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From strict dress code regulations to senseless time management techniques, there's plenty of rules to follow at work or school. And while some of them give our life order and direction, others are... just stupid. But don't waste your energy thinking about how to break or change them. Sometimes you can just wait it out. If the rule is as ridiculous as you think, there's a big chance it will backfire. And there's plenty of examples to back this up.
If you want proof, redditor u/TabblespoonFarmer3 asked “What stupid rule at your work/school backfired beautifully?” and the people of Reddit delivered. The post got more than 56.5K upvotes and received 13.4K comments.
Have a read through this list of comments that Bored Panda compiled and make sure to upvote your favorite ones!
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
Boss bitched and complained that we all (welders and millwrights) took lunch and breaks whenever we felt like it (actually just when we got the chance) and implemented a rule that if you didnt take your break/lunch at the right time you didnt get them. Myself and another welder got sent to do a repair that was about a 2 hour drive from the shop first thing in the morning, boss said it was going to be a quick fix so we didnt bring our lunches. We needed the machine running ASAP because it was costing a quarter of a million an hour for down time. Turns out his quick fix was a pretty major welding job, and required us to completely rebuild a motor mount. The operator knew this and had told the boss that was when needed to be done. Well guess what boss man, if you just let us take our lunches and breaks when we wanted or had at least told us what the actual job was we wouldnt have driven 2 hours to the job, done 1 hour of work, driven another 2 hours back to the shop, ate lunch at noon like we were supposed to, and then driven 2 hours back to the job to finish it.
TLDR: Bosses power trip cost over $1,000,000 in a single day so that we could eat our lunches on time.
Rules should make your life simpler, not more complicated. So the more rules we create, the happier we should be, right? Well, according to this survey, the abundance of rules at work does the exact opposite. After receiving more than 7000 responses from Harvard Business Review readers, the researchers found out that organizations had become more bureaucratic over the past few years. And the issue is even more serious at bigger companies. “'Bureaucratic drag' slows work down, wastes time, stifles innovation, and causes employees to focus too much on internal matters rather than their customers,” the results show.
Schools are also falling for the same bureaucratic trap. A Secret Teacher told the Guardian that endless rules can do more harm than good for the students. The school where the Secret Teacher works punishes them for listening to music, wearing a coat in class or having ties too short. “It has become almost too easy to remove a student from a class to the hallway or to senior management. Many of my colleagues take this approach,” the teacher said.
And while the educator understands the need for rules in general, he or she rarely uses military-style discipline for things this minor: “Relaxing some of the rules has helped me treble one class’s output since the start of last year.” Students should not miss large amounts of school due to unnecessary rules and teachers should be the ones who help and support them.
#2
Zero tolerance ended shortly after a bully got thrown through a window because "if I'm getting suspended for defending myself I'm gonna make it worth my while."
Ryan Deschanel 3 years ago (edited)
"zero tolerance" just means "we are just evil and we protect bullies." I had to threaten to sue them so they change their mind.
#3
Required every employee to use electronic timeclocks to punch in/out for work including lunch. Punching in late or leaving early would cause your pay to be docked and getting a discipline letter.
Multiple people wanted to sabotage the clocks (cut the cords, etc) but wiser heads prevailed...
Everyone arrive several minutes early and left late, every single day, to avoid getting into trouble.
Unfortunately, this created unimpeachable evidence of hours worked. The employer had to pay out thousands of dollars in overtime the first month.
The clocks disappeared exactly five weeks after they were installed with no notification.
However, if such rules make your work life miserable and there's nothing anyone can do, here's a few ways how to cope with them. First, do your research. If the rule is as pointless as you think, you should find some information to prove it and form your argument to your manager or HR.
Second, there's still a lot of meaningless policies in a number of workplaces, like strict dress codes or tattoo bans. You can try a little rule-bending to show that it's completely irrelevant and that your employer should move with the times. The more people oppose them, the faster they're going to change.
And lastly, one of the best ways to get rid of an unwanted regulation is to suggest a better alternative and put a human face on the issue. If you take the time to invite your higher-ranking colleagues to discuss the issues with you and your coworkers, you might be able to think of a better solution.
#4
Late 80’s high school- rule was no shorts. Classmate came for an exam with basketball shorts on that were below her knees. Teacher made her go home to change. She came back in a micro mini skirt and wrote her exam.
#5
There was a very strict "no visible bra strap" rule at my school (even if you were wearing a tank top with thick straps, even if it accidentally fell to the side as bra straps do). Being the smart ass I was, I just took my bra off whenever I got yelled at lmao
#6
Back in 2014 our HR made a rule people couldn’t go to other buildings. We had 3 buildings within a block of each other. All 3 had shipping areas and the warehouse employees had to go to each building to work.
We were told to stay at one building. I mentioned we ship out of all 3 who is going to do the work? The genius said oh it’ll be taken care of.
