I once backed down from a job I was almost being hired, after reading the contract and finding out that I had to give my phone and its passcode to the security guard during my shift. I've left phones in lockers on other jobs but this was a red flag. I simply turned away and didn't sign at all.

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Brian Hawley

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The American consulate in Jeddah used to make all visitors to social functions put their cell phones in a basket and collect them again when leaving. Fair enough. One day a British guy glued a hair across the data/charging port. Sure enough the hair was broken when he got it back. Repeated on other occasions with other phones to confirm. They were plugging the phones in. I don’t think they were charging them for us.

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Went to an all male grammar school in the Home Counties, and we weren’t allowed to have hair below our collar. Rules are rules, fine, but a bunch of us would get as close to the collar as possible.

Headmaster (the kind of guy who has a cane framed above his office door) pulled us all in one day to a special meeting where he had hired and hairdresser and told us we could either have it cut there and then or leave the building.

I left the building I was in, but because I was a massive nerd I figured the best defiance would be to just go to my next class in a different building (I am still quite proud of that decision in fact).

All the parents were then quite rightly up in arms and it was never tried again.

This was in 2005.

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Strings

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Come at me with a scissors in your hand, I assume hostile intent

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I had a teacher tell me I couldn't wear a hat. At all. Not a school rule just his rule. I never wore it inside. One day he asked me if I thought he was stupid because I took it off before I entered the class room. I had no idea he meant I couldn't wear one at all when he said no hats. Our school did not have any sort of dress code or uniforms. I don't know what his problem was but that entire year I felt bullied by him and the rest of the class.

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ScarletRos

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What about no hat no play?

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Chair hierarchy. Low-level employees could only have chairs without arms that had low backs. Leads got to have high backs. Supervisors got high backs with arms. Above that you finally broke out to leather seating instead of nylon cloth, but only low back with arms until you became a mid level executive.

Someone "scavenged" a low back+arms chair from the desk of someone who quit once. THAT resulted in the rules being sent out, in writing, to all employees.

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Annik Perrot

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Caste system.

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At my old job, HR held a meeting to tell us that there was too much swearing on the sales floor. Someone raised their hand and pointed out that swearing is very common in our industry and that is the way that our customers speak. HR later sent out a memo explaining that swearing should be limited to conversations with clients. It was amazing.

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Dumb teenager

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Reminds me of how Parliament House (basically the Aussie White House) tried to ban the word “mate”

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My husbands job- they have to clock in on the 1/2 hour. If you clock in at 8:00:03, you’re bumped to 8:30. If you clock in at 9:32, you’re bumped to 10:00. One of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard.

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Kalikima

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Isn't that illegal? Theft or something similar?

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As a flight attendant, our hair had to be up in a bun or ponytail. The ponytail couldn’t extend past mid back, which, as it sounds, is very vague. At the time, my ponytail hit right at my bra strap, which I considered mid back. We had a manager come on the plane before boarding and didn’t even say hi to me, she just said “your hair has to be up in a bun.” “Excuse me?” “Now, please.” I was so confused. She then told me she would be writing me up for the length of my ponytail and letting my manager know. I, in turn, wrote *her* up and had my crew members take pictures of my hair that I sent to my manager and a few other higher ups. She ended up telling my manager I didn’t have my hair pulled back at all, but she got caught because I’d already sent in the photos. All in all it was a ridiculous interaction, all because of a vague rule, and at best she was arguing about less than a centimeter of hair.

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TheElderNom

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We also have to have our hair up at my job, though mid back sounds too long. It's a safety thing, it would be bad if the hair got caught in anything but it is also to prevent people from easily being able to grab it if things get violent.

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My boss was pretty strict in the whole no phones thing, until my blood sugar crashed cause I didn't notice my low blood sugar alarm going off and I missed two days of work as a result

Now it's no questions asked.

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There's a permanently installed "temporary" wall with a door in it. The door has a sign that says "this is not a door." So every day I walk around the entire building rather than use the "not a door". They've paid me tens of thousands of dollars over the years to add to my step count rather than use the perfectly good door. If I'm in a hurry or on my way out of the building I use that door every f*****g time.

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CK

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4 months ago

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They should make a sign that says "...but I have the magical ability to walk through walls."

