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Every aspect of our participation in society is governed by rules, and good for every one of us. Unless you call yourself an anarchist, you most probably agree that they are the basis of law, order, or security, and that we all benefit from them, whether we like them or not.

But some rules, whether rushed or unthoughtful, may cause more harm than good. And if you want proof, let’s take a look at this thread from the Ask Reddit subreddit. “What's a rule that was implemented somewhere, that massively backfired?” asked someone, sparking a heated thread with 52k upvotes and 21k comments.

From a city putting up decibel meters to deter loud vehicles and realizing reckless drivers were competing for the highest decibel count to implementing a strict no-alcohol policy and giving your staff an emergency way out if there’s a staff shortage, some rules have surely brought some regrets to whoever implemented them.

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#1

30 Times Someone Implemented A Rule That Massively Backfired My company has a strict no-alcohol policy. You can't begin work within 10 hours of having had a drink.

So whenever there's a staff shortage and they need me to come in right away, guess who just cracked open a cold one?

InsanityWolfie , Karolina Grabowska Report

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#2

30 Times Someone Implemented A Rule That Massively Backfired One summer in Sweden, bus drivers in some counties started wearing shorts due to the heatwave. After being denied to continue doing so by management, they started wearing skirts instead. Dress code policy had banned shorts, but not skirts.

SowerPlave , bbc Report

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Titas Burinskas
Titas Burinskas
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Verified 2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

You can also do this in any formal environment which forbids you to wear shorts.

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#3

30 Times Someone Implemented A Rule That Massively Backfired In French Indochina, there was a major problem with rodents eating supplies and bringing disease. Given the plentiful supply of cheap unemployed workers, the colonial authorities thought they could be used to kill the rats and bring their numbers down. The French had a somewhat racially prejudiced view of the work ethic of the locals, so decided to pay them per rat killed rather than per hour worked. Each was compensated for every dead rat they handed over.

A year or so later, the colonial authorities discovered the peasants had set up rat-breeding farms in the jungle.

DemocraticRepublic , DarkCalamari RedRavens Report

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troufaki13
troufaki13
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Cats. The answer to many problems. Also the root of many others!

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Policies and punishment can have a direct effect on people’s urge to break them, researchers found. Rice Business professor Marlon Mooijman and colleagues Wilco W. van Dijk and Eric van Dijk of Leiden University along with Naomi Ellemers of Utrecht University studied 883 people to understand the links between deterrence, threats and rule following.

So they conducted a series of games in which participants reported or hid taxable income depending on whether they were threatened with fines, fined with an explanation, or fined with no explanation.
#4

30 Times Someone Implemented A Rule That Massively Backfired My work has an infraction system. If you're a minute late that's half a point, if you're up to four hours late that's half a point. So if you're going to be a minute late you might as well be four hours late because it's the same penalty.

Kordwar , Ono Kosuki Report

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#5

30 Times Someone Implemented A Rule That Massively Backfired The previous school I worked at decided that all shirts needed to have the school name or emblem (which was a fancy letter 'E') on them to be dress code appropriate. That's all the handbook said. No clarification on how the name or emblem was designed or the color or if it had to be permanently affixed to the clothing. The students hated the policy and, being in high school, looked for any loophole possible. They found one due to the lack of clarity of the handbook policy. The kids would make paper 'E's and pin them to their shirts. Thus, they could wear whatever they wanted and by pinning the 'E' to the shirt, were still dress code compliant. I thought it was pretty genius. The administration did not.

jamer0658 , kyo azuma Report

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Beth S
Beth S
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

How dare the kids use their brains and be nonconformable. I feel that cleverness like this should be celebrated.

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#6

30 Times Someone Implemented A Rule That Massively Backfired I used to wait tables in college. It was a very popular hangout for business professionals, movers, shakers, etc. The restaurant/bar was always very busy and the "in" place to be. After work, the staff would frequently drink in the bar. We paid full price for drinks and any food we ate. We shared tables, danced, and socialized with the patrons and everyone was happy.

Except for the owners.

The owners decided we were cluttering up the place and "reserved" a special table for us. Upstairs behind the dirty laundry pickup station. So we all decided we really didn't need to spend our money there if we weren't wanted so we moved to another bar for our after-hours fun. And we took all those movers and shakers with us.

The restaurant went out of business about six months later.

glynndah , Marvin Meyer Report

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As you may have suspected, with adults as with children, the researchers found, threats and punishments often backfire. This can be explained by the fact that they signal distrust by the authorities of the very people they're supposed to control. Therefore, the immediate response to such distrust is an urge to rebel.

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The researchers concluded that the more perceived distrust people feel, the less likely they are to follow the rules. Moreover, the researchers discovered, justifications and threats of punishment leave a bad taste, overall. Instead, they suggested that people respond way better to rules that have zero justification.
#7

30 Times Someone Implemented A Rule That Massively Backfired I worked at Macy’s one Christmas and found out the reason why you can never find anyone at the registers is that they don’t allow employees to stand at the register because it’s “intimidating.” I can’t tell you how many times I gave up trying to purchase something there because I couldn’t find anyone to ring me up.

sweetjaaane , Mike Mozart Report

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#8

30 Times Someone Implemented A Rule That Massively Backfired The middle school wanted to create a "trash-free environment" so they removed the trash cans from the parking lots, halls, and cafeteria. Then just told the kids to "toss your trash when you get home or in a classroom"

The amount of litter skyrocketed overnight, after a week or so they brought back the cans.

nagol93 , Jon Tyson Report

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#9

30 Times Someone Implemented A Rule That Massively Backfired Zero Tolerance Policy for no violence at school. Punishing the victims for getting bullied... yea, THAT was a smart idea...

