In short
“VERY Unfiltered HR Confessions” summer episode featuring HR consultant Emma Djamil reacting to shocking workplace stories sourced from HR forums/Reddit, plus a discussion of HR’s emotional burden and why humor helps HR professionals cope.
Guest backgrounds
Emma Djamil is an HR consultant, speaker, and creator of viral HR parody videos/music. She works with women in HR who feel overworked/undervalued, using music and comedy to address career meaning and workplace realities. She credits TikTok trends for video formats and says an AI app helps generate the music while she performs the lyrics.
Key claims
HR is widely misperceived as purely transactional/admin, but HR professionals often carry the emotional burden of serious allegations with little support. Humor provides lightness/validation for heavy HR experiences. LinkedIn rewards “human” comedy content that interrupts professional fakery.
Notable examples
police arriving to speak to “the person in charge” after a remote-vacation; a nurse allegedly using drugs and a 7-hour bathroom standoff; an employee peeing out a car window while hiding from work; a “drug test” involving possible synthetic urine; a speed round including “reply-all” email disasters and workplace masturbation stories.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOIntroducing HR Confessions
0:45 to 1:06
Discussion about exploring humorous and shocking HR confessions.
“Some are hilarious, some are unbelievable.”
Welcoming Emma Djamil
2:07 to 2:25
Introduction of HR consultant Emma Djamil and her work.
“I'm a chartered occupational psychologist.”
The Impact of Parody Videos
2:25 to 4:21
Emma discusses her viral HR parody videos and their success.
“Just in case, on the off chance that someone hasn't heard of you or seen that video, can you just give us a little background of who you are?”
Creating Content from Trends
4:21 to 6:40
Emma shares her creative process and inspirations for her videos.
“And honestly, I've been posting on LinkedIn for like five years now and I've been suffering the same kind of low reach that a lot of people have been getting on LinkedIn over the last year.”
The Value of Authenticity
6:40 to 9:00
Discussion on the importance of being genuine in content creation.
“that like if you create content we also think you need to be obsessed with consuming content Yeah, I do find myself probably consuming far too much content, actually.”
Exploring HR Confessions
9:00 to 14:00
Introduction to the HR confessions segment and how it will work.
“I've not known if people copy me per se.”
Dark HR Confession: A Shocking Tale
14:22 to 17:25
The first HR confession involves a shocking murder case tied to an employee.
“I'll explain that when we get to it, a little teaser for you, you're going to have to keep listening.”
The Dark Side of HR and Humor
17:25 to 21:39
Discussion on the challenges HR faces and the importance of humor in tough situations.
“And when I say tick list, it's like, so if the police are involved, you know, it's going to be a really serious kind of allegation, right?”
The Dark Side of HR and Humor
22:37 to 23:13
Discussion on the challenges HR faces and the importance of humor in tough situations.
“very very quick break and then we'll come back and I've got a bit more of a lighthearted one.”
The Dark Side of HR and Humor
23:15 to 23:26
Discussion on the challenges HR faces and the importance of humor in tough situations.
“Tell us about your latest episode, Phil.”
Show all 21 chapters
Unusual HR Situation: Peeing Out the Car Window
23:26 to 28:00
The hosts discuss a bizarre HR scenario involving a woman urinating out of a car window.
“to create fake TikTok videos about how much they like their work.”
HR Shenanigans: Public Urination and Company Disrepute
28:00 to 29:40
Explore bizarre HR scenarios including public urination and its implications.
“I understand the person was skiving off work.”
The Phantom Shitter: A Seven-Hour Tantrum
29:40 to 34:09
Hear a wild HR tale involving a drug test tantrum and unexpected bathroom antics.
“The email alleged that she was a drug addict.”
Employee Tantrums: From Bathrooms to Boardrooms
34:09 to 36:42
Delve into how employee tantrums manifest in various workplace settings.
“This turned into an hour-long discussion about how losing employment also means losing benefits.”
Leadership and Emotional Responses: A Fine Line
36:42 to 39:53
Discuss the emotional dynamics of leadership and personal investment in teams.
“Anyway, an hour later, I went out to take another delivery.”
Engagement Surveys: The Hidden Drama
39:53 to 42:00
Uncover the dramatic implications of engagement surveys in workplaces.
“Now, again, I'll be very, very vague, but this person was referred to us and they said, we want to run an engagement survey.”
Self-Awareness in Leadership
42:00 to 44:50
Exploration of a lack of self-awareness among leaders through anecdotes.
“of this person fakely biting their fingernails, a picture of them where they'd professionally had it taken on the way to work in like a Photoshop professionally and the caption was, I'm so nervous.”
HR Confessions: The Strange and Surprising
44:50 to 48:06
A rapid-fire round of bizarre HR stories and experiences shared by the hosts.
Humorous Workplace Scenarios
48:06 to 55:00
Discussion of humorous and awkward workplace situations including email blunders.
“Touching's cloth is where you actually say, I'm going to go, right?”
Upcoming Episodes and Closing Remarks
55:00 to 55:55
Discussion about the next episodes and closing thoughts from the hosts.
“Like masturbation, all good things come to an end.”
Reflecting on HR Missteps
56:00 to 56:27
Hosts share their past HR mistakes and humorous insights about predictions.
“In the interest of transparency, we don't get it right very often so we're just going to share all the ones we got really wrong.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:02Little warning, this episode contains course language and adult themes. Listener discretion is advised.
0:08Leanne:Hello and welcome to another of our Truth, Lies and Work Summit sessions. For the next few weeks, we're taking a little break from the workplace news and the heavier topics to bring you something a little bit more fun. You know the thing, you want something you can pop on when you're driving to the beach, when you're sat by the pool, when you've got a cocktail. Because let's be honest, nobody wants to spend August listening to a typical work podcast. Today, though, we are opening the HR filing cabinet and we're not entirely sure we're ready for what we've found. We've spent farewell. I say we.
0:39Leanne has spent far too much time trawling Reddit and HR forums looking for the funniest, most shocking and most relatable workplace confessions we could find or she could find. Some are hilarious, some are unbelievable. And every single one is claimed to be true.
