You’d think so, right?

Well, it took several hours for anyone at a Chicago police station to notice that an officer who reported for duty — and went on patrol with another officer for five hours — was a fake.

And to boot, the impostor was just 14-years-old.

The boy didn’t have a gun, never issued any tickets and didn’t drive the squad car, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Police figured out the teen wasn’t a real cop because his uniform lacked a star that is part of a regulation uniform.

The department is investigating how the ruse went on for several hours. They’re describing the situation as a serious security breach.

The unidentified boy has been charged as a juvenile with impersonating an officer.

Police say the boy looks older than 14 and once took part in a Chicago program for youth interested in policing. They suspect that may have helped him blend in with other officers.

According to a deputy superintendent, the boy didn’t have “ill intent” — he just really wanted to be a police officer.

It’s time to review the mistakes, catastrophes, near misses and just plain strange stuff in the HR world in 2008.

We determined the list based on your votes — by which posts received the most attention from readers

10. You make the call: Whistleblower or backstabber? Marcy Curlee thought two co-workers were wasting too much time, so she documented their work behavior minute by minute. She was fired. The Idaho Supreme Court said there are genuine questions of whether Curlee was fired for conduct protected under the whistleblower law.

9. Don’t tell ‘Grandma’ she’s being fired. Jolyn McDonald was called Grandma by her manager at a Best Buy. The same manager demoted her because of poor performance. She filed an Age Discrimination in Employment Act lawsuit, and Best Buy asked that the case be thrown out. The court wouldn’t throw out the case, and the next step is a jury trial unless the two sides come to an agreement beforehand.

8. Fired for smoking? Court says that’s OK.The law firm where Karen Kridel worked as a paralegal banned smoking breaks for hourly employees but allowed them for salaried workers such as lawyers. Kridel continued to take two 5-minute smoking breaks per day, and she was fired for misconduct. She was denied unemployment benefits and sued to get them. The court decided she should not get unemployment.

7. Can you top these workers’ excuses for being late? No top-10 list would be complete without … a top-10 list on it. CareerBuilder.com provided the original excuses. Then, HR Blunders readers added more that they’ve heard from employees, including:

• We received a fax from an employee’s wife with this message, “Xxxxx has been real sick and can’t come in until Monday the 28th.” We were happy to see that he had such a precise timetable for when he would recover. (from J. Trent)
• We had an employee call in to say he would not be coming to work as his girlfriend might be pregnant. (from L. Greene)
• My husband had a boss at one time who called in and said he would not be in because his dog was constipated. (from R. Foley)
• I had an employee call me and say she was stuck. I asked her where she was stuck, and that I would go and get her. She said that she was stuck in life. I told her to get herself unstuck and get to work. (from Mary Sharkey)
• An employee called to say she was going to be late because she had to pick up her sister’s boyfriend who was getting out of jail that morning. No one else could go get him because his family was mad at him and her sister had to go to work. I explained that, contrary to popular belief, she had to go to work, too. (from Shirley Busbice)
• Many years ago, an employee was chronically late and always had colorful excuses. My favorite was his cow had been struck by lightning and he had to clean up the yard. He was inevitably terminated. (from Mitzi G.)
• A young lady called in to say that she took too hot of a bath and was dizzy and could not come to work until she laid down to cool off. (from Jamie)
• After a worker got in late, he explained that he’d passed out the night before and the dog drank his beer. The dog normally woke him up every morning, but that morning the dog was too hung over and didn’t get the employee up on time. (from Karen)
• Our salesman came in late to work stating his wife had left him, took all the furniture and turned off his electricity. After taking a cold shower, he accidentally locked himself out of his house and had to break in to get his car keys. This triggered his house alarm, and he had to explain when the police showed up brandishing guns. After this was over, he backed out of his driveway and ran over and killed his dog. We sent him back home, and I suggested he write and country song. (from Jackie)
• A young male employee, a newlywed, was chronically late coming back from lunch, because he would go home to “celebrate” his marriage. I counseled him regarding tardiness. One day he was about 10 minutes late returning from lunch from one of these celebratory trips home. He said he stopped to brush his teeth before he came back, dropped a tube of toothpaste and accidentally stepped on it. He explained that getting the paste back in the tube wasn’t so hard, but keeping the little lines straight was really tough. I let him return to work (that time) without a write-up. (from T. Linneweber)

6. Big court award: Tale of the bogus e-mail. Ronald Luri, a manager for Republic Services, Inc., in Ohio, was told to fire three employees, all of whom were in their early 60s or late 50s. Luri refused, saying the company could face a lawsuit for age discrimination. Republic fired him for alleged failure to follow the directives of his superiors. Luri sued. Testimony in the trial pointed to evidence tampering to try to create a record of poor job performance for Luri. A jury recently awarded him $46.6 million.

5. Hung-over employees and the Web don’t mix. This story turned out to be a hoax. Supposedly, Australian Kyle Doyle called out sick one day to work. The story then suggested that Doyle posted on his Facebook page that he was “still trashed, sickie woo,” and that his employer was not too happy when someone there found his online posting. His employer, AAPT, issued a statement claiming the story is bogus. But Facebook postings about stuff at work can still be dangerous. Just ask the young woman who posted pictures of herself and two co-workers frolicking in a sink at a California KFC.

4. You’ve got mail … and you’re fired. Media agency Carat was facing layoffs. Its HR director prepared an e-mail with a list of employees about to lose their jobs and included “message” points for managers on how people should be told they’d be out of work. The entire agency received the e-mail.

3. Liar, liar, but employee’s not fired. An employee admitted she forged a document. After an investigation by HR, the final decision was not to fire her. The reason: There were no specific rules prohibiting forgery, and the employee was afraid of retaliation by a co-worker. That’s bad enough, but this happened at the Connecticut State Ethics Commission.

2. Woman’s uniform was revealing, but her application wasn’t. Heather Kearney of Des Moines, IA, says she was fired from her job as a criminal intelligence analyst with the state Department of Public Safety for not revealing on her job application that she’d worked at a Hooters restaurant. Her employer said it was investigating her for falsification of her job application. This case will come down to a court decision on whether omitting her work at Hooters amounted to falsification.

1. Worker attacked by candy machine sues for comp. Does a company pay workers’ comp if an employee, returning from an unpaid break, injures his foot while rocking a vending machine to shake loose a stuck candy bar? While a hearing board initially awarded the employee comp, an appeals court reversed that decision.

And from everyone at HR Blunders and PBP Media, Happy New Year. We hope that 2009 is free of HR Blunders at your workplace.

Miami-Dade police have arrested James Harris and charged him with stealing at least three county buses and driving them on their routes.

Harris picked up and dropped off passengers on the routes on at least three occasions, according to police. They say he didn’t raise any suspicions because he dressed in a bus driver’s uniform.

Police say at the end of each day, Harris returned the bus he was driving.

Authorities are investigating whether Harris had help from transit employees when he stole the buses.