ShneekeyTheLost , Ivan Aleksic Report

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Mer☕️🧭☕️
Mer☕️🧭☕️
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Schools love punishing the victim especially if they DARE to stand up to the bully. It's like schools actually believe that victims should just take it. Schools are weird.

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#10

30 Times Someone Implemented A Rule That Massively Backfired My city has issues with loud bikes/vehicles. So as a deterrent, the city put up decibel meters that displayed how loud your engine is(similar to those signs that read your speed and display it to you) but instead of deterring anyone, people would pull up to these signs and rev the heck out of their engines to see who could get the highest decibel count. The city took the counters down within a week.

RadixPerpetualis , wikipedia Report

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#11

30 Times Someone Implemented A Rule That Massively Backfired Washington State made it mandatory for schools to drop their room temperatures to save on electricity. The result: teachers brought their own heaters into their offices and the use of electricity increased.

TylerJWhit , Paul Minami Report

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Carol Emory
Carol Emory
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I remember that. How fun was it for kids to try to learn while having bulky coats on trying to squeeze their butts into the student desks. Meanwhile, I can guarantee that rule did not apply to the admin....

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#12

30 Times Someone Implemented A Rule That Massively Backfired When a daycare started charging a small fine for parents who picked up their children late. Instead of resulting in more on-time arrivals, the new policy actually caused more late pick-ups. This is because the parents were originally worried that a late pick-up would be a significant burden on the daycare employees, but because the fine was so small (only a few dollars), they decided that it must not be a big inconvenience for the daycare.

idoitforthelolz3 , BBC Creative Report

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Honu
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2 years ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Yes. They no longer have to feel guilty for a transgression. They merely pay a convenience fee. I'm assuming this is the same story I read. IIRC the daycare was in Israel. The workers actually were rather put out at being kept late and did find the behavior disrespectful of their time. They assumed the fee would discourage the behavior. It turns out the late parents no longer felt the social pressure which made them feel bad for inconveniencing people. There was a price attached, so it became a matter of payment, not politeness.

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#13

30 Times Someone Implemented A Rule That Massively Backfired One of the high-rise blocks I have to maintain has a sign saying "Anything left here will be removed due to it being a fire risk". People just dump the s**t there they don't want like fridges and sofas and by law, we have to take it

Saint_Phoenix , Jiroe (Matia Rengel) Report

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#14

30 Times Someone Implemented A Rule That Massively Backfired The one-child policy in China has led to a serious gender imbalance in the population.

Kree98 , wikipedia Report

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SamanthaStillNotBoredPanda.
SamanthaStillNotBoredPanda.
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

And a dwindling population, as nobody wants to have more than 2 children now . Most people are not having children in China , which is causing huge concern for the future

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#15

30 Times Someone Implemented A Rule That Massively Backfired During prohibition, the US Government decided to add poison to industrial alcohol as a deterrent to people drinking it since booze was illegal. Except they didn’t tell anyone that they were doing it... so the public had no idea there was poison in the alcohol. AT LEAST 10,000 people passed away.

JennGonz , wikipedia Report

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Beth S
Beth S
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2 years ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

People wonder why so many don't trust the US government... and just think this is ONE instance where they were actually caught hurting their citizens.

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#16

30 Times Someone Implemented A Rule That Massively Backfired Air pollution became a big problem in late-80's/early-90's Athens, mostly due to the number of old, heavily-polluting cars on the roads. So the Greek government made a law where only cars with odd-numbered final digits on their number plates (1, 3, 5, 7, and 9, etc.) could be driven on odd-numbered days (1st, 3rd, 5th, etc.)- and only evenly-numbered cars could drive on evenly-numbered days. Sounds great doesn't it, they'll halve the number of cars on their roads right - nope, they doubled it - everyone bought one old, highly-polluting car that had an odd-numbered plate and another with an even-numbered plate - nobody could park and the air was worse than before.

Chopper3 , Declan See Yan Shan Report

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#17

30 Times Someone Implemented A Rule That Massively Backfired A failing school district in Colorado last year decided to get rid of the recess so the students had more academic time which would hopefully increase test scores.

Except without recess, the kids had no outlet for their seemingly endless kid energy, and afternoons became a s**t show. Disruptive behavior increased, suspensions increased, and test scores remained incredibly low. It was a horrible idea.

Bubugacz , Kenny Eliason Report

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Laugh or not
Laugh or not
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

What kind of idiot think people, children at that, can work continuously without break and suffer no consequences?

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#18

30 Times Someone Implemented A Rule That Massively Backfired When Domino’s said all pizzas would be delivered in 30min. or less or your pizza was FREE.

All the delivery drivers kept getting in car accidents to get your pizza to you on time, so it wouldn’t come out of their paycheck. It was a short-lived venture.

motherofdogmemes , Anna Shvets Report

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Troux
Troux
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I would think a delivery driver could make a killing in tips by delivering everything at 31 minutes and winking at the customer. Servers still encourage tips like this all the time with free drinks.

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#19

30 Times Someone Implemented A Rule That Massively Backfired I worked somewhere with a clean desk policy on Friday afternoons. The common way around this was that everyone would just sweep all their paperwork into an envelope, stick it in the internal mail, and then it would arrive back on your desk on Monday morning.

mediocrity511 , EKATERINA BOLOVTSOVA Report

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#20

30 Times Someone Implemented A Rule That Massively Backfired December 3, 2018. No cellphones at work, company-wide policy. They have to be left in your vehicle. On December 3rd the boss asked me why I wasn't answering his calls. This rule lasted less than an hour.

ItPutsLotionOnItSkin , NordWood Themes Report

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DC
DC
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I would not comply. I have a very high chance of having to go home because of an emergency, and I will not risk missing THAT call. Fück everyone trying to pull such a stunt ... also - try that in europe, and you're n trouble. We have rights here that are enforcable AND taken seriously.