0:52Leanne:Yes, it is. And after the break, we are joined by HR consultant and viral content legend, Emma Jamil. We'll chat about the parody video she's been doing that just perfectly capture the chaos of working in HR. But before we do that, let's have a quick word from our sponsors just to make them happy, you know. Yeah, well, contractually as well. Thank you. The dirty little secret is that most businesses think they know their customers. They have the data, the records, the history, but it's scattered across three teams and four systems. And in our case, it's about 216 ,000 spreadsheets, which means nobody can actually use it.
1:28Leanne:What you should be doing is using HubSpot because why? HubSpot connects it all. Every interaction, every support ticket, every conversation into one platform every team can work from. So when sales talks to a customer, marketing already narrows the full story. And when you know more, you grow more. Nice. Check out HubSpot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses.
1:56Leanne:Hello, hello and welcome back. This is Truth, Lies and Work, the award-winning podcast where behavioural science meets workplace culture. Brought to you, of course, by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. My name is Leanne. I'm a chartered occupational psychologist. My name is Al. I'm a business owner. And normally we'd be here to help you simplify the science of work and build amazing workplace cultures, but not this week. Nope, nope. Today we're joined by HR consultant, speaker and creator of those brilliantly funny HR parody videos, Emma Jamil. Yay, welcome Emma.
2:24I'm so excited. I can't wait. Just in case, on the off chance that someone hasn't heard of you or seen that video, can you just give us a little background of who you are? Yes. So apparently I create songs these days. Emma. Yes, there you go. It is an earworm. I've always been a bit of an earworm giver. But yeah, my actual work, I suppose, is I work with women in HR who are feeling overworked and undervalued and help them kind of get back on track with their careers and start finding meaning and purpose in their work again. But the way that I attract those people to me is by creating pop songs.
3:08I say pop songs. I think that makes it sound grander than it is. But my marketing is quite unique in that I use music and humour and comedy to say some of the things out loud that probably I always wanted to in my career. And a lot of people in HR still want to.
3:29Leanne:I've loved your content for so, so long. And yeah, long term, eagle eyed listeners will remember you have been on the podcast before. You did a hot take for us probably more than a year ago now. um but when i saw this i fell off my chair because i was just like one this is a bop i just want this on my spotify playlist two it's brilliant i feel seen and heard and three it's just again that people using linkedin to actually connect with people instead of the humble brag bollocks yes that we see on there um i well i am going to get out to insert little clip we have shared on the show before as well like your listeners will know we shared a couple weeks going on news roundup At point of recording, Emma, this video has 2 ,714 reactions, 635 comments and 150 reposts.
4:17Yeah, it's gone off. It really has. It has gone off. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know what to say it has. It's amazing. The reach has been quite phenomenal. And honestly, I've been posting on LinkedIn for like five years now and I've been suffering the same kind of low reach that a lot of people have been getting on LinkedIn over the last year. It's been really tough going on the platform to get any kind of traction. So I've messaged a few of my friends afterwards and I was like, apparently all you've got to do is write songs to get any kind of traction on there. so yeah it's pretty pretty insane but great it is incredible I have to I have to ask you what
5:04Leanne:did you have a moment where you were like do you know what I'm gonna do I'm gonna write a house track and I'm gonna put HR messages to it that's what I'm gonna do today I mean kind of yeah that's pretty much how it works my brain my process I've always done these Friday funny Friday videos and and in the past they've been kind of me lip-syncing to an audio and then putting a an HR spin on it. So my process for all of them is actually to spend far too much time on TikTok, looking at things that I find funny and that inspire me. And I think, oh, I could work with that. So actually I can't take credit for the idea because someone did this on TikTok.
5:43Someone did it from a marketing perspective. And actually it's a whole trend on TikTok to like be doing messages to music and all kinds of stuff. So I'm not the originator. and I keep telling people that on LinkedIn because like don't give me that much credit but what I do do is see it and I think that makes me laugh and so there was a point where yeah I saw it and I thought this is really funny I could do this from an HR perspective so I messaged my husband and said to him like how do I how do I do this and he's quite like into all that kind of stuff he's into media and websites and all kinds of things and he and he told me an app so it's an AI app it's not even me writing the music I'm not I can't even take credit for that it's my lyrics I perform it but it's AI and it's not me singing a lot of people are giving me credit for being a great singer as well and I'm like that's not even me either
6:39Leanne:I can't believe that's AI that's incredible yeah I love about that is that Alan I've always said that like if you create content we also think you need to be obsessed with consuming content Yeah, I do find myself probably consuming far too much content, actually. And I have to really check in with myself to be like, am I consuming this for research purposes or am I living my whole life with the platform? And pretty much it's the latter.
7:11but it also gives you an idea of what is popular like you said this was a trend on tiktok uh this was something which and i think in you may have come up with it in like you know if you'd spent a day thinking about it but you could have given us like two weeks to think about new ideas never would have come up something like this so i think it's so important to see what is kicking off and what's popping off on different platforms that give you that sort of like that grain of an idea isn't it yes do you know what's interesting though is my content doesn't fly on tiktok i don't get good people think that i'm like a tiktok star because of because of what they see on linkedin and they know that i create this stuff on on there but tiktok doesn't like my stuff as much i think the difference with linkedin is exactly what you were saying leanne that people go to linkedin and it's a professional platform and you're meant to behave a certain way so then when someone is on there using comedy humor being really like human doing something that's it's interrupting people and it's going wow this is like this is different content i think that's why it flies on linkedin because it's not expected whereas tiktok that kind of content is really 10 to a dozen probably if i was to do really serious boring stuff on there maybe that'd fly but that wouldn't work for me.
8:27It wouldn't work for me. Have you seen anyone copy you at all? I mean, not naming names, but seen anyone use your idea and do their own video? I've had a few people reach out to say that they would like to use the idea. And yeah, would I mind if they did it? And I'm like, well, it's not technically my idea. So I really like that about creativity. I think if creativity is sparking creativity elsewhere, then I don't actually think we can have too much creativity. I think that's a brilliant thing if lots of people go and then take that and use that in their corner of the world to bring joy to people.
