“What are the Dumbest Questions HR Professionals Have Received? Share Your Stories! #HR #WorkplaceQuestions #FunnyHRmoments #DumbQuestionsAtWork”
Have you ever encountered absurd or hilarious questions from employees during your HR career? Let’s commiserate and share experiences!
Employee’s Outlook Dilemma
Have you had an employee ask HR how to change an Outlook profile photo? Seems like a basic task, but sometimes the obvious eludes us!
Laughable Inquiries
Connect with fellow HR professionals and share your most amusing employee questions. It’s always entertaining to look back on the moments that made us shake our heads in disbelief.
Join the conversation and let’s have a good laugh together! #HRHumor #EmployeeEngagement #FunnyWorkQuestions
Can you fill out my W4?
Can they still work for us if they freeze social security number (scam caller told them their SS was being frozen), why does my W2 show no income tax withheld (cuz you marked exempt on W4), “hey can we get a defibrillator to just have at the office in case”?.
Dumb or not, it was weird.
I had a guy come in to see me on a Monday. He got married and “guessed” that he should add his new wife to his benefits. He sat there filling out the paperwork and asked me “do you think I should have gotten married to her?”
I thought he was joking. He was not.
Life tip: if you have to ask your HR manager if your marriage is a good life choice, it probably isn’t.
EE: (unmarried) tells her manager she’s pregnant
Manager: are you kidding me? Do you even have a boyfriend???
My previous org, there was one guy who worked every summer but not in the winter. And every summer we had to rehire him in the system, including doing a new I9.
And every summer he would gripe and moan and ask. “Do you really need to see my documents? I’ve NEVER had to do those before”
By the time my last summer rolled around I looked him dead in the eye and said “Ron, you and I have personally had this conversation for the last five years. You’ve had to present your I9 documents at every new job since the 80s. This is not news to you my dude”
How come you didn’t take taxes out when I checked exempt on my W4?
My friend who also works in HR, just this week she had an employee ask her if they should submit their receipts for their contacts for reimbursement since insurance didn’t cover the full amount.
Since I’m only a permanent resident and not a citizen can you tell payroll to not take social security tax out of my paycheck
A new hire had a hyphenated last name. The last name on her drivers license and her social security card were flip flopped, and E-Verify rejected it as a mismatched name. When I called to tell her she needed to get it corrected, she asked me which version of her last name was the right one.
Not really a question, but Had a debate with an individual who, despite using his US passport on his I-9, refused to check the box on if he was a US Citizen or not. Finally convinced him when I told him I couldn’t hire him if he wasn’t authorized to work in the US. Gotta love Sovereign Citizens.
I had a first year medical resident ask if someone could come to his apartment and show him how to use the washing machine.
Turns out it was his first time living away from his parents. It was a ‘you’ll have to google that’ response from me.
Me: your mgr has been trying to reach you for several days. Are you OK?
After 24 hours of crickets…
Me: we’re separating your employment due to being a no call no show multiple days.
6 months later…
EE: am I eligible for rehire?
An administrative assistant resigned effective immediately. Their supervisor came to my office an hour later, furious, because he didn’t give the employee permission to resign.
He asked why someone was allowed to quit even though he told them not to. He wanted HR to do something about it.
My boss heard the commotion and walked over, and we both let out the biggest WTF after the door shut behind him.
Mgr: we’re terminating your employment due to falsifying your application stating you have a high school diploma even though you don’t.
EE: can I transfer to a position that doesn’t require a diploma?
We have a large teams chat where people ask HRIS to remove pending candidates from a list in our HRIS system. Today after multiple request of candidate removals one person said “I would also like to be removed from this email thread. This is my second request”
Bro- this is not an email. Its teams and you can leave any time. I sent him a screen shot of how to leave the chat.
Had a guy ask to submit a life event because he aged out of his parent’s health insurance. When I go to approve his life event submission, I noticed he only elected voluntary life insurance. When I asked about it, he thought “life insurance just included everything” like health, dental, etc. I had to explain what life insurance was and how it was different from health insurance. The man is 26 years old.
Health and Safety asking me what happens when someone’s gradual return to work doesnt….work….. and they designed the plan……
Someone called to say they never received their 6 month sign on bonus. I track and pay them so I was worried I missed someone somehow. I pulled up their name and they were terminated, they actually only worked for us for a few weeks. They said “yeah I know I don’t work there anymore but I signed something saying I would get a bonus after 6 months.” They were dead serious.
When I was the office manager for a fairly large practice, one of the owners came to me to tell me to “get us off of Google reviews”…
Can I use sick leave for when my pets are ill?
Some of these show why sometimes people give us the stereotypes they do
I am getting the outlook question frequently.
someone asked me how the money from their paycheck gets sent to their bank account. aka direct deposit. i sent them a youtube video explaining how
In his defence, I’ve worked at a couple of places where getting a profile picture up or changed was a complex process that involved multiple teams, multiple approvals and at least a few days. Nonetheless, the subject is fun.
Yesterday, an employee that’s with the company for 8 years asked me how to read his payslip.