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#21

30 Times Someone Implemented A Rule That Massively Backfired At one point in history, the president of Paraguay tried to eliminate racism by making it illegal to marry someone within your own ethnic group.

Needless to say, this was quite racist.

reddit , Nathan Dumlao Report

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Tamra Stiffler
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2 years ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

How TF do people like this come into power?? I'm in the US, so I've had occasion to ponder this question over and over. Have yet to arrive at a satisfactory answer.

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#22

Infamous Barbados vs Grenada soccer match.

The organizers of the 1994 Caribbean tournament cup had a rather odd change to the rules for extra time. If a game was still drawn at full time, it would go to extra time but the first goal scored would win - this is perfectly normal (the "golden goal" rule). What was different is that they ruled that winning this way would count as having won by two goals for the purpose of tournament qualification, instead of just one.

Barbados went into a match against Grenada needing two goals to qualify for the main tournament. If they lost, or won by only one goal, Grenada would qualify instead. Under the regular rule, this would mean that if the match went to extra time, there would basically be no point Barbados playing because even if they scored, they would only win by one goal, and not qualify. But the two point rule would motivate them to play on. Sound good?

Well, you might be able to guess what happened.

The match looked like it was about to end with Barbados 2-1 Grenada - a win for Barbados, but not the two goals they needed. So Barbados deliberately scored an own goal in the last few minutes of the match, making the score 2-2, hoping to trigger extra time and a chance to score the magic 2-value goal.

The Grenada players quickly realized they could do the same - score an own goal to make the match 3-2 to Barbados, which would have Barbados winning by only one goal, so Grenada would qualify.

But the Barbados players realized that too.. and so they began to defend Grenada's goal.

So for the last 7 minutes of the match, Grenada were trying to score a goal in either net (since scoring a goal against Barbados would give them 3-2 and they would win the match, and scoring in their own goal would make it 3-2 to Barbados so they would lose the match but win the qualification), and Barbados were defending both.

Amazingly Barbados did actually manage to do so, successfully defending themselves while half of their team were defending Grenada's goal against Grenada, and then scored the golden goal in extra time and qualified!

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#23

At a preschool I worked at if we called out sick (even if we had sick time to use), we'd have to have a doctor's note when we came back or we'd be written up. Three write-ups equaled termination. So people would just come to work sick and then go homesick later in the morning since that wasn't considered calling out. Illnesses would spread like crazy and as far as I know, the policy still stands.

There was a teacher who fainted on her way out the door because she was so sick. Then we got in trouble with corporate for calling an ambulance and not some emergency service vehicle we had on contract. Probably the worst place I've ever worked.

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Jill Chambers
Jill Chambers
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I got in trouble when I was long term ill for coming in on the days I felt well enough. I was taking sick leave too often. I left. I've often wondered if I could have sued (UK law) but it was my mental health and I just didn't have the energy to look into it.

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#24

The utility I worked for hired a new Human Resources Manager. One of the first new rules she implemented to 'cut overtime' was if you worked over one day you came in late by the same amount the next day. Ex: work over 15 min on Monday you came in at 8:15 Tuesday. No un-pre-approved exceptions.

The new rule went into effect Monday.

Wednesday a tractor-trailer accident resulted in my whole department working over 6 hours.

When the entire department came in at 3 pm the next day (yes I know that's 7 hours but lunch hour is noon), EVERYONE was freaking out. The head honcho-o looked like he was ready to have a heart attack. The Human Resources Manager was in his office getting a new asshole.

The new rule was rescinded that day. Human Resources Manager didn't last a year.

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tw 72
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

During an economic downturn, like everyone else, we had a series of layoffs, which left only the hard workers; the marginal workers and slackers were let go. The remaining staff was the best of the best, worked really hard, worked extra hours, and were a great team. Then, we get a new HR director. Their big idea was to jam everyone into a curve, meaning 10% of the staff had to be placed into the lower section, indicating that they were substandard workers and they got 0% raise. Hmmm. Guess what that did to morale? Yep – no more long hours, no more extra tasks, missed deadlines, etc. If you are trying to convey "Employees, you mean nothing to us" – this is how you do it.

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#25

30 Times Someone Implemented A Rule That Massively Backfired Dry Counties were meant to reduce the use of alcohol in certain areas, but they result in people who want to get drunk driving further away from home to do so, increasing the odds and frequency of drunk driving accidents. Also, many attempts to rescind dry county laws end up getting countered by campaigns paid for by the bars and liquor stores that are set up on the edge of dry counties, typically under the guise of religious messages.

Bigred2989- , Artyom Kulakov Report

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#26

30 Times Someone Implemented A Rule That Massively Backfired "You have to eat whatever you touch" was a rule in my kindergarten which led to all the children touching all the food to call dibs on it.

reddit , Naomi Shi Report

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Mazer
Mazer
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

My friends sister is developmentally disabled easily in her 40s and always wanted to go shopping my friend said “no we can’t go shopping until the shampoo bottle is empty.” So her sister promptly emptied the entire full bottle of shampoo down the drain in the shower. I was laughing my ass off said to her my friend you know your sister is not a stupid she think she is. That was a genius move on her sisters part.

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#27

30 Times Someone Implemented A Rule That Massively Backfired A Buddy of mine told me about a Happy Hour promotion a bar ran close to his campus. Apparently the special was something stupid like 50-cent beers that lasted until the first person went to the bathroom.

As he tells it, the first few weeks went without incident, but once it got more popular, people were going to extreme lengths to not be "that guy" including wearing adult diapers. Once people tried to covertly pee in corners and trash cans, the bar cancelled the promotion.

tepman16 , Gonzalo Remy Report

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Kusotare
Kusotare
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Those are commonly known as "Bladder Busters". Not only do people go to great lengths to avoid using the bathrooms, once somebody does, EVERYBODY tries to get in there because they've all been holding it for so long.