9:02Like, that's brilliant. I've not known if people copy me per se. What I have seen more of on LinkedIn is people doing the voiceover stuff. That may have just happened anyway. But it's kind of like, oh, there's more in that kind of HR space now doing the voiceovers and the kind of funny audio stuff. Again, great. Like, ultimately, I'm speaking to humans. So if there's a way to connect with people and to make them feel something, then let's do that. Because there's just too much fakery. There's too much of that kind of, oh, we're meant to be something else because we're on a professional platform.
9:47But at the end of the day, we're all humans. So let it be. Let there be loads of it. Yeah, I totally agree. Leanne's on LinkedIn a lot more than I am because I sort of see the two camps generally of content is self-congratulatory, hidden under I am so honoured to announce. It's like, fuck, will you? And then vacuous bullshit that just doesn't mean anything. That is just the same thing that someone said, sorry.
10:14Leanne:Al really doesn't like LinkedIn. I didn't get that. That didn't come across at all. but I do have to ask you I do have to ask you um what's come of this like is there anything you can tell us about that that has come of this particular video yes well yes um and I've done a couple since because I'm a bit of a dopamine seeker so I will just like go where the energy is and also I love doing this stuff so um what's come of it since is um I've been booked to do a comedy set in September at an industry event, two comedy sets, in fact, on both days. I've just been approached by an industry publication to be a contributor.
10:56I've had people reach out like yourselves to like, come and be on podcasts. People have approached me for coaching as well. And interestingly, my husband just prompted me because he's a marketer, marketeer, marketer. And he said, because the last one I did, I linked to a webinar that I'm running in August. And he said, have you had any uptake on your webinar since doing that? The most recent post, which is a ballad. Of course it is. And it was seven people yesterday registered and 50 today. 56 people. Wow. Yeah.
11:35Leanne:I'm also fuming. I haven't seen the ballad. I saw the trance one, which is also excellent. excellent i'm gonna have to honestly linkedin algorithm is is awful there are actual drone shots we use the drone to record it like we went all in and i say we because it was a family affair like i was telling again my husband's such like a facilitator or an able i'm not even sure but he um he was the one who came up with the drone idea he was like we could we could record you gonna be getting in the field like in a drive i was like yes you're all in on this let's go we did on Sunday last week went out and took the dog for a walk and then there's just me like dancing in a field just because that's what we do amazing I love that that just do you know what it just gets the energy you need isn't it it reminds me of you are like it's just like once you're in it's like I'm all in let's get a smoke machine let's get some light yeah exactly do you know what though this is this is one of my biggest learnings since I've been putting out content on LinkedIn when you first start out when I first started out you think you have to be something in your messaging and you think oh you know you see people who you think are doing well and you think I should put a message out like that I know without a doubt that the people who come to work with me or who invite me to work with them on whatever that they're people that I'm going to get on with that I'm gonna like really enjoy working with and they come on a call with me and they're like you are just like you are online and I'm like yeah I am because and and that is such a god that's a beautiful thing that is a beautiful thing to go out into the world as yourself and be accepted like I don't give all of myself on LinkedIn I don't think that's that anyone should but yeah for the bits of me that I allow people to see to be accepted for that is so powerful and I wish people had i wish people had that and experienced that because it's just so i know i shouldn't be seeking external validation but there is something quite validating about it well yeah exactly when you create content you know whatever the purpose is we're all doing it for attention exactly the metric is to get attention
13:54Leanne:yeah ah so i think i think that leads us nicely into what today's summer session is about and the best thing is we had this idea to do this as one of our episodes before um before we reconnected emma over your video um and when i saw i was like oh my god emma's gonna be perfect for this hr confessions um emma hasn't seen any of these in advance important to say no and so I think what we're going to do we're going to read them out one by one are we yeah yep and we're going to we say share our reactions it'll mainly be Leanne and Emma and mainly Emma and also Emma do feel free to tell your own stories tell a variation of it and we are now Leanne what's the judging what's the how's it process we've got three phrases haven't we've got a that's the lightning round the speed round at the end yeah oh I see yeah we've literally got very very short stories and we're going to get Emma to react to them quickly.
14:51Leanne:I'll explain that when we get to it, a little teaser for you, you're going to have to keep listening. But no, I think if we just read them and we'll just react. Some of them are funny. Some of them are like, oh my God. And others are just filthy. So I think we just, it's enough material to just talk about, you know? Amazing. So, Leigh, do we want to, which one should we, where do we want to start? Shall I start with, I think this is probably the, possibly the darkest one. Yeah. Yeah. What am I in for? Well, I've read this. I've read this. And I'll be honest, when I was reading it, I didn't fully see what was going on till the end.
15:32So you're going to have to just make sure you keep this, you'll annotate this, Lee.
15:35Leanne:Okay. So this was titled, The Police Needed to Speak to the Person in Charge. My boss, the owner, preps me for weeks when he's leaving for a very remote vacation and will not be accessible. ball. He gives me also his season tickets to a football game in town and says, leave early, go to the game with my husband. I never leave early. So I say to myself, you never leave early. Next week is going to be hell. Go. I noticed the police outside and I asked the receptionist what's going on. And she says, I don't know. The officer came in and asked to speak to one of our employees and they went out to the car.
