This situation has blown up on tik tok and shocked to see that it involves the Chief People Officer of a company.

Being in HR, I’m not sure how this would be handled and it would definitely diminish the reputation of the entire HR team.

Edit: I did not expect this level of engagement when I posted - thank you, I appreciate all of the feedback and advice. I wish I could spend more time combing through every comment, but I just can't dedicate more time to this post. The job search will commence very soon.

She claims that I cannot complain about overwhelm, as I am not putting in the same amount of time that she is (55 weekly hours compared to my 50). I live alone and have a dog - I physically cannot spend more time in the office, and she is anti-WFH.

We are a department of two (smallest dept in the organization), and she has positioned HR as the "catch-all" for anything clearly not outlined in someone's job description. In her words, "If we don't do it, it won't get done". We spend egregious amounts of time on non-HR tasks, so much so that the core functions of our department are done after-hours. I will be working until about 10 PM to finish payroll, as I have spent the last two and a half weeks trying to learn our commission system after our Sales Director was abruptly terminated.

She gives me average performance reviews despite excellent performance - she feels that, within HR, most functions can't earn higher than a 3/5 because "you either do them or you don't, you can't 'exceed expectations'".

For example, in 2023 I accomplished 5 major projects, ranging from drafting a new handbook, to creating and implementing a new incentive program, to evaluating and implementing a new HRIS system. I received only positive feedback on my regular duties (payroll processing, benefits administration, onboarding, virtually any non-strategic HR function outside of recruiting). I received a 3.5% merit increase. This brought my compensation to $21.35/hour as an HR Coordinator. I've had this title for almost 4 years, and asked what I could do to advance my career with the company - she said I had to "take on more responsibility".

I recognize that she makes more than me because her role is strategic, she is wholly responsible for the department, and has decades of experience. I do not dispute that. But I, an hourly, entry-level employee, should not have the same expectation of commitment as a high-level strategic role. My commitment already exceeds my compensation. I am so exhausted.

As the title states we had some of our summer interns start today. I’ve already had to have two conversations regarding dress code. I work for a company in tech so it’s not like we have a suit and tie policy. Jeans are perfectly acceptable. One of the interns showed up in a crop top and really short shorts. And another intern showed up in sweatpants. And not even nice looking sweatpants they were all ratty at the bottom and look to have a bleach stain on the knee.

When I spoke to the intern in a crop top, she said that many HR people are posting on TikTok about dress code and she got this exact outfit from an HR influencer 🙄

I have no idea what to say to this. I mean, isn’t it obvious that both of these outfits are not good choices for a workplace?

I have a conversation coming up in a little while with the person in sweatpants. 🤦🏽‍♀️

ETA: yes we have a dress code section in employee guidelines. In addition when the interns signed on for their position, part of the paperwork was to read through the employee guidelines and they had to know dress code for daily wear, and some specific events they’re going to have with our executives throughout the summer. We have over 1M employees this is not a small company.

RANT/OFF MY CHEST:

I hate my job. I’m an HR Generalist and I hate it. No amount of money is worth being severely stressed out every single fucking day. I loathe it. The only day I’m able to enjoy is Saturdays as Sundays bring so much anxiety for the week to come I can’t enjoy anything else. I cry at least once a week. I don’t want to climb the corporate ladder. I don’t want more responsibilities. I don’t give a fuck about the executives. I could give two fucks about reports and metrics. Everything is urgent as if someone is dying and it’s fucking ridiculous. “Aren’t you paid well? Don’t you work from home” I DON’T GIVE A FUCK! Being this stressed out so a mother fucker can go on his 6th vacation this year? I have no desire to see family or friends. No desire to do errands or clean my house. I have no desire to do fucking anything like a normal human being. I’m severely depressed due to this job. Burnt out is beyond an understatement, there’s not a word created yet to describe the despair I feel Sunday-Friday.

I have been in HR for 7 years, Generalist for 3, I’m done.

Just some background, I am a regional level HR manager. 240 locations. National Retailer.

