Wherever there's people, there are rules being enforced to keep the peace or to keep people safe, especially in the workplace. Sometimes though, some of these rules are quite absurd and can actually lead to more problems, while others were previously unspoken that now have to be addressed due to someone's incompetence. Here, people share the dumbest rules they have seen enforced at their workplace. Content has been edited for clarity.
Dedication Gets Overshadowed
“A long time ago at my old job, we had a night with some very heavy snow and some folks (myself included) made it to work anyway. The roads hadn’t been plowed so I walked there, and when I arrived, the big boss was impressed with the dedication of everyone. He ended up sending everyone home and even had the company cover getting folks back home, and said he would give us $50 on our paychecks for showing up.
The next day the folks that stayed home caught wind of what happened and they felt that they should get the $50 and that they would have came to work if they would have known that.
So then they rescinded on the extra cash for those folks and never offered it again. I hate to say it, but these were the same people who complained all the time about how little money they earned but when they got a raise they just took a nosedive deeper into debt by doing something else completely stupid with their lives. One lady drove around in a Mercedes while Habitat for Humanity was building her a house.
It doesn’t matter how much money some people make – they will always be poor.”
An Underground Lotion Operation
“Here at work there is this new employee. This person is super sensitive to smells. We can no longer wear lotions, perfume or cologne/after shave. That part is understandable as most companies have that policy.
But now we have had to change the hand soap and hand sanitizer as she says even those mild fragrances cause her to have an allergic reaction similar to an asthma attack. The new soaps and hand sanitizers are causing everyone’s hand to dry out, but we can’t have any lotion at our desks or this person will tell on us, even the unscented ones.
Thus we have resorted to smuggling in unscented lotion and putting it on while in the bathroom stalls. Shockingly this person can withstand the smell of bathroom deodorizers, so that’s how we hide any smell of the lotion, or what our motivation for the bathroom visit while in the bathroom stall if this person is present. (As if using lotion in a bathroom stall couldn’t get any weirder.)
I feel like we should be play the theme song from The A Team every time we are successful, but this person is probably allergic to the smell of a plan coming together.
I know it’s a real medical condition. But the way she acts is the problem. For example: She doesn’t like this one younger (and prettier) woman she works with, so she will make claims that this person is wearing perfume which is now against the rules. That young woman has to go to HR and be talked to, and most times it’s confirmed that she doesn’t have perfume on. However, if one of the handsome men walks up to our allergic co-work with nice smelling after shave or cologne on, she says nothing. To the rest of us, it’s about control. To us she feels like she has power of the office. I feel sad for her as she hasn’t made any work friends and no one trusts her.”
It’s Just A Pen
“I once needed a pen. Figured this was a reasonable ask. Went to the supply closet on my floor, which was locked. Asked the floor’s admin, she told me to go to the main supply room in the basement. Went to the basement and explained my situation of needing a pen. They told me all requests for supplies must be approved by my department head. Problem is, being new, I’d never met my department head. She also worked in San Francisco (I worked in Milwaukee), so I needed to send an email both introducing myself, and asking her if I had permission to get a pen from the supply closet.”
Calling In Sick
“We had unlimited sick time. Normal people didn’t abuse it, but it was great to know it was there if you need it and the whole building wasn’t infected by people who were too sick to actually be there. One person called out sick every Friday for the entire summer. That January they changed all of our time off (vacation, personal days, sick) to one bundle of PTO which translated to only 4 sick days. God forbid you got the flu or pneumonia and had to be out for a week. You had to eat into your vacation days or come in sick. I swear way more people took sick time because too many contagious people were coming in instead of staying home.”
On Call Shifts
“I work in retail and we have ‘on call’ shifts.
Your name will be listed on the schedule for a certain time as a call-in, so you have to call one hour before your shift to figure out if they need you to work for the day. For example, you would be listed as ‘on call for 2pm’ and wouldn’t know until 1pm if you were working that evening. If you don’t call in, it’s considered ‘not showing up for a shift,’ but there’s no extra pay for the shift whether they need you or not.
So for three days of the week, I don’t know if I have to work or not. Can’t make any solid plans to do anything except call my work and ask if they need me. I can’t imagine having children or elderly that need taking care of because it would be such a hassle to arrange care for them just an hour before having to work.”
It Takes One Person To Ruin It For Everyone
“I’m a cashier at a grocery store. One time we had an inspection agent from corporate come in disguised as a customer to monitor employee behavior. It’s pretty common practice. Of course, the agent happened to come in the day this one female employee, who treated the job like social hour since day 1, was quite literally stuffing her face with Mallomars in front of customers. I even saw the agent’s report and it said, ‘She had so much food in her mouth I couldn’t even understand her.’
A few weeks later, no more food or water allowed on the registers, only in the manager’s office. If you need a drink, wait for a lull in customers and briefly go to the office. Employee mentioned earlier is still employed.
Fast forward a year. New computers and other tech set up in the manager’s office. No more food or drink allowed in the office because it’s a hazard. Hungry? Thirsty? Either wait until you go home or have a break.
Of course the employee at fault for all this quit a while back so she doesn’t even get to see how bad she messed things up.”