16:11Leanne:My boss tells me to go that due to the nature of the employee that's involved it can't be anything serious this guy is always on time works very hard well dressed educated well spoken has a good life i shrug it off we go to the game i'm scrolling through my phone and see my business on the news that a dead body of a missing person has been found on the property my phone starts blowing up because my mr perfect guy just to confirm mr perfect guy was perfect employee guy who the police were talking to before she left got it yeah has just been arrested for killing this person the police need to speak to the person in charge and now my boss is on a flight and cannot be reached the next week was the worst week of my professional life i had no guidance fast forward three years later he was convicted of killing this person on his lunch hour and burying him burying him in a shallow grave on the property he's still in jail I mean that got dark quick didn't it yes I have to be honest when I read this first time I don't think I fully grasped just how dark this was and I'm thinking where does he work that he has long enough on his lunch break to do all of that
17:34so there's pros and cons to working at this company
17:37Leanne:you were just impressed with his efficiency yeah wow do they get really good time off like
17:48oh god so what what's our initial thoughts liam i mean i want to hear from you emma i mean this is
17:54Leanne:quite an extreme example but do you think in hr have you you must have seen all sorts of things have you ever heard of anything like this whether it necessarily be murder but arrests or other questionable behaviors you know as you were talking i was like okay so is this a sexual harassment one like because it's almost like a tick list of of like potential scenarios so no i've not ever i've not ever dealt with a murder like thankfully goodness me you have situations where people do stuff outside of work see in my head now i'm going like well was this on company time and is the employer of my car is reliable was this company business um there's the hr in me right um no so i'm not i'm not have it i'm not ever thankfully ever dealt with a murder like especially not on the premises was there was the other person employee too or just some random that we we believe it was it was it was a random person or not associated with the company i am thinking though emma if you not got the opportunity to do a sophie sophie ellis baxter cover of murder on the shop floor is that too far is that too much i mean it would be hilarious but highly inappropriate i love that creativity look see it's there it's coming out i do want to know you said you had a tick list i mean were you joking there or do you genuinely you and your HR chums, do you genuinely have to deal with all this kind of weirdness in the police and stuff?
19:31Oh, genuinely. Yeah. Yeah, we do. And when I say tick list, it's like, so if the police are involved, you know, it's going to be a really serious kind of allegation, right? Which is why, and I was thinking of people within my network who have dealt with serious sexual harassment cases, like and um of underage people like and have had to deal with that situation because it was like their ceo or something like really so yeah it's not it's not uncommon for an hr professional to to be dealing with the employment side of of a of a situation like that i think what's simplistic is how HR is perceived as an admin function and a transactional function.
20:23And we do the letters and we send out the offers. And in my opinion, this side of HR, this dealing with the very raw experiences of HR is so woefully unsupported. Like there is no recognition that I've found within our professional kind of standards of how we should be dealing with this. we've got all these standards around how as HR professionals we should be dealing with other people's well-being and how we should understand how work affects them but there is nothing that says as a HR professional you are going to be dealing with all of this stuff and therefore you are expected to resource yourself support yourself get some kind of space for you and then you go into organizations and they're like oh you're just admin so just do the admin without You're actually taking the emotional burden of stuff that people, they're not even going to see a lot of the time because you're, you know, part of your thing is you're meant to be confidential.
21:24Leanne:And I think this is where humor is so important as well, isn't it? You know, I think there is an element when you work in industries like this, you do develop a slightly dark sense of humor. Yeah. Like, I think it's a part of the survival, isn't it? But also you need that, you need that level to, that lightness to go with the heaviness. and I think that's why people love why your video did so well because it is that that little shining yeah light when people are calling you admin how dare you sir yeah exactly how dare you sir that might be another lyric no it's so true I think this is why it's as well is it it's validation and it's and it's someone saying oh I actually like I see you I see what you're actually dealing with and and so many people don't it's so misconstrued as a profession um and some and HR people have got some of the best sense of humours exactly because of what you said because we have to because otherwise you know what have you got yeah definitely I think my favourite thing already from this episode and I hope you beat it Emma is how long are their lunch breaks now
22:34love it talking of breaks very very quick break and then we'll come back and I've got a bit more of a lighthearted one. Still a little shocking, but a bit more lighthearted.
22:45Leanne:Did you know that the UK's number one management podcast, that's us, by the way, and the UK's number one marketing podcast are both on the same podcast network? We actually have a lot in common. We both use behavioural science to help people do better at work. And we both had to wrangle Rory Sutherland on an episode. And two out of three of us are devilishly good looking. And you're not going to say which. Phil, host of Nudge, UK's number one marketing podcast. It's brought to you, we need to do this in threes. The HubSpot Podcast Network. The audio destination. Or business professional. Seamless, seamless.
23:21Tell us about your latest episode, Phil. We've just done an episode on fake fandom and how New York indie bands are paying agencies to create fake TikTok videos about how much they like their work. And we talk about the behavioral science behind fandom and how that encourages people to enjoy the music and all of that good stuff and do some big things about how this affects the world of politics, business and brands as well. It is.
23:43Leanne:It's such a good show. Of course, you'll hear all the stuff you want to hear about how to grow your business by using behavioural science in your marketing. But there's also just some really interesting episodes that will be right up your street. Personally, I enjoyed Can Balsamic Vinegar Make Beer Taste Better? It can. And are we all just status-seeking monkeys? I am. Go and listen to Nudge wherever you get your podcasts. But come back. Yeah, come back. Definitely come back, because Nudge isn't as good as this, so come back. I'll cut that out. Keep that in.
24:15Welcome back, welcome back. Just in case you joined us halfway through, what are you doing, you absolute weirdo? You should start from the beginning. That's a very strange thing to do.
