"BAD HR"

First there was BAD SANTA, now there is BAD GRANDPA, but before during and after there is BAD HR. No this is not a movie. It isn't even about bad HR, rather it is about all the bad things that happen involving employees and their bosses at work each day.
I have more then 25 yrs. worth of stories and many of them fit the BAD criteria. I break them into 3 categories: BAD EMPLOYEES, BAD BOSSES, and just plain BAD BEHAVIOR.

As I have repeated, I could probably write a book and these little stories will certainly be repeated. So lets have some fun and I will start with BAD EMPLOYEES part 1 (there will certainly be additional installments):

I am always amazed by the amount of alcoholism, drug abuse, prescription abuse and the like in the work place. Its almost taboo to talk about, however its rampant. My first quips all happened before I went into HR...

My first experience with this was early in my career when I worked in retail operations (sorry but I will not mention real names or businesses, however many of you can hit the bull's eye on each of my anecdotes). Crazy RTV guy was a long term employee with a drinking problem. Little did I know they put him in the RTV room to keep him away from the public or any high ranking official that might visit the store...He was a nice enough guy that at first I thought had a speech problem. Some days he said nothing and on occasion I heard him slur a few word's...he used to take a lot of breaks and go outside to his car through out the day...For about the first 3 months in my job I was to busy to even notice there was something wrong. then we started using attendance software and my reports showed he was late a lot, left early at least once a week and called in sick most Mondays. I had about 40 staff in this job and I was a little green on the supervisory thing, so this report was my first sign something was wrong.
One day he came in late and I asked him to see me...he never did...and when I went to see him...he smelled like a bottle of Listerine...He slurred his words and told me he had a cold... I bought the story...then we had a problem one day and had to get a large vendor shipment back to the vendor for defects...I went in the RTV room to work on it and noticed he was no where to be found. The attendance system said he was at work. I sent one of my stock guys to find him and he was sleeping in the lunch room. I went to talk to him and he smelled liked a brewery. I didn't know what to do so I got HR and we brought him to the HR department and called his wife to pick him up> About 45 minutes later he reappears in the RTV room and sais he's ready to work.
I ask what happened to his wife, he sais I called her and said "don't bother picking me up I am fine".
We had to call his wife back again to get him. For the next 3 months I dealt with this crazy behavior, no one in management knew what to do and everyone was afraid to deal with him of fire him. Finally HR got him into a program, he took some time off from work and I got promoted so I don't know what ever happened to him.
Then we had a store manager with a Cocaine problem.  One of my peers walked in while he was snorting up...he was a really smart and nice guy who apparently was bounced out of a big job in corporate due to his "problems"...no one wanted to deal with his issues...so they put him in charge of 300 people and a 65 million dollar business...we all knew he had a problem but were all scared to say or do anything...the worst part was the company knew and did nothing about it...He used to hold management meetings and do that nose slurp things addicts do...
I was in a corporate role during my career, and had a peer on pain killers, they told me they went to 3 different doctors and got a prescription from each one. They were always stoned at work. They also always got in trouble and didn't care. Most of senior management liked this person and the person had done a good job before the drug problem. This person had become comic relief...they kept them around for a good laugh..

So are these folks BAD EMPLOYEES or was it Bad management???
I will be back with some more BAD EMPLOYEE stories in the future...next up BAD BOSSES part. 1