“She Didn’t Get It”
“Our workplace started a friendly post-it war with the office across the street that went on for about half a day. Honestly, all of the pictures were safe… just Metroid Samus, Mario, emojis, super basic stuff. The pieces were getting pretty good, too, and it was clear both offices were having a blast thinking of the next, fun design.
Our CEO walked by around 4pm that day, saw the post-it art, and asked what it was. We exclaimed, ‘Oh, just a post-it war with that office! Would you like to join us in the next mural?’ She said she didn’t get it. She didn’t get the concept of the post-it war. So, we spent a few minutes trying to explain what it was about, you make art out of post-it notes, and whoever has the best mural wins. Pretty simple stuff. She kind of laughed it off, but it was clear to all of us that she still didn’t quite understand why someone would do it. What a silly millennial thing, she must have thought.
The next morning, an office memo was on every desk saying that no one was allowed to put post-its on windows. We had to take all of our art down. When we asked the office manager what we did wrong, she explained that the CEO quite literally still didn’t understand it and banned post-its for that reason.
Also, this happened just days before Christmas last year. The holiday party was that evening, the next day (Friday) nearly everyone was out to start their vacations… it was very clear that we were not interrupting a busy work day by spending lunch making a few murals. We are not some band of idiots that can’t understand the meaning of a productive work day. Our CEO was just a straight up grinch.”
You Can’t Sit With Us
“I’m sure other idiots have done a version of this, but this is one of the only cases where I can point out the guy who definitely ruined it for everyone. One of my best friends works on crews for shows that take place at arenas pretty much anywhere within about a 500 mile radius. One that they work fairly commonly is WWE. WWE does a lot of stuff with Make A Wish, the charity that grants wishes for children with severe or terminal illnesses. He has a coworker who is a complete idiot.
There was a time when if you were backstage crew, it was fairly informal; you ate with the performers in catering, it was fine to talk to them, whatever, so long as you didn’t do anything obviously stupid or get in the way. Hither came this idiot.
On one very fateful occasion, a local Make A Wish kid and his family had been granted backstage access, front row tickets, you name it, and their personal tour guide for the whole thing was WWE Legend, Mick Foley. The family and the kid were all backstage and taking pictures with Foley and other WWE superstars. This idiot interrupted them and asked Mick Foley if he could get a pic. Foley obliged him, probably just to get him outta the way, and carried on with the kid and his family.
The next day in a town not too far from the first, they were handed a very long and fairly draconian list of what not to do, including: ‘Never speak directly to a WWE performer or personnel unless spoken to, do not ask for an autograph, do not ask for a picture,’ and the catering they formerly enjoyed? That was now out as well. They all knew instantly who was the reason for this and called him out on it. His response: ‘What?! That little kid was getting pictures with him! Why couldn’t I?!’
This happened well over a decade ago, that sheet is still handed out to pretty much any and all local backstage crew and still no catering. So if anyone out there has been handed that sheet, you can thank my buddy’s idiotic coworker for it.”
Greed Ruins Everything
“The Sears Heroes at Home Program. Throughout the year, Sears would gather donated money and distribute it around Thanksgiving time to military families. It was a really sweet idea and you could tell Sears was doing it from their cooperate heart, but as we moved into the era of Facebook, things got a little nasty.
My husband and I signed up in 2008 when our first baby was born and we had recently moved from Alaska to South Carolina. We got about $200 and it was a great help. Well, as more people started to hear about the program, more wanted to get themselves a part of it. The amount given was lower when we signed up again in 2012 and we got $60. Still welcome. We bought our new baby a high chair. People were ticked though and let the Sears Facebook page have it. They weren’t getting enough, they posted. Their kids were going to have terrible Christmases because Sears won’t give them more money etc.
Sears ended the program I want to say in 2015 and I’m pretty sure they cited greed as the reason why. It was something that was great in the beginning but was quickly ruined by the scum of humanity.”
This Seems Less Efficient
“I work in the mailroom of a large tech company. I pick up mail from the post office and distribute FedEx and UPS packages between the buildings on campus. When there’s good weather, I use a golf cart and when there’s bad weather, I use a box truck. I also use that truck to go to the Post Office.
We recently got new managers and they decided that they didn’t like the box truck being parked at the receiving dock of the building where my office is. So they had me park it between 2 buildings…in the dirt. It sucked but then we had rain and the dirt turned to mud and the truck almost got stuck in there twice. But what ticked them off was all the mud the truck tracked all over campus.
Now I have to park the truck behind Building 1. Since I work in Building 3, that means I have to walk all the way across campus if I need the truck.”
Unamused At The Amusement Park
“I worked at an amusement park. We were typically allowed to leave at 10 pm. However, as a caricature stand that held onto drawings for people so they didn’t have to carry them through the park, we needed to stay for the customers to come pick them up, which could extend past 10. One of the workers left 5 minutes early and didn’t wait for one of the customers to come get their drawing. From that point on, EVERYONE in the park needed to be dismissed by park security when there were no more customers in an area. How someone managed to have that much pull on a company to force an entire park to need to be dismissed by park security before they could clock out is beyond me, but it somehow happened.”