24:21Leanne:Don't put that on. I can do whatever. There's no rules here. Well, yeah, but they're making me explain the whole format again. That's no good. Anyway, now welcome back, welcome back. Okay, so we're putting to Emma these HR scenarios that we found online. by the way is it hr or hr what's the proper way of saying it i well my whole song that i've just put out is don't call me hr so like just call me my name i wasn't actually just defining you by hr so we've got m hr here oh man i got myself in the right pickle here okay so let me read you this scenario and you tell me what you whether you've heard of something like this what what your thoughts are on it so this person wrote we had some woman trying to avoid doing work by sitting out in a car in the parking lot well that's a problem in itself while she was hiding out there she needed to use the restroom so instead of going back inside she decides to pee out the car window even though i'm also a woman i was impressed and disgusted by the physics behind this she'd stuck her bare ass outside the window and just went for it so unbeknownst to her her male co-worker had arrived at work late due to an appointment he drove past to find a parking spot which was free with her ass in the parking spot i'm guessing dribbling so he then reported the incident to us hr one of our hr people to investigate it and sure enough parking lot cameras could corroborate his story but she said uh oh that was it sorry i've got lost the story here we are one hr person confronted the woman this is the peeing this is this is the peeing woman the bare ass the bare ass bare ass brenda we'll call her from now on well how did he know it was me it could have been anyone and we thought okay fair enough fair enough so uh we went back to the male peer and asked how he knew it was her his response oh it's definitely her the tattoos are pretty recognizable i thought that was a bit of a bit of a story that so essentially and also how do you know the i mean are we talking how far down the tattoos are we talking there's there's a lot here that's that's not anyway so this was this was finished up by hr going we definitely don't get paid enough for this is that ever happened to you i mean emma i'm not saying have you ever peed out of a car window because you may well have done but that's not part of it anything like this crazy happen to you not out of a window like who why would she do that why would she why would she do that and not just open the door like in what this facet people fascinate me like what is the thinking that I'm hiding I'm hiding in my car to escape from work I need the toilet I know the best thing to do rather than open the door and give me a bit of cover is just to stick my ass
27:10he does that
27:14Leanne:the other thing is like what i really enjoyed how the hr person also recognized what to say i was impressed and disgusted by the physics behind this feat do you know what my mind is immediately going to is like this obviously they're investigating it right just the investigation notes i was like having to to type up the different words that people will use to like explain like the guy driving past that he will explain will he use the word ass will he just use bum like what what
Read the full transcript
27:51those investigation notes are going to be absolutely amazing
27:58Leanne:is it one of those where you have to find really like professional ways of saying like like the woman presented her her backside to the car window
28:11i can't i can't go over how why you stick out the window that's such a good point anyway lee do we want to keep talking about this or should we
28:23Leanne:I mean, I think my question would be a serious question. How is this punishable? I understand the person was skiving off work. So are they punished for skiving off work? For public urination? For indecent exposure to a colleague? Like, what's the HR complaint? That's a good point. Do you know what's so sad is how my mind immediately goes to the answer. I'm just like, well, technically, you'd probably be bringing the company into disrepute.
28:56Yeah, it would probably be. Well, yeah, obviously all the stuff around like missing work, but getting your ass out on company property when you don't know who's driving through, that would definitely be bringing the company into disrepute. We were talking to Rebecca Taylor a couple of weeks ago
29:15Leanne:um and she was actually Rebecca was on the episode Emma that we shared your first video on the um house song yeah um and she was telling us how there was a she was because she's in HR there was a time where she basically had a phantom shitter yes who would just poo in the bathroom but on like the bare tiles and she'd have to like get it cleaned up and then try and deal with it and she was like that wasn't even like the worst thing I dealt with probably that day everyone's got a shit story really every HR professional yeah yeah yeah we've all got one is it like a rite of passage like until you have a shit story you're not a proper HR professional I think yes absolutely it's like um you're not a HR professional unless you've got cheapy experience like we chase cheapy experience like it's the golden like so when you've got it you're like yeah I've got to be it's the same thing you have to have some kind of shit story otherwise you're not really HR are you even HR unless you've got a shit story that's the title of your next song yeah oh my god yeah there have to be thank you I see it as a country maybe a country song oh yes don't spread your shit round here exactly exactly some kind of like banjo yeah don't be bringing your shit into the toilet
30:50that's another soundbite and you know it this is brilliant the clips make themselves they really do oh my I prefer don't bring that shit around here
31:03I snorted
31:06Leanne:oh god amazing i look forward to seeing that very soon you know it's gonna happen i'm already falling in it
31:24oh dear
31:29there's a couple more at the top that i thought were really which one do you want me to do um well well i'm still trying to keep it kind of light um and oh the top one's a bit sad making the second one is um it's just a bit odd oh i quite enjoyed i quite enjoyed the seven
31:48Leanne:hours one i thought this was quite funny so this is it went on for seven hours mind out the gutter please we received an outside email with a photo attachment the photograph was of a nurse we employed with what looked like a glass pipe of some sort in her lap. The email alleged that she was a drug addict. It prompted us to go seek out the nurse. When we arrived at her desk, she was on the phone with a patient but visibly nodding off. We requested she come to the HR office with us to talk. Then we confronted her about the allegation. She denied everything and agreed to a drug test. Instead of sending her out to an outside lab, we had one of the technicians in office building administered the test.
32:31Leanne:That's when things went south. She began telling us she needed to go out to her car. We believe this was because she planned to use synthetic urine or someone else's. Maybe Bare Ass Barbara. She went out and filled up a jar from a car window.
32:50Maybe that's what Bare Ass Barbara was doing. She was selling fresh urine. A drive-by.
33:16Leanne:we flatly told her that leaving the bathroom would be noted as a refusal to take the test which would mean an automatic termination this woman proceeded to throw a tantrum on the floor the bathroom for the next seven hours. We had to shut down that entire bathroom. Other employees started a rumour we were holding a pregnant woman hostage and at lunchtime she demanded a meal. So I went to the cafeteria, purchased her sandwich and drink and she ate it on the bathroom floor. After hours of tears and yelling, 5pm rolled round. She calmly stood up and said, it's the end of my shift so I'll be leaving now.
33:52Leanne:We repeated to her that leaving would still be considered a refusal and grounds for immediate termination. Eventually, she reluctantly agreed to take the test. The results we got back were positive and she was terminated. I thought that was the end of it until several weeks later, she called to complain her insurance card was no longer valid and she couldn't pick up a prescription. This turned into an hour-long discussion about how losing employment also means losing benefits. That's a bit of a crazy story. It sounds a bit like she is she's gone because when she got up at the end of a shift 5 p.m she's gone right i'm going so it sounded like she just needs to put off the time she's just wasted chill seven hours seven hours exactly and also to go from nodding off because you've had a little bit of can we say crack i don't think we can can we we've had you've had a bit of a glass pipe session nodding off to then just like having a tantrum and staying up for like a further seven hours that's kind of impressive if i have a whiskey at night then i'm asleep within 20 minutes well she's a nurse i Yeah, she's used to long shifts.