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#28

30 Times Someone Implemented A Rule That Massively Backfired Alcohol bans at college football games have led to increased intoxication problems because fans are loading up before going to the stadium.

Budpalumbo , Brayden George Report

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#29

30 Times Someone Implemented A Rule That Massively Backfired Brazil in the 1980s (I think) had a massive debt problem, which they tried to solve by simply printing a bunch more money.

Any economist worth their salt would have told Brazil that would cause massive inflation, and that's exactly what happened. People found their life savings were barely enough to buy groceries for a week.

Hysterical_Realist , Daniel Dan Report

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Eduardo Kraszczuk
Eduardo Kraszczuk
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Yeah, I remember that, I was a child back then. Prices in supermarkets changed (always up) sometimes more than once a day. My parents went to the supermarket as soon as they were paid to buy groceries for the whole month.

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#30

30 Times Someone Implemented A Rule That Massively Backfired The military used to have a 2 beer lunch rule...they never specified the size of the beers.

BlueFalconPunch , engin akyurt Report

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#31

I used to work at a semiconductor lab, looking for defects in computer chips with an electron microscope.

The work is complicated, precise, and easy to f**k up. One wrong move, and the sample is toast (a LIP - Lost In Processing, as they say in the biz).

Management got really angry at LIPs and started clamping down really hard on technicians who did them. If you f**ked up a sample, you got written up.

The problem is that not all jobs are created equal. Some jobs are really easy, and other jobs are really hard and risky. So, the smart technicians started taking all of the easy jobs, and the idiots who didn't know any better started taking all of the hard jobs.

The LIP rate then went up, and it created a really contentious atmosphere in the lab of people screwing each other over to take the easiest jobs. Morale plummeted, and people started leaving to go to other groups that weren't s**t sandwiches. This drove lab output down even further.

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#32

30 Times Someone Implemented A Rule That Massively Backfired "No cards game at school"

When I was in elementary/middle school Magic The Gathering and the Pokemon card game were pretty popular. Almost all of the guys played and would get together after lunch to play before classes started again.

Here is where it's important for me to mention that this was a Christian school. It probably didn't take long for a teacher, administrator, or helicopter parent to wonder what all the fuss was about. Sure enough, one of them probably got a hold of an MTG card, saw art depicting a demon, and decided that this had to be the work of Satan to warp our young minds.

Almost over night, all trading card games were banned from school. Any cards would be confiscated until the end of the school year.

Well, you now have several dozen pre-pubescent boys with about 30 minutes of free time and nothing to do. So we did boy s**t. Ran around, pushed each other, went places we weren't supposed to, just overall got into mischief. All this time they had a free babysitter that was keeping us all engaged, quiet, and civil, all while reinforcing quick math skills and teaching multi-level problem-solving.

The next year we got a new administrator and card games were allowed at school again.

JohnyUtah_ , Ryan Quintal Report

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brukernavn340
brukernavn340
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2 years ago

This comment is hidden. Click here to view.

Although the excuse might have been bad, I can get why something like that could be banned, in order to prevent exclusion of children from poorer families. And I call BS on the "nothing to do" part. Just have some imagination, and you'll find stuff to do. It isn't that hard.

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#33

Worked for a marketing firm that often locked you out of the building if you weren’t back in your cubicle by the second your break was up. They revoked your break the next day as punishment. This is not legal here in New York State. They got into a lot of trouble.

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#34

My company eventually blocked all the well-known music streaming sites, Google Play Music, Amazon Music, Spotify, iHeart Music, etc. However, they didn't block YouTube. So instead of the network having a bunch of employees streaming about 15 MB per song of music only now the same employees stream the same songs but with video on YouTube which can be 10 times as much give or take.

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#35

A zero-tolerance "knife law" was implemented in Denmark a couple of years back to hinder knives from being carried in the city, and you would get fined even if it was in your car. This meant that carpenters, electricians, amateur fishermen, grocery store workers with box cutters, etc., were fined when leaving work/hobbies and having their equipment either on them or in their car. This law was fairly quickly changed.

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NsG
NsG
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

This is one of those cases where, although it's a largely negative approach, a touch of whataboutism may actually be a sensible thing to apply! (As in "what about X thing(s) that the policy maker has clearly not thought of or even remotely considered, not how it's actually used to promote some crazy backwards ideas, obviously!)

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#36

30 Times Someone Implemented A Rule That Massively Backfired The infamous housing project Pruitt-Igoe had a policy of supplying housing to single mothers. However, if they stopped being single they would lose their tenancy to their homes. This meant that fathers or step-fathers of children in these poor homes had to stay away. Pruitt Igoe is a legendary social disaster and it was demolished after twenty years.

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Carol Emory
Carol Emory
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Then there is the problem in the USA of women that have food, shelter and medical benefits for themselves and their kids. But if they marry, they are suddenly disqualified from a lot of those programs because it is assumed the new husband can provide for the kids even though him supporting the family would make them worse off than having benefits. The loophole...just don't marry. I had a neighbor that had 4 kids with the same man..never married and he lived at a friends house. The day the youngest turned 16, she applied for disability and had it approved by the time the youngest aged out.

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#37

30 Times Someone Implemented A Rule That Massively Backfired In Kenya, our governor in Nairobi banned public transport from getting to town so people had to walk long distances to work. And since we don’t have enough pavements, people ended up walking on the roads (like 3000) and there was a traffic jam that lasted for more than 5hrs. The next day the ban was removed.