A store reported to us that an associate made comments Sunday that they wished their previous suicide attempts were successful and they are ready to die. In true fashion, the store didn't report until Monday morning. Fortunately the associate showed to work Monday(today)

This initially went to my HRBP but they are still in training. So I took over and had them shadow me.

The associate in question I had actually met during a previous store visit and we shared a fondness for a horrible but good sci fi movie called Plan 9 from Outerspace. This store location is about and hour and half. So rather then reach out on the phone I drove to the store. He was there and we met and talked in the managers office.

I let him know we were made aware of his comments. I let him know we wanted to help him and the company offers free mental health via EAP and as he had short term and long term disability plus PTO, we could even offer an LOA and he wouldn't be financially impacted. Dude had like 5 weeks of pto saved up.

He gets a bit angry and says his life is his business and walks out, gets in his car and goes home. In this moment I'm worried he may self harm. We call non emergency and they do a wellness check. In a short 30 minutes, he killed himself at home. Gun shot per the police.

This all happened at around 1pm today. I'm devastating thinking I accelerated his suicide. I know I didn't cause and yes I'm scheduling therapy. But it just keeps replaying in my mind. What did I do wrong. I should have did something different.

I have since discovered his spouse had left him 6 months ago. She took everything and near full custody of their son.

I just needed to vent. Thank you for hearing me.

And no I am not suicidal. Just sad. I have too much to live for.

I have been in my current role for almost a year and a half as an HR generalist. My role has grown quite a bit and I am thinking of asking for an increase. Interested in seeing what others in similar positions are making! Also, if you were to ask for a raise, what is the percentage range you would find appropriate?

Is anyone not having a terrible time right now? The last few months have been even crazier than 2020 with all the business ups-and-downs. How’s everyone doing?

I'm not holding this one in for the Friday vent thread. I just need to yell about this because it's my number one pet peeve in HR.

Came to work early, and people were squabbling about the fridge, and somehow it was my problem. Apparently someone was keeping a week's worth of Red Bull, and ANOTHER person stole one, but that other person had their fancy breakfast sandwich stolen, and someone else is mad the fridge is full and apparently it was my job to go in there every Friday and throw away all the food.

I've dealt with this at every workplace I've had. Someone is leaving 5-week-old food in the fridge, someone has 24 cans of soda and a week's worth of groceries, another person had food stolen, and another person cleaned the fridge out and threw out a person's great-great-great-grandmother's family heirloom Tupperware.

I can't stand how many workplaces try to turn HR into the fridge police. I haven't used a work fridge in maybe a decade because of this shit. I keep a lunchbox with ice packs. That's that.

It's bewildering how goddamn stupid people can be with a fridge.

Anyways, what's your fridge story? What are some of the non-HR things you get assigned that you can't stand?

At least I don't have to worry about being hacked when I send my action forms for signature this way. *shrug*

#getoffmylawn

Using a throwaway since I used to work here. SHRM’s a mess and this is proof. If anyone is still taking HR advice from them, why? This internal email is proof that they’ve gone off the deep end. It was sent to all staff yesterday.

And I just know somewhere in this story is an HR professional who advised against this and will take the blunt of the blame

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2026/03/19/ohio-jury-employee-baby-death-case/89223261007/?link_source=ta_first_comment&taid=69bc1e064e76fe00019797f9&utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwZnRzaAQpxT5leHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZAo2NjI4NTY4Mzc5AAEetH7PnLegqyWaPYoMTbPEV1yMhWtZgMnkpawTix7vD_q_567VSnrECXmQotM_aem_DC8qnssQNuy4zY73oVwTJw#qjn14kwt7rcjtp0nbi6u3lwj7ey186n8

My firm is hiring for a director-level role, and just by happenstance, I'm the one conducting phone screens for this role, just due to other projects and vacations.

I've seen some wild resumes over my days, but this one takes it. This lists their resume in reverse chronological order, and on paper are an excellent candidate. They have an advanced degree, a professional certification, and tons of good experience.