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First "real job" post retirement from the Army. Took a job as a defense contractor in a primarily in office position. First day I meet the government lead - lets call her Jane - for the office and we had a bunch of common connections. All good. An hour later the on site Program Manager for the contract pulls me aside and says "Really glad you and Jane got along well because she can be difficult to work with. Also she has a history of making illegal and unethical request of contractors so be careful." I should have left then and there. Over the next 4 days I am getting trained by the two existing people - one contract and one government - on how things are done. 95% of the time they reference "Well Jane wants us to do...." or "Jane prefers we do...." If you know anything about the government it is that there are rules for everything. The work we were doing happened to be in the rule enforcing business (oversight). If you are doing oversight, you absolutely have to do things by the book, not by how Jane wants. I should have left that week. Despite there being plenty of space, Jane's office was physically separated from the rest of us by two floors. To compensate for this she did "Leadership by Microsoft Teams". Everyone was expected to be logged in to Teams at all times with the group chat open and monitored. Jane expected regular updates on what everyone was doing as if she were right there. This was at times difficult because we also maintained a Teams chat that was essentially a "customer service" window and Jane expected near instantaneous response in there too. Jane also expected a detailed breakout of all tasks done during the day. My two fellow employees had an MS Word document open where they would note a task as soon as it was done. And I mean everything. There were entries like "Answered phone call from (name) reference start time for meeting" and "Responded to (name) in Teams chat reference (thing)". These were compiled daily and weekly for "Activity Reports". I asked my contract counterpart how much time he spent on activity reports and he said "probably 4-5 hours a week" and then checked his activity report from the last week and said "oh, I guess 6". Yes, the activity report included an entry for time spent on the activity report. It gets worse. When I say Jane expected everything to be in the group chat, I mean everything. If you were away from your desk for any reason, it had to be in the group chat. Going to talk to someone in another office? Chat it. Going to the printer? Chat it. Go to lunch? Chat it. **Going to the bathroom? Chat it.** Im Not Kidding I absolutely refused to do this. I also refused to participate in "chit chat" in the group chat. Jane expected a "Good morning" followed by small talk every day. I actually went to the PM and asked if that was a requirement of the Statement of Work and was told it was not. I relayed to my coworkers that since it wasnt in my SOW I was not going to do it. They begged me to just play along and humor Jane and when I refused they started doing it FOR ME! That was actually what caused me to quit. One of my coworkers said hi for me in the group chat and Jane went on a rant about how I needed to get my computer fixed if I couldnt use Teams blah blah blah knowing full well I was in the chat but being quiet. That was a Friday about an hour before the end of the day. When I got home I told my SO I wasnt doing anything until I applied for 10 jobs. I managed 7. While I was doing the 7th one LinkedIn told me the recruiter for job 3 was online and asked if I waned to chat with her. I did. We talked for about 15 minutes and arranged a call the next day. Talked for another 45 minutes and set up an interview for Thursday. 20 minutes after the interview was over they called and made me an offer. I accepted immediately. 50% pay raise, I have my own team of 14 people - with complete hiring authority - and my boss is amazing. We consider it a good week if we dont talk at all.

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Evelyn Wrightsman

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3 months ago

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I read the first three lines, curious how long it was, saw it and I was like "Let's post a comment on how you are NOT going to read that"

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In junior high we could sit inside the cafeteria or outside, but you couldn't bring trays outside, so you could only get food from the take out side if you wanted to go outside. Made sense since kids are lazy and less likely to bring the trays back inside.

However, if you say in the cafeteria, you had to eat on the hot side if you got a hot meal or the takeout side if you got a take out. So if you got a burger and your friends go lasagna, you couldn't sit together.

It made absolutely no sense to me and has driven me crazy for 25 years.

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I was the sample hander-outer at Sam’s Club for 9 months during college. Isn’t really a ridiculous rule I guess but we couldn’t eat the samples we were giving out. Like even if there was extras of anything during breaks or after the shift, it all went in the garbage. It was ridiculous though that for example, at Costco or Sam’s, most people know they sell frozen pizzas in 2-4 quantities in one box. If we were sampling pizza that day, if you opened one pizza out of 4 within the box, and the shift ended. All 3 remaining pizzas went into the garbage brand new, frozen, and sealed. As a broke college kid, it hurt my soul. We did this no matter the item or quantity etc. and if you took food home you’d get fired. Also we were always told how much each of our products we were sampling sold the previous day, but we didn’t get paid extra for it. So it was always annoying when they said “xyz” products sold better or not good enough. Like I gave a single f**k. Making $10 an hour and no extra. Stupid.

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Magenta Blu

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4 months ago (edited)

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It amazing, the quantity of food people toss in the garbage

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Worked at a call center. Had to punch a code into the system whenever you got up. So when I had to take a s**t I was gone for like 7 minutes. Boss texts me asking if everythings ok, youve been on pause for a while. So wish I told I was taking a dump but I just ignored his message.

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Aidan Campbell

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That is not uncommon in a call centre. You have to set it to comfort break etc

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Boss told me never to call or email him and to just "catch me when you can catch me". Then said he didn't have time to answer my question, the answer to which I needed in order to proceed with my task. This was his MO with all staff, every time.
I documented the conversation (all convos w him actually) with an email lol. Every time he complained about me to upper management, I pulled up the emails.

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A bunch of us won assorted cash prizes at work, between $5.00 and $90.00 each.

Later that day the 19 year old office assistant walked around with an uncovered clipboard asking everyone who won to fill out their full names, associate numbers, amount won, and their social security number.