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Rijkærd
Rijkærd
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

....and now we have an express way to reduce traffic that one has to pay toll fees for which means only rich folk will be able to avoid traffic while poor normal folk will be left on the f****d up road with crazy traffic.....f*****g Kenyan govt. from the high as f**k president and his criminal of a mom ruining the country....am so shocked as to how the international community thinks of Kenya as a very special little ass country in Africa without noticing its among the worst in making its own citizens suffer

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#38

30 Times Someone Implemented A Rule That Massively Backfired Worked for a warehouse four days a week. 11am-930pm Monday to Thursday. They reiterated many times during the interview process that overtime was optional. My first day my supervisor told me that overtime is indeed optional, but if you don't stay for overtime then everybody else has to stay even later. "So if you do leave on time, don't come back."

Eh whatever. I didn't mind the extra hours too much (although a 10.5 hour shift is already long) but the bonus was that we could go early if all the orders were done. As you can imagine, the good workers busted their a** from start to finish cutting as many corners (good and bad ones) as they could in order to get out early. Normally this ended up with us being able to leave around 15 mins early or on a really good day where the stars aligned (re:everybody showed up), we could leave as early as 7:30 or 8. However.. leaving that early only happened once or twice a year at most.

Overtime was every week. Every single Monday we would work until 2am. 11am-2am isn't ideal when you have no idea when you're off. At around 7pm we'd start to get an idea if we're in for another hour or another 6. One of the genius new hires mentioned to the boss in the office how he was hoping to get out by 6. Oh good. Apparently the boss was thinking us leaving early was a common occurance now and decided that nobody was going to be leaving early any more. Sweep or dust or whatever, but nobody leaves until 9:30.

All of a sudden we were late every single day without fail. Why? We were working our asses off to get out early but failing every day and ending up on time (or still late). By taking away our ability to leave early, everybody gave up working hard. "Slow down! We've got another hour left anyways. I'm not sweeping.". Went from about 45 hours a week to 55. 13 hours every day. Nobody ever left early anymore... but nobody left on time either. Losses for everybody involved because the boss didn't realize that us leaving early for 2 days out of a year actually gave us the daily motivation to work our asses off the other 360~.

tl;dr Boss put a stop to leaving early. No incentive to work our asses off anymore means paying overtime every day.

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Beth S
Beth S
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I feel there should be a cap on how much overtime a company can force a person to work in a week. Some of these companies where I live are rolling 12+ hour shifts/7 days a week. Just because a person needs that job doesn't mean they should be worked into the ground.

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#39

Well, Harvard implemented a rule that bars students who are members of single-sex campus organizations from being leaders in other student life aspects (captains of a sports team, student government, etc.) as well as stops them from being able to receive a letter of recommendation from a college dean for a post-graduate fellowship.

Harvard claimed the reasoning behind the to curtail the power of secret societies (like the skull and bones group) and because all-male fraternities have issues with sexual assault.

Except for the rule now discourages students from joining ANY single-sex organization. Panhellenic sororities, the multi-cultural Greek organizations (namely the Black fraternities and sororities), a "women in STEM" club, an all-male acapella group... those all count as single-sex organizations. Members of groups that have no outstanding issues are being punished for the poor behavior of a few (all-male) groups.

They're now being sued by a number of sororities and fraternities.

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Dillon
Dillon
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Yea that’s sexism. It now adays can’t you just say your something else? Wonder how much the rest of the world laughs at us? Hint alot

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#40

Universities love to mess with alcohol-related things. My University decided to pull over campus busses on weekend nights and give out tickets to drunk passengers, as well as a lookout for walking drunks. The following month had more DUIs than the entire previous year. Everyone's excuse was they were scared to walk or take the bus, so they drove.

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Nikki Sevven
Nikki Sevven
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

This reminds me of blue laws in the US. On Sundays and holidays, it was prohibited for liquor stores to be open. So, instead of going to get a six-pack and taking it home to watch football, people went to the bar instead. More drunk people on the road in the middle of the day. Brilliant. (My state has changed this law.)

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#41

Back in the early 1990s, AOL banned offensive words on their service. You couldn't search for certain things on the internet.

That's bad enough as it is, but one of the words they banned was "breast," and it massively backfired, as a number of breast cancer patients and the American Cancer Society took AOL to task for banning the word.

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#42

The outgoing Republican governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker implemented a stricter election law that candidates could only demand a recount if the candidate was losing by 1.0% or less of the vote. On election day this year, he lost by 1.2% of the vote. Had he not changed the law last year, he would've been able to ask for a recount.

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#43

In Indiana, they stopped providing needles for druggies; bam, instant HIV outbreak.

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#44

I had a friend in sales who had to fly a lot. The company decided that since they were paying for the tickets they should own the frequent flyer miles. He then decided to only fly during working hours, rather than catching an early flight out or coming home late, or even sometimes flying on a weekend. After his number of sales calls dropped by a third they reversed the policy.

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tw 72
tw 72
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2 years ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Not ours but another company – required conference attendees to stay in a particular hotel, which was NOT the hotel that hosted the conference. Their "discount" savings for using the required hotel was just a fraction of what they had to pay for rental cars!

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#45

Spill-proof gas cans... I have spilled sooo much more gasoline by trying to figure out how to use the complicated spill-proof containers than I ever have with just your "old style" gas cans.....looking at you California!

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#46

Not sure if it is still the case as I graduated many years ago.

But where I went to college, the hospitals had a thing where if someone came in with alcohol poisoning, and they were underage, then they'd also call the cops. So of course what happened was when underage kids really should have gone to the hospital, their friends wouldn't call and ambulance because of fear the cops would punish people. Luckily, while I was there there weren't many deaths due to alcohol poising, but there were more than 0.

