I do all of our new hire orientations at a large manufacturing plant. I go over safety policies, benefits, whatever. A lot of our employees come through temporary hiring agencies, and are converted over to full-time employees if they perform well enough.
I usually generically ask people's names and work histories just to break the ice a little bit, and one of the guys mentioned he had been in prison for 21 years. I didn't think much of it beyond 'couldn't have done anything nice to be in prison for 21 years,' but just sorta moved on from it. I usually distribute nametags for the new folks, and this guy mentioned how the last name on his nametag didn't match his actual last name. “Weird, this is definitely the name the temp agency sent me,” was the only thought I really had.
After all was said and done after a few hours of orientation, the guy decided he didn't want to work the evening shift. Fair enough, it's not for everyone. He told me that how “after 21 years in a box he promised himself he'd live his life in the summer months” – rock on, dude, I get it.
I let everyone know that he had declined the job offer and went about my day. Curiosity got the better of me this morning and I wondered what put him away for 21 years – turns out, he had confessed to the murder of four fucking women, and the article very explicitly called him a serial killer. After a bit of a “holy shit holy shit holy shit” head rush moment, I just sent the article over to HR. The manager wasn't in the office yet, but her second-in-command came over and expressed her “holy shit holy shit holy shit” alongside me.
The manager got into the office and I went in to go talk to her. We were actively working on a project to coordinate active shooter training, and letting a serial killer into our employee force seemed like it might be… I dunno, of interest? As soon as I walked in, she just said “this is about yesterday's background isn't it? He passed his background check, it doesn't matter. Someone out there could have killed someone 30 years ago and we wouldn't know,” and basically told me to get out of her office.
Am I the asshole for feeling ridiculously uncomfortable after that? Like, do we really not vet our people enough to weed out fucking serial killers? I get that people deserve second chances, but like… four women, dude. Would you, as HR, really have been comfortable with that guy walking out of his evening shift into a dark parking lot in the middle of the night with the other women who work here?? Plus, it's not like this was decades ago – I looked at our state's inmate data and the dude got out last March and is still pending charges on his record that I freely looked up on the state's website! The fuck!
Maybe I am just overreacting or didn't like my concerns being brushed aside so easily. Whatever. HR sucks ass. Parasitic kowtowing mouthbreathing fucks.