Next day $500k shipment didn’t go out. The following day we have a meeting.
Why didn’t you ship this? Uh, 2 days ago we were told to stay in our building and someone would take care of it.
The rule was quickly changed.
Paul Davis 3 years ago
This is a sign of incompetent top management -- you don't let your accountants and HR make operational business decisions. Happens way too often though.
#7
I worked for a consulting company, traveling monday-thursday somewhere in my country. We had a pretty good hotel allowance (enough for 5 star hotels) and a great rule: if you stayed with a friend, you got an allowance (about a third of the hotel allowance) to buy gifts for the host.
I got the rare treat of a 6-month project in the town of my best friend from childhood was going to university. We made a great arrangement: I would crash at his place and spend the evenings drinking beer, watching movies and play videogames. In return, I used the gift allowance to order dinner for the two of us.
After submitting my first expense report, I was told by some HR drone that the gift allowance was supposed to be used seldomly and not for food for myself.
So I booked a room in a five star hotel, was upgraded to a junior suite because of my rewards status and invited my friend to evenings of beer, video games and room service.
After my second expense report, the project manager asked me about the tripling of the expenses compared to the first report. After explaining the situation and pointing out what sum of money it would mean over the 6 months, he got in contact with HR...
Two days later, the rule was recinded. The project even got my friend (the then newly released) PS3 as a thank you for letting me stay with him.
#8
A long while back, but my school banned the color pink because a bunch of students were wearing it one October and they thought it was a "gang" thing.
It was for breast cancer awareness month. The rule didn't go well for them.
#9
My company decided to “Save Money” by eliminating our staff messenger, a sweet older guy, who drove to each of our 5 local offices daily, to pick up and drop off mail. In the afternoon he would sort outgoing and inter office mail to be delivered the next day. They told us to send any inter office mail overnight by UPS. This could mean sending out 4 different shipments, one to each office. After the first month the UPS bill was 5 times the guy’s monthly salary. They scrapped the plan and hired him back.
#10
When COVID started our boss demanded that our entire team sit in on group zoom calls, even if the topics on the agenda didn't have anything to do with their roles. She felt it would build team unity.
Productivity dropped, negative Google reviews came in, staff became more stressed.
When she demanded answers on the next zoom call one of my co-workers bluntly said "well, I would reply to this woman's voice mail, but I'm stuck on this zoom call".
#11
Working at Home Depot I asked for a long weekend off I was denied. Later on I got in a bit of an argument with one of my supervisors, who reprimanded me by giving me a 3 day suspension...over the long weekend. Success.
#12
The bottom floor of my secondary school was a square that had corridor all the way around. After some incident where a kid got knocked over, they implemented a one-way system. Unfortunately, they were Very Strict on enforcing it. If you accidentally walked past your class, you couldn't just turn around. They seemed very proud of their new rule... until everyone started showing up late for class because they had to do extra laps of the bottom floor.
#13
My spouse's workplace realized they didn't have a policy about sending sexual images or jokes as part of their email acceptable use policy, so they added it.
Except they made it a firing offense to send or receive sexual content (I think the intent was to stop people from subscribing to such content). They also said that your access would be immediately revoked until a determination was made.
So someone got fired for something else and decided to send their whole management chain a graphically sexual image, then report it using the anonymous tip line. IT got the report, concluded they did indeed receive sexual content, and did as required—suspended all the involved email accounts, including the SVP's.
The policy has since been reworded
#14
I was working as a medical assistant at a private practice medical clinic. Our clinic manager wouldn’t allow the new receptionist to drive to the bank to deposit cash. Made her walk carrying the money bag so that she couldn’t “drive away with the money.” Bizarre. I know. That went on for a few weeks. Then the receptionist was mugged and over $1000 in cash was stolen. She was allowed to drive after that.
#15
They stopped paying for extra hours because the "only reason we needed extra hours was because we didn't organize our work properly". First people stopped working late.
Some tasks were just impossible to perform within working hours.
They ended up having to pay 4 Saturdays in a row (150% of the income) to 2x times more people just to get back in schedule.
#16
You can't speak a foreign language at work unless you're a certified translator in that language. We had a guy in a customer service position that spoke Spanish as a second language. Yeah, his regular Spanish speaking customers were confused as to why he could no longer speak to them in Spanish, because they knew he was fluent. Eventually J explains to them (in English) that they made it against the rules for him to speak Spanish. They weren't happy about that.
#17
Couldn't buy drinks at lunch with cash money, had to buy some voucher. They were just cheaply made laminated pieces of paper. This was 2001, I was 13 and bored.Scanned the vouchers and printed them out on paper that kinda matched the colour of the vouchers. and laminated tem myself. They were horrible made and not even the right colour on the backside. Also crudely cut out. I 'made' about a hundred of them of passed them out after I tried paying with them for myself and encountered no problems. Made some new friends and upped production. Took them about three weeks to find out but by then the fakes ones had intermingled with the real ones and had already been resold to students via the student office. About half of the vouchers sold were fakes.