Edit: For clarity, I wasn't saying the people calling would get punished by the cops. I was saying the person with alcohol poisoning would be punished. But people still didn't want to call for fear that their friend may get in legal trouble

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#47

I worked at a contract agency that works with Child Protective Services. CPS policy is to never tell the parent who called CPS on them, but my agency’s policy was to always inform the primary caretaker if one of our social workers called it in. Obviously, this irrevocably destroyed our rapport with our clients. Imagine telling a parent you called cps on them only to knock on their door the next week to “listen to their concerns.” The agency made an asshat out of us, and all potential for case progression was out the door. Stupid rule, if you ask me.

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Kathryn Baylis
Kathryn Baylis
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2 years ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Social workers, who still need to work through their caseloads, should have rights to anonymity when reporting mistreatment of children to CPS. I mean, if social workers cannot enforce child safety laws by reporting someone when they see them breaking those laws, then how tf are we ever going to end the abuse and make the abusers pay?

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#48

More of a minor thing, but a previous boss was extremely particular about everybody clocking in and out EXACTLY on time, not a minute before or after. Under threat of writing people up for not being on the minute.
As a result, everybody completely ceased being productive towards the end of their shift and just stared at the clock.
“Hey, can you go do X for me?”
“Nope sorry, I only have 20 minutes left and that might take longer and push me over.”

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Jo Johannsen
Jo Johannsen
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

How many people were attempting to clock in/out within the same single minute?

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#49

30 Times Someone Implemented A Rule That Massively Backfired When I worked for immigration, some bright spark decided that we weren't going to remove people who had been caught smuggling drugs from certain countries. They believed it was too risky to deport people, who had failed to complete their jobs, back to pissed off gangs.

News traveled quickly and within a few weeks, there was a huge spike in smuggling. People were smuggling drugs and immediately handing themselves over to authorities to guarantee that they wouldn't get deported. In addition, dealers found it much easier to convince people to attempt to smuggle drugs because it was a win-win for all parties. The whole idea was scrapped pretty quickly.

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Kathryn Baylis
Kathryn Baylis
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2 years ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

While I can see the logic of not wanting to send people back to face being murdered for not delivering the drugs, I also see an idea that was not thought through completely. There might be a way to do it with the loopholes closed. Possibly asylum, but then again, that can be taken advantage of as well. So you see, policy really must require long term thinking and loophole closing before it is put into effect—-not an excuse to “send it to,committee” and have it die there, btw. Just think s**t through more thoroughly, including every conceivable “what-if”, before making it a rule.

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#50

30 Times Someone Implemented A Rule That Massively Backfired My institute banned p**n sites from its WiFi. Most people weren't tech-savvy enough or bold enough to ask how to bypass it. Then the institute banned Facebook. Everyone learned to use proxy in a matter of days.

Let's just say the servers were under heavy pressure from then onwards.

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Electric Mayhem
Electric Mayhem
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

The censorship is getting insane, BP. Just because the word 'p0rn' refers to something that contains dirty content doesn't make 'p0rn' a dirty word.

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#51

A hotel I used to work for decided they were having an alcohol-free holiday party. This didn't sit well with the people who'd been working there for years and were accustomed to a full bar at the party.

The staff parking lot ended up being full of people drinking in their cars trying to get a good buzz to carry them through the party and most people ended up getting way drunker than they would have so the party was a s**t show.

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Pheebs
Pheebs
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I have a reverse of this. Company I work for has a party at Christmas, and serves wine. They trusted employees to behave like adults, and didn’t monitor intake. That ended the year employees got a DUI on the way home. Now the head of the department personally pours the wine at parties and limits people to no more than roughly 8-10 oz total. They didn’t completely kaibosh alcohol, but they’ve realized even adults are idiots.

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#52

My old high school made a rule that whenever a Lockdown was initiated, everyone had to put their phones in a bag that the teacher kept locked up until it was over. This happened after some kids took pics of swat and texted about the situation to parents causing worry.

The school was trying to be the only news source for parents to keep worried down but this only led to a huge backlash from parents, and the PTA told kids to hide their phones when they try to take it. It was rolled back after the first Lockdown test.

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Kathryn Baylis
Kathryn Baylis
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Yeah great. Make sure worried parents get no answer when they call their children, while the one school secretary is trying to contact hundreds of parents to tell them what’s going on—-and not getting through because the parents are panicked at not being able to reach their children. And exactly HOW MUCH do school board members make?

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#53

30 Times Someone Implemented A Rule That Massively Backfired At my old job, some people abused lunch so they made a few of em text in when they started and finished lunch. One guy specifically would text the start time, a place he got food, his order in detail, the address, price, etc. Even when he bought a snack while out. That stopped a week later.

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#54

30 Times Someone Implemented A Rule That Massively Backfired The school I go to has a rule that says if you come late 3 times, you get an unjustified absence, which lowers your grade quite a bit. So if someone is late they pretty much always skip class so they can get an absence that can be justified by simply signing it...

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#55

My agency just implemented this yesterday. We had recycling wastebaskets at each desk for paper and a regular one for trash. My floor has about 75 people on it (on floor 25 of a 32-floor building), floors below us have about 170 people. So they removed the individual baskets from each desk, and now if I want to dispose of a sheet of paper, I have to walk to the lunchroom area or the copy room. This will be a huge waste of time, as people are just going to throw the paper out in the trash. This is their way of being "aggressive" in terms of recycling. I don't see how this makes things easier, or more conducive to recycling. People are going to just put more paper in the trash.

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tw 72
tw 72
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Great way to encourage compliance - make the process HARDER.

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#56

So I go to a school that’s considered a pretty heavy partying school. We had our homecoming in September traditionally, and it was a huge party with much drinking. However one year the administration decided to move our homecoming into midterm season in an attempt to cut down on partying. Us being the smart students that we are decided instead to party on the old date of our homecoming and the new one. So now the admin has two parties on their hands instead of one.

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Kathryn Baylis
Kathryn Baylis
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2 years ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Arizona State, perchance? I went to high school in California, and all the parties were applying to ASU because of its reputation as a party school.