34:49True. I think when people interact with HR, they think that you're a little bit like of a job's worth. That's the word I'm looking for. Job's worth. Because you go through like, well, you have to consider this and then maybe we should consider this. That was going through my head. That whole time you were talking about that situation of like, well, what would I do if an employee was tantruming? What do I do when my daughter is tantruming? Sometimes I cope with it well. sometimes I don't if it was an employee I probably wouldn't you know I reckon I'd have called the police or something to say like what are you doing get off the property like grow up I just the amount of times I wanted to say do you know that if you watch the in-betweeners film where they're having the fight and then I grow up grow up and then he goes grow up I wanted to say that so many times in my employment to people of just like come on people you get a very like like a poker face in HR because what you really want to be doing is telling people to grow up and I think I probably would have had to with her Having the cheek to say to one of the HR to people Ah, this is shit Can you go and get me a sandwich please?
36:01Give me a sandwich Exactly Can't do it Yeah Oh my god, that's just weird Every HR professional studied many years to be the ones who get lunch
36:17the amount of times we're asked to uh how can you get some sandwiches in for that board meeting or something you're like are you shitting me are you actually joking like get your own bloody sandwiches how dare you sir how dare you sir exactly
36:37Leanne:yeah these stories are insane they are a little bit unhinged aren't they I don't remember having like either an employee or a colleague having a full on like that level tantrum but I think we've all seen colleagues have like kind of low key tantrums like arms folded and won't talk and you know won't talk again in the meeting because of something that's been said or i've got one i don't tell you because this is but this is this when i first started my first company i had about 25 employees no hr had no idea how to manage had no i didn't even know what hr was uh anyway so i you're gonna you're gonna so judge me in this one of the one of the drivers i had to let them go and i was like because basically he went off to deliver it was late night we delivered beer to students three o 'clock in the morning he went off and he had he had three deliveries to make he made them but only after an hour and a half because he went to his mate's place to smoke to just have a little smoke halfway between on the delivery so he came back and I was like dude this isn't acceptable I'm really sorry you know and he started kicking off with me which I thought was weird someone who just smoked a load of dope because they're supposed to be a bit more calm but he was kicking off with me and he picked up I think he picked up the papers and he threw them at me he picked his phone up that I'd given him picked his phone up and Nokia and he went to throw it to the floor he went he thought better of it or placed it in front of me and then got in his car and we were in this yard with maybe about half a kilometre between us and the gate at the end, screaming down this yard, like in his car, you could hear wheels spinning, his hand out the window, giving me the Kenny G's, like all this kind of stuff.
38:08Anyway, an hour later, I went out to take another delivery. He'd forgotten the gate was locked. So for an hour, he had to sit at the bottom of that yard and wait for someone to let him out.
38:17Leanne:He just didn't have the key. He didn't have the key. He couldn't get out. And I know, it was kind of like I went, all right Dave he's like oh let me out anyway sorry that's brilliant we'll be talking about tantrums no I think that's a brilliant a brilliant example yeah have you got Emma Emma kind of like those kind of things not tantrums so much but you see it quite a lot in leadership to be honest people take things that their team do really personally so there's so much I think we talked about this on the last podcast you know around like ego and how um yeah in in leadership a lot of the work that i've done in hr is trying to like wind people's neck in basically on their behalf so something really simple like a flexible working request people can take that really personally like it's a massive inconvenience that someone wants to have a life outside of work how dare you inconvenience us with your needs like how do we How could we possibly cover the work?
39:21How will we all stay in touch with each other? So it's not like a full-on meltdown in a toilet I've never seen. But when you are an HR professional, you get to see what people really think. And you're the ones that kind of then go, okay, I hear you, but maybe let's not sack this person because they just put in a flexible working request. like it's um i i they're they're tantrums that happen all the time particularly founders founder-led businesses oh my god because it's their baby like you understand it's their company but then that creates all kinds of emotional stuff that you're just like what what are you talking about like you're you're their employer it's not actually your family um let's let's let's wind it in a little bit and be a bit more reasonable yeah we've we've worked with a fair
40:19Leanne:few owner-led businesses in our time and it is it what what makes me I love it because they also seem to be very curious and and very like interested in people because they care they genuinely care um so I love that but like you say they kind of just kind of latch on to something I remember working with an organization I'll be very very vague that I showed them one particular a kind of like employee data insight that I thought was kind of be like a we need to you know keep an eye on this but it's nothing kind of crazy literally like no we need to talk about this one thing for the next hour because that completely undermines my entire identity if my people think this it's like yeah they're not saying they do they're just saying they might on occasion sometimes think that it's like yeah and it turns into this whole thing to the point where even like two years later when we were kind of running things again that was the only thing they were they were interested in they're like i want to see this this data point first and it's like wow triggered something for them yeah the amount of times i've been asked if i can like recalculate or calculate engagement scores a different way because they haven't liked the oh they're like could we just use a different calculation no no no it works darling sorry Sorry.
41:35We did have one customer. No, it wasn't a customer. It was a lead, wasn't it, for us? Now, again, I'll be very, very vague, but this person was referred to us and they said, we want to run an engagement survey.
41:48Leanne:No, it was worse than that. They came and they were like, talking to me about all these things. I was like, it sounds like you need to start with engagement. Right. And then we never heard from them again. She ghosted us. No, please. And then about three weeks later, we saw a picture on LinkedIn of this person fakely biting their fingernails, a picture of them where they'd professionally had it taken on the way to work in like a Photoshop professionally and the caption was, I'm so nervous. I'm about to relaunch my engagement survey today. I hope they say nice things and posted it publicly on LinkedIn where their employees were.
42:22And we were like, we dodged a bullet with that one, didn't we?