That is, until their most recent exp is OF. I was doubting myself, maybe that's not a hard knock out. So I took an extra step I don't usually do and skimmed this person's social media, and man, does this person have some extremely politically charged opinions to put it... nicely. We work with at risk kids so that's a hard no for me. I just can't figure out the rationale for this sort of thing being on a resume.

What's the weird stuff ya'll have seen?

And if you do regret leaving, why?

Rant:

I understand some industries can or prefer candidates to call the recruitment team regarding applications, but that is not how our company operates. I specifically have in my voicemail that due to high volume of applicants, we cannot take phone calls and they can email instead, if necessary. They are sent text messages after applying with the same exact verbiage.

A candidate decided to call me 3 times in a row, emailed me, and left two voicemails. I responded via email for them to apply internally and someone from our recruitment team will reach out if their qualifications align. Literally right after I sent that, they call AGAIN and leave another voicemail to “talk about the open positions”. STOP FUCKING CALLING ME!!!!!!! That is what an INTERVIEW is for. I am up to my asshole in shit I have to do daily, I have absolutely no time to sit on the phone and have an unofficial interview and answer questions that are listed out in the job description and that are to be asked DURING AN INTERVIEW! If a candidate genuinely needs specific questions answered for whatever reason, that is what email has been invented for.

Now I’m just annoyed because you’ve chosen to leave me 3 voicemails, called me 4 times, and emailed me twice all within 45 minutes. After just applying today. I cannot for the life of me understand this shit. I get the job market absolutely sucks right now, but that doesn’t justify behavior like this.

I'm an HR journalist, so mods, please delete (and forgive me) if this isn't allowed — I'm working on an upcoming Halloween-themed story about HR horror stories, and I thought this group might have some good ones to share.

Anyone have any great ideas for work-friendly, HR related costumes for Halloween this week?

I thought I had it nailed when I thought up Petey the Sexual Harassment Panda, but I don't think anyone at my office will get the reference. . .

Y’all…I am struggling.

My boss (CHRO) has progressively been using AI to respond to me and other leaders more and more frequently and I’m hitting a breaking point, I think.

We have a business account with an AI platform and, I’ll be honest, I’ve used it sometimes to help me put together outlines or to help me organize discussion points. I never copy and paste language because it feels so weird and inauthentic to me, especially nowadays where people know what AI “sounds” like.

Anyway, my boss has now started replying with AI when we ask them for their own thoughts about our proposals, which feels like it’s 10 steps too far. For example, last week I sent them for their opinion on a list of questions (the sub won’t let me use the actual word for some reason) drafted to roll out to employees. They responded with a very long AI-generated response breaking down my entire outline. It was so unnecessary and also didn’t answer my main ask which was, “Do you like this or not?”

I’ve periodically tried to steer them in a different direction by suggesting warmer communications or rewriting AI stuff to have an actual human voice, but they are definitely not getting the hint that I don’t vibe with AI all the time. I get irritated very easily (LOL) and this is getting to me! We have a very positive working relationship so I’ve been thinking of finding a way to gently explain the perception of using this all the time for regular stuff, but I hesitate.

Has anyone else gone through this in HR with their boss?

I have 5 years of experience, started in TA and then HR coordinator roles. I was laid off last year from a nonprofit due to lack of federal funding from gov't then was able to land a job 2 months later which was great (Retail HR) until they demoted me to part time due to layoffs. I have been looking for a FT HR Generalist job for 8 months now.

It is extremely exhausting, heard back from company today that I had final round with last week (fully onsite) and they gave me a tour of the whole office, showed me my 'future' desk all the things, to tell me today I didn't get the job because they want to keep interviewing, and leadership wants someone with more experience. This is now the 3rd job where I've got to final round and didn't get the job. I've only experienced not getting a job after a final round since the job market has been like this.

I've decided I needed a break and am going to apply for retail part time jobs for extra cash (I used to work retail before corporate.) I've seen some people have HR leads on here, feel free to let me know if you do. But shedding light that it isn't easy at all right now for those searching for a job in the HR field.

