asked if he could have another day or two. HR said they’d “hold his spot for a few days”, but they put the job posting back up.
Wednesday and Thursday were repeats: no-call-no-show until after 5:00 pm. His pre-set-up accounts and information in our systems were all terminated Thursday morning. On Friday, he didn’t even call back.
All of this would be a frustrating but not terribly unique situation. What made it really interesting was that two weeks later, once we had already hired a new person and it was their first day, THE ORIGINAL NEW HIRE STROLLED IN LIKE NOTHING HAD HAPPENED.
He thankfully never caused a scene or started a fight; he was just completely stupefied that we didn’t hold a job for him when he didn’t show up or initially call for three weeks straight.
The main conversation was about what drugs they had given him to get his brain working in such a way.