42:26Leanne:Yeah. Yeah. That was our client. We'd be like, take it down. Take it down now. Yes. I just, again, it always baffles me how lacking in self-awareness leaders can be as well by doing stuff like that. We had a CEO one time who drove like really fast, like expensive cars, talking to basically our grounds people. So like, you know, lower paid people about his six fast cars and his like expensive watches. is and you're like, read the room. What makes you think that what you're doing in this, where you've just told them that there's no money for more people or more pay rises or whatever and you're boasting about your fast cars.
43:14Can you not do that? Oh, dear. It's horrible.
43:20Leanne:Yeah, it's just, yeah, wow. I mean, I'm not surprised. No. Sadly tends to be males, doesn't it? you said it yeah no no because i know quite a few founders and uh and yeah they say they they make a million dollar a million pound in revenue in the first two years and they're like all right i'm going to buy a ferrari it's like yeah that's probably not the best thing you can do with that money but anyway i listened i didn't go and buy a bmw i couldn't afford no we certainly didn't go bankrupt for it either oh no they didn't get it taken they were taken away from the bankruptcy no no true story I'm 103 ,000 good times yeah yeah 103 grand went pop for and yeah they took my BMW and I was like don't take the BMW they're like dude you haven't paid it for like six months I'm like I know but you sounded like the gingerbread man then not the gumdrop button not the BMW
44:17Leanne:poor Al yeah well that was back when I was a dick I'm still a bit of a dick now but I was more of a dick back then You want a wear dick I want a wear dick
44:34I'm so sorry I genuinely didn't hear what you said I thought I won't say what I thought you said Lee we've probably I'm going to move it on We've probably got time for one or two of these fast rounds
44:47Leanne:Oh no I think we've got time for more because they're all too good So speed round okay okay i want you to rate it is seen it as in i have personal experience of this either directly or or through one of the um your professional people that you support believe it in the totally totally probable yeah um and stop it like can't be true absolutely not don't be ridiculous okay i don't think i'm going to say stop it
45:16Leanne:not ever okay so the first one i had to explain to an employee that despite not having any paid time off available she needed to go home and change her pants after shitting herself it was severe enough that her chair needed to be replaced believe it amazing so i'm saying everyone's got shit story amazing so believe it second one found out our top salesman had been working from home from a golf course three counties away for six months numbers were too good to question it believe it yeah i think i'd want to be that person as well i see it this is why i stay this is why i stay out of these conversations when leanne brings them up because i'm like good good on you son yes i love it when people find little shortcuts and they're like they've got a mouse jiggler going on or something and they're all that or they're just in bali not bali it's a bad place but yeah i'm not in hr that's fine um caught an employee um asleep under the desk at 2 p.m his excuse he'd been up all night preparing for the meeting the meeting was in 10 minutes and he had nothing prepared seen it no actually asleep under the desk yeah of course yeah well you say that like it's a thing I don't know anyone who's fallen asleep under the desk or even at work you've got to get yourself a job in HR now
46:45Leanne:amazing amazing wow okay next one I spent two months sending increasingly desperate company-wide emails about underwear left in the toilets never caught the culprit underwear left in the toilets believe it yeah I mean if someone's gonna shit they're gonna leave their pants in there as well aren't they no but are you saying are you saying like i i have so many questions about this so if someone's leaving underwear in the toilets are they leaving underwear that is beyond repair like we had in the first in the first person first one example are they leaving underwear just because they like leaving underwear how much i think so i think it's fetish because i think this person would if it was like dirty underwear they'd specify that right i have a feeling it's some kind of weird fetish or maybe just a game just like lol you know sandra's had to send out another email about the bra in the i don't know i like this i reckon the person who's doing it's got a proper vendetta against the person sending the emails and at some point they were like i'm gonna get there i'm gonna get that person and this is the way i'm gonna do it as a mechanism for a vendetta it's excellent 10 out of 10 i love it like yeah take that yeah and there's another pair of pants
48:01Leanne:well i mean underwear is expensive these days i know i'm thinking but then i was thinking also if you were going to do like something a bit worse it's probably the cheaper of all of the the shocking things you want to leave in toilets yeah and leave you with a some self-respect i think yeah you know well it's not freaking brenda out the car window anyway okay that's what i think i think we've all seen this an employee fires off a furious email ranting about their useless teammates to their boss except they hit reply all yeah of course seen it we've all done that seen it this is actually sort of on brand my sister worked for um i'll just say a british council english county council and she got a job in comms uh which she does that's her profession she's very good at it it was day two and there was this there was this event coming up called um a touch of cloth and it was all about it was all about like it was the touch of cloth was like a vicar or something and it's like a play going on or whatever anyway she got a bit confused and sent an email out to every single person with the headline touching cloth which just in case anyone from the uk doesn't know what that means that means you're about to shit yourself Yeah, which the previous person should have told someone about.
49:20Touching's cloth is where you actually say, I'm going to go, right?
49:23Leanne:Yeah. I saw it where somebody applied for a job, but they did it. It was back in the day and it was over email, which is a bit archaic looking back. But reply to all with their application. So yeah, everyone could read their like, was it good? Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Awkward. But then, you know, it just things like the email's recalled, but it's not. You've already opened it. What's this recall bullshit? I don't get it. Yeah. Anyway. I once emailed someone and called him Anus instead of Angus.
50:03Which if you're going to be called Angus, you've got to expect that in your life.
