Devil in the Details – The Unbelievable But True Story of a Seriously Bad Hire

Blond Doing NailsThis is without a doubt one of the craziest bad hire stories I’ve ever heard.

I was at a house party a while back and met a lawyer. Upon hearing I was in the recruiting business he told me this true story. It happened to a colleague of his who was a partner in his law firm.

This partner had a hard time hiring right talent. He disliked change and the prospect of hiring so much that he avoided it at all costs.  Consequently he had a legal assistant who he had kept on longer than he should have. Much longer.

Although very good at certain aspects of her job, this lawyer was driven particularly crazy with her chronic and perpetual spelling mistakes. No matter how many times he spoke with her, coached her and tried to correct her, the problem didn’t just not go away, it seemed to him to get worse with time. Still he resisted the unpleasantry of having to replace her.

Obviously she wasn’t aware of his despair because one day after lunch she walked in and announced that she felt she deserved a raise. When asked why she responded that she’d been there a long enough time and others had been receiving raises, so why shouldn’t she?

To this our friend said, Ok, I’ll give you a raise. Matter of fact, I’m going to give you a $900 a month raise. The woman was more than pleased, she was over the moon. But, the lawyer added, there’s a catch. For every typo I find in your correspondence I’m going to deduct 50 cents, and he added, his voice rising on every word, by the end of the month I’m pretty damn sure you’re the one that’s going to be owing me money!

His assistant was so insulted, she stormed out of his office, sat at her desk and wrote out her letter of resignation, printed it off, stormed back into his office and threw it onto his desk.

He read it and smiled. It said “I quite”.

 

This post has been approved for public release by Barbara Ashton. All certified posts carry this Google Authorship link to Google.

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