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#57

A salon I worked at one day decided to drug test the hairstylists. Out of 12 stylists, 11 failed.

The manager texted everybody the next day and told them to come to work.

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#58

My company had an injury (in a facility in a different country no less) that resulted in lost time. The guy was hammering on an adjustable wrench because the nut was too tight... instead of on banning stupidity, they decide to ban adjustable wrenches in every facility. All fine and dandy except we don't have wrenches at our machines because everyone just uses an adjustable wrench. About three weeks into buying thousands of wrenches they decided adjustable wrenches were safe again and stopped buying us regular wrenches.

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Kathryn Baylis
Kathryn Baylis
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Good. I’m glad that the f****d up idea of punishing everyone for one person’s stupidity blew up in the suits’ stupid faces.

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#59

Had a new manager, her first gig as the boss. One night we ran out of wine at the bar and it takes a while to restock, so someone was missing from the bar staff for almost an hour.

Because I was bar manager she ripped me a new one and said the bar must he fully stocked as soon as I begin my shift. Well, on weeknights I was often the only bartender on duty. So before serving the wait staff I spent 30-45 Minutes stocking. She was livid! And she was too stupid to realize it makes far more sense to have the day shift do it in advance.

The other manager said she got even madder because she had absolutely no basis to reprimand me for not serving the wait staff. B**ch didn't last too long there thank the gods.

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Norma
Norma
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I've been working around 45 years and I still can't figure out how some people get into management...barring nepotism, of course.

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#60

China's Four Pest Campaign

It turns out taking out all the sparrows isn't a good idea, probably contributed to the starvation of 25+ million Chinese

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Carol Emory
Carol Emory
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Same thing happened with Europe and the Plague. There was a fear of witches back then and cats were considered mediums for witches resulting in thousands being killed. When the first plague rats showed up in Europe, there was not really anything to stop their spread and the disease ran rampant. Always good to have a cat in the house. Keeps the rodents at bay.

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#61

The beach club I worked as a cabana boy at decided one summer to buy $40,000 worth of "club umbrellas".

The old system was that you as a cabana boy had 30 to 60 families who you took care of in exchange for tips. One of your responsibilities was to carry whatever heavy beach equipment they bought (Tommy Bahama chairs and umbrellas) from the cabana to the ocean and set it up, and then carry it back up to the cabana at the end of the day. If you left chairs or umbrellas on the beach, the club supervisors would charge you a dollar per item because they would have to carry it to avoid the stuff from getting washed away, broken or stolen by locals. It was a pretty fair and workable system.

The new system was that members still had their own chairs, but would request a number of umbrellas from the cabana boy. Obviously, they requested way more than they would ever need or buy themselves, and the club umbrellas were extra heavy and exhausting to set up. We complained to management about this and a lot of other stuff, but they basically just said "f**k you" to us. Well, that didn't exactly inspire us to do them any favors, considering most of our pay came from the members.

Since all the umbrellas looked the same, we would just take the chairs and leave the umbrellas on the beach and no one would know who was supposed to be responsible for picking them up. The supervisors simply couldn't get them all and almost all of them wound up broken or missing by the end of the summer. Whoops.


TLDR: Beach club got new equipment that caused a lot of extra work without giving us any additional compensation or tools to deal with the work. All the new equipment ended up getting trashed.

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#62

Brother's friend works at a large company where safety is a "top priority", even in corporate offices, to the point of absurdity. After an employee fell down some stairs, the company instituted a rule that all employees must use the handrails at all times. Signs were posted in stairwells, and reminder emails were sent out. The idea was scrapped after a record number of employees came down with the flu.

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#63

I worked as a researcher for a real estate software company. I had to call commercial tenants and find information on their properties. Instead of requiring us to quickly harvest the info, the company required us to keep them on the phone for 2 mins. This led to people just bulls**tting on the phones for 2 mins instead of harvesting quality data.

My trick was to research the tenant's last name before calling them and talking to them about it. This worked until I talked to a man with an English name, and I asked "so were your ancestors from England?" He said, "the people that owned my ancestors were from England."

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#64

My company went to a smoke-free campus. All ashtrays were removed and the smoking area was closed. You can only smoke off the property or in your car with the windows up. They don’t enforce the windows up a rule so now when anyone comes on site they a dozen people standing at the road smoking and then you have to walk through the parking lot and secondhand smoke to get into the building. Oh, and there are cigarette butts everywhere.

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#65

My high school was laid out with the lunch area and offices in the center and long halls of classrooms shooting off from it in all directions.

In order to reduce shenanigans, the already difficult 5 minutes between classes was reduced to 2.5 minutes.

Your locker could be a total of 250 yards walk from your current class if you were unlucky. The same could be true for any two of your classes. Obviously, no running or leaving the school building.

About 95% increase in student lateness and consequent shenanigans.

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Abigail M Uken
Abigail M Uken
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

We only have 2 minutes. Students carry everything with them. Only the freshman use the lockers but if I have a lunch and water bottle ill carry it with me if I have a project I better hope it fits in my bag. We have complained so many times but the principal wont give in

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#66

Work hours are restricted to 11 hours a day including overtime while traveling. That means if I drive 3 hours to the client, spent 6 hours there, and drive back for 3 hours, I need to get a hotel for the night 1 hour away from home. Don’t get me started about flights from Germany to Japan.

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Kathryn Baylis
Kathryn Baylis
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Hope to hell the company’s paying for those unnecessary hotel stays.

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#67

Some municipality in the northern US decided they would save money by installing LED bulbs in the stoplights. Not only would they use less electricity, they would be changed much less frequently, saving a lot in labor

Then it snowed. And it turned out that the incandescent bulbs melted the snow. But LED bulbs aren't hot enough to melt snow. So they needed to send work crews to clean every stoplight.