What are some unpopular opinions or hot takes you have about working in HR? A few of mine:

1) References are a waste of time and I don't really care if you are listed as eligible for rehire or not. A company can say you're not because they say it for everyone, another might say your are even though you were let go for cause. Just depends on who is responsible for that and how they track it.

2) Dress codes are stupid for many many workplaces. If someone is not dressing in a way that is appropriate, deal with it. Otherwise, I don't think it should matter if someone wears sweatpants or shorts or athleisure or whatever if they are still doing their job.

3) Salaried employees should be able to shift their schedule as needed. Take a few hours to go to your kid's appointment or performance, leave early to get home before it rains, etc. Again, handle the issues but otherwise treat employees as humans.

Obviously, much of this is dependent on company size or type.

I'm not a negative person and I really don't do this but I need to put this somewhere.

in December one of our contractors in Spain filed a labour complaint with the Inspección de Trabajo and that's how I found out we had a six-figure problem nobody knew about.

she'd been working 40 hours a week on a fixed schedule for over a year, using our tools, reporting to our engineering lead, basically an employee in every way that matters under Spanish law except we were paying her through a services invoice.

I got the notification on a Tuesday morning and I already knew before I even opened the files that she wasn't going to be the only one.

I spent the next couple of weeks auditing every international contractor we had. 14 people across Spain, the Netherlands, and Germany, and when I mapped each one against local employment indicators like exclusivity, schedule control, integration into the org, tool provision, 11 of the 14 would likely be reclassified as employees if anyone else filed or if we got audited.

the exposure in Germany alone was ugly because of retroactive social security contributions, and in Spain we were looking at fines on top of back payments. our external counsel ballparked the combined worst-case somewhere around €180-220k.

spent the next 2-3 months building the infrastructure to fix it without blowing everything up.

worked with outside counsel on the reclassification analysis country by country, set up employment contracts in HiBob, ran the EU conversions through Workmotion since they had own entities in all 3 countries so we didn't need to incorporate anywhere, and for the contractors who were independent I rewrote the SOWs to strip out the exclusivity and schedule control language so the relationships would actually survive scrutiny.

the whole thing was a quiet fire drill that nobody outside my team and legal even knew was happening.

then last week my CEO pulls me into a 1:1 and asks why people ops tooling costs went up 40% quarter over quarter. I walked him through the exposure numbers, showed the before-and-after risk map, explained what would have happened if the Spanish complaint had triggered a cross-border audit, and he kind of nodded and said okay but can we revisit this line item next quarter.

not hostile exactly, but completely unmoved by the fact that I'd spent a quarter preventing something that would've cost 10x what I spent to fix it.

I left that meeting feeling like I'd been speaking a language he doesn't have any reason to learn until the fine actually lands on his desk.

I keep going back and forth on whether there's a way to make this kind of work visible to leadership or whether preventive compliance is just permanently invisible by nature, like the only version of this story that would've gotten his attention is the one where I didn't catch it in time and we got hit with the full penalty.

idk, maybe I should've let one of the smaller fines land first so there was something concrete to point to.

anyway that's where my head is tonight, what did i do wrong guys?

Why

My hot take: HR should go to company social events, but dip before you or the rest of the company gets too drunk 😬

Hi fellow HR professionals,

I need to vent for a moment. I just received another rejection after an interview I felt genuinely good about.

I had all the relevant experience and answered every question with a clear sense of how my background applied. I also asked thoughtful questions about the role and the team. They still decided not to move forward.

Why are we holding out for unicorn candidates? The market feels like a catch-22 right now, where you can't be considered unless you've already done this exact job at this exact company.

I'd be curious to hear how others on the hiring side are thinking about this., and what I could do in the future to really stand out as a candidate.

I wanted to post this to Friday Venting but I didn’t see it this week.

Anyway, I just got off a final call for the week with an HR colleague and she goes “Ok. Have a great weekend. Disconnect. Fuck everything and fuck everyone. Talk to you Monday!”

And I think that about sums up how our January went. Anyone else? 🙃