Corrupt HR Is Not On Your Side

This post is about the moment I realized that HR is unethical and will lie to employees. Blatantly. Right to your face. Just know that HR is not on your side and they are not ethical.

[In an earlier post, I gave a quick intro into my experience at this toxic office environment. If you’ve missed the intro for extra context, you can find it here.]

HR is on the side of company leadership. They serve to protect them at all costs, at the expense of every single employee if necessary. I looked-up how Wikipedia defines HR and I was able to find this definition here: A human-resources department (HR department) of an organization performs human resource management, overseeing various aspects of employment, such as compliance with labor law and employment standards, administration of employee benefits, organizing of employees files with the required documents for future reference, and some aspects of recruitment (also known as talent acquisition) and employee offboarding.

I was always so naive about HR. I mean, I’ve never been in trouble at work before, so my experience with HR was always concerning annual enrollment and a few random questions about benefits.

And until I needed to escalate a work issue to them, I believed they would be on my side. They actually advertise pretty heavily that they have an “open door” policy to hear any employee concerns or issues, etc. But that is a flat-out lie, as this is only a ploy to hear issues ahead-of-time, so they have time and can assist leadership in any cover-up work in the background.

The work issue that I escalated to HR was concerning a male employee that was stalking me, inside and outside of work. He even texted to me photos of himself OUTSIDE OF MY DAUGHTER’S DAYCARE. This is how bad it got for me with him. Unfortunately for me, this male employee was also a buddy of the guy running the company, so he acted quite outrageously towards me because he had confidence that he could get away with.

I had already gone to my stalker’s boss because I thought maybe she could intervene and help. I also thought because she was the only female executive at that company that she would be the most sensitive towards this problem. But she did not help me. She chose to protect my stalker instead and advised me to “toughen up”.

I lost all respect for her leadership at the company at that point.

Because he kept getting away with everything, his behavior kept escalating.

One day, I arrived at work early to find BLOOD. Everyone knows that I arrive early, usually before anyone else. The blood was on the floor and the wall en-route to the restrooms. Then I arrived in my office and there was BLOOD on the papers on top of my desk. When I found that it was on my desk, I KNEW it was this stalker guy doing it. And I KNEW I was the target.

I know this because I’ve had issues with him in my office after-hours before, going through my papers. He’s the last person to leave work everyday. He even stays after the cleaning crew. So the person who did this, must have done this AFTER the cleaning crew and he’s the only one that stays that late.

Here are pics of what I found that day when I arrived at work. I’m sorry the photos are crummy and poor-quality as I took them on my cell phone only. Seeing it in-person was alot more startling.

I immediately went to HR, and told them I know my stalker did it. I gave them them the papers with blood on them. And there are also surveillance cameras all over the office and I asked them to confirm with the surveillance cameras. They said they would investigate and sent me away.

Never heard back from them so a few days later I asked them what they found in their investigation.

They seriously played-dumb with me. Like, “what investigation?” I told them they were supposed to find out if my stalker did this or not and they said nothing happened. I told them I gave them the papers with his blood on them (I watch enough Forensic Files that I know that’s legit evidence that can PROVE who it was) and they were like “No, you didn’t give us anything.” WTF! I told them I wanted the surveillance cameras checked and they said they couldn’t do that because no one was currently employed that knew how to review the surveillance cameras and they would have to hire/contract someone and they weren’t going to do that because nothing happened.

I later find out that the surveillance camera excuse was also a lie, because a few weeks later, the guy running the company turned 50. And some employees decorated his office overnight and he arrived to see his birthday decorations and freaked out about people being in his office and demanded to see the surveillance camera footage about who all was involved, and within 30min, he was watching the footage for himself. Everyone involved were his buddies so he was happy and not freaked out anymore.

I was completely disgusted with HR and leadership at this point. I lost all trust in them. I consulted with a lawyer over this event and he advised me that HR’s purpose is to protect the company from lawsuits, not to protect the employee. I never knew that until it was already too late, when I already delivered to them actual evidence when I needed help.

Please be aware of this fact yourself. You need to protect yourself at the workplace. Don’t trust HR to protect you. If you do have an issue that needs escalation, please consult with an employment / labor lawyer first. Never give HR any original copies of evidence if you want to be able to escalate the issue. From my perspective, it’s practically the same thing as wiping off all the fingerprints at your home after you’ve been robbed but before you call the police.