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#68

Not exactly a rule, but just last week my job thought it was a good idea to take away our electric cart pusher machine bc they felt that we didn't need it. The very next day, the place was absolutely packed and we couldn't get carts in fast enough.

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Kelli Lindsay Boone
Kelli Lindsay Boone
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I worked VERY BRIEFLY at Lowe's. Nope, this 55 year old isn't doing f*****g cart duty. It's BRUTAL. People, for the love of god, park your carts in their designated places!

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#69

I work in manufacturing and we get paid piece rate, so the more I run the more I get paid. We also have a base hourly pay rate of $10/hr, so whichever pays more (the hourly or the piece rate) is what we get paid for the day. On bad days sometimes they bump us to $12/hr for the day and when we train new people we get paid $15/hr to compensate for having to slow down or stop our machines to teach the new people.

The big boss, my boss' boss' boss, came in last week. Now he used to work on the line like I do now, but you can tell he's living comfortably in his corporate life and has forgotten some of the bad parts of this job. He told my boss that we are to no longer receive training pay because, by his logic, if we are working with someone we should be making more than $15/hr, anyway. And these past 3 weeks or so we have been doing a LOT of training. So a few of us got together at the end of the day and agreed: if they aren't paying us, we won't train people. We will teach the new people enough to make us some money and leave the training to the designated trainers (2 people split between 15 or so new hires, but they make $17.50/hr)

The policy lasted 4 days.

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Keller Worthen
Keller Worthen
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I have literally no experience in a job setting like that, but the original pay system sounds great

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#70

One company we do security for changed their policies and decided we shouldn't be getting into conflicts physically with people anymore and will actively push termination on my company to violators because they want to keep their places of business family-friendly. This past week alone there's been 8 different instances of security staff being requested for termination by this because there was someone assaulting people be they guests or employees in their building and security did nothing because it would have cost them their jobs if they started fighting with them. The worst part is that when upper management is confronted with the paradoxical nature of their policy change and their requests they seem to think everything is working as intended

Like have we really become this G rated that we can't see when s**t makes 0 Damon sense

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Kathryn Baylis
Kathryn Baylis
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2 years ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

And, once a business does nothing about offenders like that, they get a reputation as a place where you can pull s**t like that with impunity. Hope the place goes downhill and out of business because of it (the employees can find better jobs with companies that have a bit of sense). Hotel I used to work for cut out their overnight security protection to save a buck. To make it even worse, they didn’t allow the lobby to be locked after hours, in case of late check ins, and didn’t think to install a late check in window so no one could get inside to commit their crimes. Within a month, the night auditor was shot and killed while being robbed. Needless to say, the hotel had to pay a f*****g bundle his surviving spouse and children because they didn’t protect him. They filed bankruptcy not long after. This all happened after I had quit doing the night audit there, btw, so I wasn’t affected, thankfully. I shudder to think.

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#71

My work implemented a “no conference calls after 3pm” rule. It worked for one week, then people realized that everybody’s schedule was clear after 3 PM so they would set up these “one time only” calls. Enough people set up calls and pretty soon everyone’s schedules became jammed between 3p and 5p. Nothing like a full afternoon of conference calls at the end of your day....

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#72

I guess laws count as rules, so here are a few good ones from the UK:

The Poll Tax in the UK in the early 90's. It had massive opposition and riots on the streets and was culled in favour of the Council tax. In operation for a very short time.

The Window Tax in the UK where the amount of tax you paid was dependent on how many windows your house had. As a result, people just bricked up their windows. In operation for ~150 years.

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Carol Emory
Carol Emory
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

The last one might have been a way to combat the Right to Light law. Basically says that if you have a window with an unobstructed source of sunlight for a certain period of time, you can have a Right to Light which means no one can build or change anything that would obstruct said natural light. Maybe the tax saw to get people to get rid of these windows so that buildings could be put up next door. Crappy way of doing that though.

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#73

Super-injunctions. In the UK a few years back a famous person was rich enough to be able to take out an injunction, meaning that no one in the press could report on his affair. Not only that, but no one was allowed to talk about it, or even acknowledge that the injunction exists. Not the press, not the media, nor the average man in the street.

It backfired when everyone just spread the person's identity on Twitter, and it caused a far bigger (we’re talking massive nationwide coverage) s**tstorm than your average kiss-and-tell tabloid affair would have done.

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#74

When roundabouts or traffic circles were created in the 30s the right of way was given to the person entering the circle. This obviously caused major problems. It took 30 years before it was switched so that the cars in the circle had the right of way. But since it took so long and the traffic that it caused was so bad, the US was resistant to adding in new ones which is one of the main reasons why here in the US roundabouts aren't very common.

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#75

This goes back 10 years, but at work, anything bad was based on a point system. Calling in sick = 1 point. If you called in a second day, still just the same 1 point. So, if you wanted to go on a weekend getaway, you take your 2 normal days off, were willing to get a point, and you had 4 days off in a row.

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WoodenLion
WoodenLion
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

same - plus had to call in 30 min. before shift to be absent. 30 min. max after shift starts to be late. we call in after shift starts and set our new "shift start" time and then call in for the full day 30 min. before the new start time. (if you missed the first window)

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#76

My school implemented the rule that if you were late or didn't have your books with you, you weren't allowed in class. I don't know whose bright idea it was, but it resulted in a lot of kids chilling outside in the hallway because they would rather chill with their friends than/then learn about the difference between then and then. I still can't remember!

Needless to say, that rule was fairly quickly lifted

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NsG
NsG
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I know OP won't read this, but: if you would rather chill instead of learning, use "than"; if you chill and learn afterwards, use "then". Or, if you prefer, consider the answer to When is Then. (And the answer to What is That, the answer to Where is There)

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