Drinks were cash only from then on. They had no choice to accept the fakes one for a little while longer though, as they had sold and charged for some of them.
#18
My mother was an elementary school teacher. For years the teachers' "be quiet" signal was holding up one hand in a peace sign. Well, the principal decided that this didn't have enough meaning and invented her own.
At a staff meeting she explained that her new sign stood for "ears Listening, eyes Looking, lips Locked". She then made an "L" with her index finger and thumb and held it in front of her forehead.
This principal didn't take criticism well, so none of the staff members were willing to tell her that she was making the Loser Sign. And so the new sign was taught to the children. Most of them made fun of it. Some of the more sensitive ones got upset by it. Overall it was a disaster and within a few weeks they went back to the peace sign.
#19
I am the one who lives closest to work, so if the building alarm goes off overnight, I'm first on the list to get the call from the alarm company. It used to be that if we had good reason to believe the alarm was not an actual break in we could tell them not to summon the police and ignore the alarm. (I can access the building cameras from home. The most common alarm was the cleaning crew who were always messing up the disarming.)
Then a sister site ignored an alarm that turned out to be an actual break-in, and the facilities director decided that no matter what, if there was an alarm we should have the alarm company summon the police, then go to the building, get the police all clear, and re-set the alarm. This was a pain in the ass but rare enough and I lived literally 2 minutes away.
Then we contracted for the alarm company to come in and replace all of our panels and sensors. It was a nightmare process that ultimately ended up taking months, and the whole time there were phantom alarms, sometimes multiple times a night.
Each time I had to go out in the middle of the night, I'd prepare the required report, send it to the facilities director, and request to go back to the old process. Each time he said no, we couldn't afford to miss a potential real break-in.
After about three weeks of this nonsense, I was due for some time off. I was going out of town, and the protocol for that was for me to ignore calls from the alarm company so they moved to the next person on the list... which happened to be the facilities director.
In the five days I was off, I must have ignored at least four overnight calls that all would have gone to him next. Then suddenly, nothing. When I got back I was informed that for the duration of the alarm update, we just weren't going to arm the building at all.
So much for "can't afford to risk a break in!"
#20
A boss was worried we were "stealing time" by using the bathroom for too long. So being the nutjob he is he locked all the bathrooms in the building except the ones he could see from his office door, shut of water to them, put out of order signs on them, and he would sit there with a stopwatch timing us between walking into the restroom and walking out (these are all one-at-a-time restrooms) and then would call out the time. This was STUPID over the top and almost positive is illegal but he never made a policy officially restricting bathroom time... he just wanted to make everyone feel uncomfortable if they took too long.
I discovered that with my height it was really easy to go through the drop ceiling and over the half wall and I was the only other person using the men's besides my boss, who is short... so I went in... locked it from the inside and did my business and climbed out the ceiling leaving the door locked so my boss could not get into the bathroom when he needed to go and was forced to use the ladies... which led to our female employees complaining that he was taking too long in their bathroom.
To this day I don't know if he ever figured out how I was doing that.
Mohsie Supposie 3 years ago
What about someone who suffered from IBS? I have IBS. If I even get a thought that someone is monitoring me, it makes it worse, and it takes me EVEN LONGER. They started doing this at my last job, and I had to straight up quit!
#21
I went to a strict catholic school with uniforms. The kids in 4th-8th grade had to wear belts until we got a new principal who made it mandatory for all the kids in the school to wear belts. Many bathroom accidents from kindergartners, 1st and 2nd graders later (and complaints from parents, of course) the principal rescinded her addition to the dress code.
More recently, this principal was fired for embezzling money from the school.
#22
At my old school you could get suspended for most minor infractions. This included smoking. However if you were a witness to other people smoking then you would get suspended along with them. So this ended up with everyone constantly working together to hide the smokers at all cost otherwise just about everyone would be suspended.
#23
I remember my brother wearing a skirt to school for a while when they changed the dress code so boys could no longer wear shorts.
#24
Every shift, there's a quota we need to fulfil. And then, even if you do fulfil it, you have to keep working until your 8 hours are up.
Cue everyone speeding for 4 hours, having a 3-hour lunch/coffee break, then slowly moving their ass for an hour. No rule about us taking necessary breaks if we're still capable of reaching the quota.
Now we're allowed to stop once we're done.