He was angry when I handed it back to him with my social security number left blank. I told him there’s no way I’m writing it down, HR has it, and the fact that I can see everyone else’s info is ridiculous. He stormed off in a huff.

Later that day I saw the clipboard, uncovered, laying on the counter next to the customer service window for all to see.

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Michael Largey

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As a former IRS auditor, I can't express how little we'd care if someone did not report a $90 prize at work. Such prizes aren't always even taxable.

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During the recession, I drove a delivery truck because f**k engineers, amirite? Well, one day I was assigned a truck I don’t normally drive, so I checked the oil and it wasn’t even on the dipstick. Holy s**t! I informed the paint store boss about it and he said to take it to a place down the street to “get some oil”.

So what do I do? I drive over to the service center, and try to get some oil. Turns out they only sell it in bulk and wouldn’t sell me a quart or two on the company account.

So I go back to the paint store and tell the boss what they said, and he gets all huffy and pissy and throws a fit! “Why didn’t you get an oil change like I told you to?” He raged.

He didn’t like it when I told him that he told me to get some oil, which typically means adding oil in favor of doing an oil change.

Sit down, Mark, you manipulative waste of good carbon.

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Moë

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4 months ago

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Freakin Mark

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Right after I graduated from high school, they made a rule to ban students from hugging each other in the hallway. They called it a form of pda, but didn't ban kissing or hand holding.

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Dumb teenager

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My schools just got a straight out no contact rule ( unsurprising I guess for a catholic school ( doesn’t include high fives and stuff like that, they’re not that strict))

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In HS, we had a no wallet chain/metal decorations rule. When I was in highschool I thought it was ridiculous, but after graduating they finally announced why that rule was made so now it’s not so ridiculous. Basically some kid found out he could use his wallet chain as a set of brass knuckles, and he would intentionally get into fights so he could dog walk kids. Someone got beat so bad they had a seizure.

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Evelyn Wrightsman

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If I was at that school I'd get in trouble a lot because I wear metal bracelets, glasses accessories, necklaces, earrings, anklets, cuffs and maybe a few more things. But I make most of my metal jewelry so I'd never disrespect my own stuff

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I middle school (~2002), part of the dress code was that we weren’t allowed to wear flip flops that had the insertion points visible from the bottom. If you couldn’t see them on the bottom, it was fine. They would demand to look at the bottom of your flip flops, and it’s still bizarre to me >20 years later.

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Justin Shock

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Because they're cheaper and more dangerous. Those insertion points can slide out, get caught on stairs, make you trip, scratch up wood floors, the list goes on. Kinda stupid, but that's why.

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Not being allowed to put my hands in my pockets even when it’s 30 (F) degrees outside.

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Farnzy

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Kandy car wash in Oregon is this way. You're getting wet and can't put your hand in your pocket to warm them up even when no customers are around. Dumb

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In law school, I was stopped from entering the library because I had a cup of tea and the rule was water only. It was really just a cup of water with a tea bag (which I had yet to put in the water) so when I was stopped, I showed the librarian that it was still just hot water and threw out the tea bag. He said, “Sorry. No hot water allowed.” I went back to the cafeteria, came back with my cup of hot water and a handful of melting ice, dumped the ice in the cup in front of the librarian and asked if my water was cold enough to enter now. Such BS.

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Michael Largey

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4 months ago

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Are we surprised that this guy was studying to be a lawyer?

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I got dress coded for shorts being two inches above the knee instead of the permitted one inch. I was made to change into basketball shorts that were not allowed outside of gym class. 




Best thing is, I was also wearing a Cannibal Corpse Butchered at Birth t shirt that day. No notes on that one.

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Jan Rosier

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Upvote for Cannibal Corpse !

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We had to log every bathroom break in a shared spreadsheet. Nothing like announcing your bladder habits to the whole office!

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Jan Rosier

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Nobody else's business, what would happen if you donot fill this in?

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Catholic high school was crazy for many reasons. These weren't schoolwide rules, but they were ridiculous.

In one class (the teacher was also the football coach), if you yawned without covering your mouth you had to stand in the doorway facing the hallway and yawn while covering your mouth for as many times as the teacher demanded. If the weather was nice, you would be sent to the football field to chase the geese away. His classroom overlooked the football field.

If you were caught chewing gum in French class, you'd have to put the gum on your nose and stand on one foot next to your desk.

Students were assigned to a homeroom. Each week, 2 students were responsible for cleaning the chalkboards, taking out the trash, realigning the desks, etc. Though it may sound ridiculous, it built character. You had an opportunity to connect with a fellow classmate and the teacher while taking pride in the cleaning work. My best friend had an amazing homeroom teacher and I would even volunteer to help her during her cleaning week. The teacher was a great mentor to us both (and he even gave us great advice and the occasional candy as a reward!).

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Annik Perrot

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In my only year of Catholic school, we had to take turns filling the inkpots on the desks (yes, I'm that old, LOL). I was only 8 and clumsy as h*ll, so they only asked me once...

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