50:08Leanne:100%. If that's your official verdict as a HR professional, when it got reported, that was the outcome of the investigation just expect it buy a nurse go away blame your mum yeah when i just what i did really quickly when i had a web design agency um back about 20 years ago um i sent an email with a proof which needed approval and i sent it to them and i forgot the r in proof and so i just i was only a few weeks later i was looking through the email i realized my mistake and they just didn't say a word but they were a charity that were you know that that quite rightly would have been quite annoyed about my use of that word but thankfully they they saw it as like that's obviously a typo obviously anyway oh dear have we got one more one more um just because i want to know if emma's ever seen this i found a guy masturbating to paul in his cubicle porn or pool porn yeah believe it I haven't I haven't seen someone in the act but there's been like records on IT watching porn and stuff like that you know on their computer I don't think I've ever actually caught anyone or know of anyone yeah there's I think there's an entire Reddit I think it's I think it's I'm not sure I should say this next week I think it's called reddit you know they have the r in front of it r and it's called danger wank and it's like all the all the dangerous places you try it go sorry i mean you're nodding as if you you've you've posted on that on that i mean all the time no i can just believe it i can just believe it there's all kinds of kinks aren't there like they're just they just are and there's the guy in parliament looking at looking at porn you know like come on yeah we never had i never heard of anything like that although i was at a hen do once and it was you know it's like a friend of a friend um so you don't really know them that much but i kind of met her once before and i was chatting to her and she was like how's work so hot really stressful and i've had to masturbate in the bathroom three times this week i was like whoa what yeah genuinely true story but she was so confident with it you know you start to think am I the prude?
52:27I love this. See, my mind's gone to, this is like the new wellbeing technique. Screw your fruit bowls. This is like... Literally, you could screw your fruit bowls. Yeah.
52:40Leanne:You're munching. Yeah, just be careful if you roll that out as a campaign, like screw your fruit bowls. Today's wellbeing tip. My God. This is the masturbation corner.
52:54in your induction this is what it comes to when it's too stressful oh could you imagine opening the door it was like a queue of two people waiting to come in and you're like morning, morning and wait long oh good god right we've covered everything today well if all that doesn't get cancelled I'm not sure what will I know this has gone all kinds of places I am not disappointed with this at all this has been everything I expected
53:21Leanne:and more amazing amazing i i think i don't think i've stopped crying since like we basically started recording for good in a good way um i i mean it's it's brilliant isn't it and honestly if if you if that's the type of thing you like just get on yourself onto reddit because there are some that are just insane like i they were fairly tame there were others on there that i was like whoa um so yeah go and go and have a look um and just remember that you know it doesn't matter how strange you think your workplace is somebody somewhere has got an even weirder story than yours Emma thank you so so much for taking the time um to to join us it has been a genuine pleasure we'd love to do this much more more often with you you are funny funny and just brilliant and if anyone right not if anyone when someone wants to know more about you they can go on LinkedIn do you have a website for your upcoming seminars anything like that yeah I think probably LinkedIn is the best place actually I'm all over the place my websites at the moment so find me on LinkedIn have a laugh at my staff and then stick around and find out more fabulous fabulous and we can't wait I mean I can't wait for the country country shit video that was protection I would like
54:36Leanne:I feel that me and I should get like a writing credit on it yeah or be like Jimmy Carr on the Ed Sheeran song he's a backing singer on the Ed Sheeran song we could just be backing singers I can't tell you how many requests I've had to be my backing singers. Like there is a queue. It's longer than the masturbation section.
55:06Leanne:Please do this again. Yes, let's do this again. Like masturbation, all good things come to an end. Simplest link. we're gonna be back on we're gonna be back on Thursday with something a little bit
55:26right so Thursday we are we're actually handing over the microphone and appearing as guests on Megan French Dunbar's brilliant podcast Unbehaved we chat about the unwritten rules of professional life the ones we've broken clearly clearly um and that's one time I got caught masturbating in McDonald's. Then Leanne, that's not true. Leanne.
55:45Leanne:And the next Tuesday we are back for another summer session called Things We Were Wrong About. We're ever wrong. We're revisiting three years of our New Year prediction episode. So every new year we try and predict what's going to happen in the next 12 months in the world of work. In the interest of transparency, we don't get it right very often so we're just going to share all the ones we got really wrong. In fact, yeah, we probably just won't bother with the ones we got right. I think there might be one in there. Yeah. And it was like, AI will be big next year. Groundbreaking. You called it Al because you didn't know how to say it.
56:19Emma, thank you so much. We're looking forward to your next, well, to everything you've got in LinkedIn. And yeah, thank you again. You're amazing. Thank you.
From the publisher
Ever wondered what really goes on behind the closed doors of an HR office? In this Summer Session episode, Al and Leanne open up the anonymous HR filing cabinet—and it gets wildly unhinged.
We're joined by viral content creator, HR consultant, and founder of Be Unstoppable, Emma Djemil. We dive into the hilarious reality behind her viral HR house tracks and parody videos that have taken the HR community by storm.
Then, Emma joins Al and Leanne for a round of raw, anonymous HR Confessions sourced straight from the depths of Reddit and online forums. From employees peeing out of car windows and a 7-hour bathroom standoff, no topic is off-limits.
Expect cringing, laughing, and a lot of 'inappropriate behaviour'!
🔥 Episode Highlights & Confessions Covered
Emma Djemil's Viral HR Tracks: How parody videos turned HR pain points into viral house tracks, and why comedy is the ultimate antidote for workplace stress.
The Parking Lot Incident: The physics, the shock, and the tattoo identification behind an employee using her car window as a restroom.
The 7-Hour Bathroom Standoff: A wild story of drug testing, bathroom floor meals, and complete benefit confusion.
Speed Round Shockers: Masturbation in cubicles, golf course "working from home," and pants-changing protocol.
👤 Connect with Emma Djemil & Be Unstoppable
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/be-unstoppable/
Website: https://thehrbigmeet.com
Email: hello@beunstoppable.uk
📬 Connect with Al & Leanne
– LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/truthlieswork
– Al Elliott: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thisisalelliott
– Leanne Elliott: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meetleanne
– Email: hello@truthliesandwork.com
– Book a call: https://savvycal.com/meetleanne/chat
Mental health support
UK & ROI — Samaritans Call 116 123 or visit https://www.samaritans.org
UK — Mind Call 0300 123 3393 or visit https://www.mind.org.uk
US — Suicide & Crisis Lifeline Call or text 988 or visit https://988lifeline.org
Australia — Lifeline Call 13 11 14 or visit https://www.lifeline.org.au
Global helplineshttps://findahelpline.com
Truth, Lies and Work is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.