#25
I worked at Starbucks for like 5+ years before and during undergrad and at one point our district manager thought it was a good idea to implement a "just say yes" policy, where we literally weren't allowed to tell the customer no. Lasted for about 3 months and in that three months our unaccounted product and waste went up over 300% because when the POS didn't have a way to punch in a customer request we had to just do it anyways. We also got complaints from stores in surrounding districts because they had angry customers who were requesting things that were against local food service code, and told them that we did it for them at our store. I knew exactly how that policy was going to play out and I just laughed every time management was freaking out about the problems it was causing.
#26
At school, no going to bathroom during lunch...I think you can imagine how many teachers got mad about students always needing to go to the bathroom during class...
Btw the reason they made the rule was because someone stole a stall door during lunch so they thought that the students couldn’t be trusted. Idk how making them go in class could have possibly gone any better though
Allan Breum 3 years ago
Fun fact; According the The Human Rights Convention, you are not allowed deny someone if they have to "go".
#27
No more swipe cards to get in the building. From now on, it's going to be fingerprint sensors. That was 2 weeks before COVID-19 happenned
Big Blue Cat 3 years ago
This would be a disaster for me. My devices don't recognize my fingerprint if I have been in the shower recently, if it's too hot or cold or whatever. I have to use pin more often than I get in with fingerprint.
#28
Not really a “rule,” but a change in policy. I used to work for a major beer distributor as a delivery driver. They decided to start using less glue in the packaging to save money. We’re talking a few cents per package. As a result, breakage during distribution increased drastically causing them to eat a lot more damaged product. It caused such a large loss in profit that they quickly changed course.
#29
To make moving between classes more efficient, they had designated up and down stairways. But they didn't take into account that the stairs were located at the ends of the very long corridors , which meant it was impossible to get to your next class on time. Because of this, no one bothered trying to get to class on time and just blamed the stairway rule.
#30
No more back packs or bags. Teachers were mad when you didn't have any supplies. What were we supposed to do stuff it all in our shirts or pants? Also as a girl yikes...they did not think that one through I can remember getting in trouble for carrying my purse when the rule initially took place, they eventually lightened it so we could carry small bags.
What do you think ?
ZAPanda 3 years ago
This is the most moronic list of rules I have ever seen. The short summary is: do not poop, do not use your cellphone or laptop, walk in single file on one side of the corridor, keep quiet, wear monastic clothing, wear IDs, do not carry a bag in case it has a gun in it. These rules are ALL a product of a militarised conservative society. They are all quite familiar. When we were under apartheid, apart from the no bags thing, we had similar rules. Why ? Because we were an actual militarised POLICE STATE. Jesus christ america please come into the 1990s. At least the 1990s. We are in 2021, but maybe if you can just exit the 1980s and enter the 1990s, things will get better.
Auntriarch 3 years ago
I'm having trouble with the notion that toilets are a luxury not a necessity. And no, it isn't an American thing, my goddaughter had exactly the same ridiculous problem in Stoke on Trent.
Ryan Deschanel 3 years ago
If stupid rules harm you, dispute them. If they harm the tyrannical moron who implemented them, just let them backfire.
Marco Richter 2 years ago
For no. 7 I've to say that was a very generous rule to begin with. The author was a complete d******d by abusing it
alloutbikes@yahoo.com 2 years ago
After prom school tried to make a rule about girl's shoes for graduation. I said no you should have made the rule before prom so we could plan on one pair of shoes for both. Heavy sigh from student coordinator well what shoes do you have? I said all of them. This isn't about me this is about anyone who can't afford more shoes and doesn't want to make a fuss. They threw out the rule.
ZAPanda 3 years ago
This is the most moronic list of rules I have ever seen. The short summary is: do not poop, do not use your cellphone or laptop, walk in single file on one side of the corridor, keep quiet, wear monastic clothing, wear IDs, do not carry a bag in case it has a gun in it. These rules are ALL a product of a militarised conservative society. They are all quite familiar. When we were under apartheid, apart from the no bags thing, we had similar rules. Why ? Because we were an actual militarised POLICE STATE. Jesus christ america please come into the 1990s. At least the 1990s. We are in 2021, but maybe if you can just exit the 1980s and enter the 1990s, things will get better.
Auntriarch 3 years ago
I'm having trouble with the notion that toilets are a luxury not a necessity. And no, it isn't an American thing, my goddaughter had exactly the same ridiculous problem in Stoke on Trent.
Ryan Deschanel 3 years ago
If stupid rules harm you, dispute them. If they harm the tyrannical moron who implemented them, just let them backfire.
Marco Richter 2 years ago
For no. 7 I've to say that was a very generous rule to begin with. The author was a complete d******d by abusing it
alloutbikes@yahoo.com 2 years ago
After prom school tried to make a rule about girl's shoes for graduation. I said no you should have made the rule before prom so we could plan on one pair of shoes for both. Heavy sigh from student coordinator well what shoes do you have? I said all of them. This isn't about me this is about anyone who can't afford more shoes and doesn't want to make a fuss. They threw out the rule.
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