What A Tool
“The company I worked for had a specific type of needle-nosed pliers specifically made for the job, been in use for decades by thousands of engineers without incident.
ONE complete idiot managed to poke himself in the eye with them whilst using them in a ridiculous and obviously stupid way, that’s it.. the needle-nosed pliers are banned.
Unsurprisingly, thousands of engineers were suddenly taking much longer per job and ordering sets of the 3 different tools that replace the one special one got management’s attention. While management still was concerned about safety, they were still on the fence about lifting the ban to make up for their overreaction. Last I heard the ban was lifted but it was in place for way too long.
Also one guy brained himself (fatally) falling off a ladder (wrong type of ladder, used unsafely, also massively bad luck in landing on a sharp thing) so all ladders everywhere were chained up and a lot of perfectly good ones were cut up & binned because they were dangerous to the stupid.”
Under Surveillance
“My last job wouldn’t let anyone leave the building. Not on your 15 minute paid breaks (ok understandable because you’re being paid) and not on your 1 hour un-paid break. Once I climbed the corporate ladder a little higher, I found out the many, many cameras we had throughout the building (4-5 in common workspaces and a minimum of one in every meeting room/office, and 2-3 in our very small break room) recorded not only video but sound. The ownership team- a Christian family made up of a brother and sister and their father – would review the tapes and used recorded audio for reasoning of termination.
Example: An employee was terminated because they had her on video during her lunch break, talking to a coworker about how she was worried the company wasn’t doing well financially, due to many lay offs and downsizing from a brand new shipping facility to one 1/4 of the size. Our HR manager stated she was ‘inciting fear in other employees with the sole reason of creating chaos within the company.’
Now with my state (as most others) is an at-will state, so legally they could have fired her because she looked at someone funny, however it didn’t sit right with me ethically so I left soon after.”
Protecting Precious Cargo
“I worked the night shift for security at a large factory in rural Ohio.
So this shift was literally the graveyard shift: from midnight to 8am, I sat and guarded the truck lot for the factory’s receiving department. I might see 2-4 trucks a night, and most of them would be lost, looking for the receiving lot on the OTHER side of the factory grounds. So it was basically eight hours of nothing at all.
The company stated, of course, that sleep was unacceptable. So the other guards and I would bring everything out with us to keep us awake for the shift: books, DVD players, laptops. Once I relieved a guy who had set up his whole gaming rig and was deep into a 4 hour session of WoW.
However, that was only true of the truck lot. The other shift was at the security office at the front gate, with our Head Officer. Our Head Officer was a serious prick.
When in the security office with him, you were not allowed to bring books, tablets, or other electronic devices. He allowed personal phones, but only up until between 4 and 5 am. Then you had to be alert. You had to do multiple rounds of the factory throughout the night, watching for intruders, lazy employees, safety violations, all of that, and then file a report of all the nothing you saw.
You know what kind of factory this was? A soup factory. But if you asked my officer, it might as well have been a bomb factory from how seriously he took the job.
That was both the best and worst job I ever had, depending entirely on which shift I got.”
A Complete Waste Of Efficiency
“I worked in a shop once where we’d move an entire product’s formed pieces by a cart with wheels on it from the press brakes to the welders. These carts would go down the ‘assembly line’ as flats, get formed, then go to the welders area behind the brakes for ‘prep,’ which was welding all the small stuff like brackets onto the panels, where it would then go to the fixture to be fully welded. We would literally send every cart as it was finished.
One day the brakes were really hitting it hard as a mother and the welders were being kind of lazy, so the carts piled up until the brakes were backed up, which kind of ticked off the pressmen, who then started slamming carts into the backed up carts as they finished. Domino effect ensues, and the rumbling carts slam into a welder’s table and spills his coffee.
Anyone with common sense right now is going, ‘oh, so no more coffee on the floor.’ Nope. They made a rule of no more than three carts between areas at one time. So you’d have a bunch of people bored off their butts at press brakes and welders taking their sweet time. It was the dumbest dang thing I had ever seen in my life and I hung out with people who did some pretty messed up things while growing up.”
A Matter Of Life And Death
“I’m an anesthesiologist. Among other things, we do anesthesia for cesarian sections. Sometimes they’re very, very urgent. Either you get the child out within minutes or the child and/or mother dies. When you get that call, you just run into the OR without changing, washing or anything. You’ll be standing in the OR in jeans and a t-shirt if that’s what you were wearing at the time. The number one concern is getting that child out as quickly as humanly possible.
There is one medication (thiopental) that is necessarily needed for the anesthesia. The whole thing can’t start without thiopental, but it has to be dissolved first which takes quite a while. So it used to be common practice at my hospital to dissolve it at the beginning of the day and store it in the fridge for emergency c-sections. At the end of the day, it would be thrown away if it hadn’t been used.
Then some hygiene commission came along and decided that this was not ideal from a hygienic standpoint, even though there had never been a single documented case of infection from pre-dissolved thiopental at our hospital. Dozens of mothers and children have died because the child couldn’t be delivered in time.
And now, everyone is standing there and waiting for the nurse to dissolve the thiopental while the child and/or mother are in the process of dying.”