Employing new staff can be a bit of a mixed bag.

Sure they sounded good in their interview, and their resume was impressive.

But until you actually work with someone, you never truly know whether or not they’ll be good for the role.

This was absolutely the case for the grocery store in this story, who recruited a woman who’d been desperate to work there for a long time.

But they weren’t prepared for how she’d act once she’d actually been hired.

Read on to find out what happened.

The Woman Who Worked One Day

I worked at a grocery store at a full service meat counter – this means if you wanted any type of meat (steaks, chicken, fish, etc – not deli meats) you had to get it from me behind a counter. This place was also in a fairly rich neighborhood, so we had plenty of entitled customers.

One day, after a massive storm took out power all across town (the town ended up without power for weeks), and our store just happened to be one of the first places to get it back.

There was one regular customer who was not our typical clientele – she was most likely living on welfare, was very disheveled in appearance (but not homeless) – but loved to come into our store.

Every time she came in, she would tell the cashiers how she was constantly applying for a job here, and once they gave her a job everything would be perfect and her life would turn around.

Let’s see how the store reacted to the woman’s words.

After a few months of this bragging, we decided to help her and actually gave her a job – she seemed like a lovely lady and we were short staffed due to the storm.

I wasn’t there when she was told she got the job, but I heard she started sobbing and gave the store manager a hug, thanking him over and over until she left.

On her first day, there was another small storm – this would be perfect for her, as the rain usually keeps out customers, limiting traffic so she can learn the basics easier.

However, when the time came for her to clock in at 10am, she was nowhere to be seen. We wondered where she was, hoping she was able to make it here okay. Ten minutes later, nothing. Fifteen minutes, still nothing. Twenty minutes, we were really starting to get worried something may have happened to her.

Read on to find out if and when the woman appeared.

She finally showed up at 10:30am, looking for the working assistant manager, Kelly. Kelly was Meat Manager’s wife, and very good at her job. She usually trained the cashiers, as she was also the manager of the front end.

So as Kelly was teaching the woman how to use our clock-in system (at this point we had one that scanned our hands and fingerprints to recognize who was clocking in), she mentioned to the woman that she was thirty minutes late to her shift.

The woman casually said she was not late, and that she was actually perfectly on time. Red Flag Count: 1.

Kelly then pointed to the screen on the hand scanner, and said, “Look, the clock here says 10:35. You showed up here five minutes ago and all I did was give you your employee ID.” The woman replied, “Well your clocks must be calibrated wrong then. You should really get that fixed.” Red Flag Count: 2.

And things just kept getting worse from there.

So we worked on getting her to a register to train her on the POS system, as she was only supposed to be there until 2pm.

At 11:30 she noticed the younger kids who were there before her were going on lunch break. She decided that this was a good time to ask when she can take her lunch break, and asked Kelly.

Kelly replied, “Well, actually because you’re only meant for a four hour shift, company policy dictates you don’t get a break. You get 15 minutes with no punch out for 5 hours, 15 with punch out for 6 hours, and half an hour with punch out for 7 and up.”

The woman said, “Really? There’s no way I can go out real quick?” She tried to give Kelly crocodile tears and puppy dog eyes. Red Flag count: 3. Kelly replied, “I’m sorry, maybe later though – you’ve only been here for an hour.”

But that wasn’t the end of that.

Fast forward fifteen minutes to 11:45am, where she once again piped up to Kelly, “Kelly, do you think you can hold the front end down here? I need to use the restroom.”

Kelly agreed, and the woman left to the bathrooms, which are located in the employee break room. A few minutes later, kids in the break room were reporting a terrible smell.

After fifteen minutes, the woman emerged from the women’s room, with the distinct smell of cigarette smoke. Our store is a strictly no smoking area, if you want to smoke you have to do it outside. Red Flag count: INFINITY.

Kelly went into the ladies room to investigate the smell (which had now started bleeding through to the meat department as seafood is right next to the break room) and the woman had lit a cigarette, enjoyed her smoke, put it out on the toilet seat, melting the plastic, and didn’t flush it away.

Yikes! Read on to find out what happened next.

Reasonably angry, Kelly brought the woman to the back room and asked her what that was all about. She explained she thought that Kelly was being unreasonable to her, and since she couldn’t take her smoke break with lunch, she decided that it would be best to take it in the bathroom.

When asked why she had to melt the toilet seat, her only response was “Where else am I supposed to put it? You guys don’t do the whole smoking indoors thing.”

Knowing that she was aware of the smoking policy when she voilated it was enough to force Kelly’s hand into firing her. She consulted with the store manager and he agreed. When they gave her the news, her reaction was what we had more or less expected of her now.

Kelly started, “I’m sorry but you’re fired. This is ridiculous, you’ve only been here an hour and a half-” to which the woman interrupted, “What?! No! And I’ve been here two hours! I got here at 10!” Kelly corrected her, “You showed up at 10:30. You vandalized store property-” and the woman insisted, “Because you’re being so unfair to me! I should have a break, I’ve been here long enough to get one!”

Clearly, firmer action was needed.

Fed up with her behavior, Kelly told her to get out, at which point the woman asked her for her paycheck. Kelly confirmed that she’d be able to get her paycheck a week on Tuesday, when her time working in the store had actually been processed.

The woman was not happy with that, insisting, “No! I demand my money now! I worked hard for it! You owe me exactly $16.71!” Kelly explained again when she’d be able to pick up her check, to which the woman screamed, “No! **** you! Where is Store Manager?! I want my $16.71!”

The store manager, hearing the commotion, left his office. He didn’t need to ask what was going on, the small store made it very easy to know what was going on.

He clarified that she would not be getting any money until a week on Tuesday, to which the woman insisted “That’s against the law! You have to pay me!” The store manager stayed firm, telling her “Just leave already – you’re lucky we don’t charge you for the property you destroyed.”

But then, the story took an unexpected twist.

Then, the woman demanded, “Well then where’s my form?!” The store manager was confused and asked her to clarify. Which she did: “So I can get me my unemployment!”

Finally onto her, the store manager said, “Get out. You’re not getting any forms, you’re being charged for the property you’ve damaged, so you’re not getting any paycheck. Leave. Now.”

She left to her car, peeled out all over the parking lot, (this could be seen because the entire storefront is glass) and she drove in front of the store flipping the bird at everyone before she left. Looking at the clock, she didn’t even last in retail past 12:30.

We never saw her again.

It’s a shame that the woman’s apparent enthusiasm for the store turning her life around turned out to be a ploy for something else.

But at least all the staff who witnessed her two-hours of working in retail had a story to tell.

How can someone cause such chaos in the space of two hours?

Let’s see what the Reddit community made of this.

This person was flabbergasted by the story.

While others thought her efficiency in getting fired was impressive.

While this Redditor had seen similar failed recruits.

It sounds like this store were lucky to get rid of the woman so efficiently.

If she had stayed longer, she’d have surely been a nightmare to work with, and to manage.

At least she showed her true colors quickly.

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.