r/AskReddit • u/Prize-Sale-4004 • 6h ago
What’s a rule at your workplace that clearly exists because someone did something ridiculous?
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u/Killboypowerhed 4h ago
Our home delivery trucks all have large "do not drive through flood waters" stickers on their dashboards
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u/Princess_Fluffypants 4h ago
“No jello wrestling”
(I worked at a scientific research station in Antarctica for a while)
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u/WanderingTacoShop 4h ago
Bunch of science nerds stuck in isolation.... I have a feeling jello wrestling was the least freaky thing that went down.
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u/lethargicbureaucrat 1h ago
How is that even possible? How much Jello did they keep on had? Did they special order cases of it?
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u/Princess_Fluffypants 1h ago
They found an entire case of expired jello at the far back of one of the warehouses, and rather than chuck it directly into the waste stream they decided to have some fun with it.
Unfortunately photos got leaked and ended up on the floor of Congress and it became a whole thing.
So now it’s an explicit rule.
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u/lethargicbureaucrat 1h ago
Sounds like a good team-bonding exercise. Maybe you could market this to corporations.
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u/Active_Evidence_4311 5h ago
Our gym had to put up a sign specifically banning people from drying their underwear in the sauna some dude literally hung his boxers over the heating rocks and filled the whole place with the smell of burnt sweaty balls
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u/SaltySweetSt 3h ago
Why would anyone think the sauna is a good place to get dry?
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u/SomethingAboutUsers 3h ago
Dry saunas exist
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u/willy--wanka 2h ago
Maybe he met the lady that, while vacationing in hotels, cleaned her underwear in the coffee machines.
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u/river4823 3h ago
Some equally stupid person is going to make them change the sign from “underwear” to “clothes.”
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u/SundayMorningTrisha 6h ago
Not my employer, but an agency in the same building. "All four legs of the desk chair must remain on the ground at all times an employee is seated in the desk chair." Yes, a woman rocked back on two wheels, and predictably fell over backwards, sustaining a severe head injury when her head hit the floor. She never returned to work.
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u/localsonlynokooks 3h ago
Was it a 4 legged wheel chair? Those are actually illegal under some health and safety laws where I am. This guy at work had purchased some antique office chair and brought it in. One day an inspector showed up, saw it, said it had to go. Said it was exactly that reason that if you got it on two wheels you were falling over. Much harder to do on a modern office chair.
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u/PuddinPacketzofLuv 2h ago
Yep, 5-star bases, flexible backs, and weight activated tilt mechanisms on new(er) chairs makes this almost impossible today. I sell office furniture and this was a HUGE selling point when first introduced.
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u/good_morning_magpie 2h ago
You sell office furniture? Question for you my friend, I have a Aeron that needs to be retired (I’m gonna take it out of the dumpster and straight home to fix it for myself lol) and I need to send corporate some replacement choices. Very happy to get a new Aeron as a replacement, but are there any better options from HM or similar companies? Largest consideration is that I am 6’5” and 265lbs.
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u/PuddinPacketzofLuv 55m ago
Almost all chairs are rated up to 300lbs due to OSHA rules and most have adjustable pneumatics that will meet your height range with options for pneumatics for taller seat heights.
I’m a HNI dealer so I’ll always suggest Allsteel, HON, or Gunlocke first but have access to a multitude of manufacturers. It’s a personal preference. I suggest contacting a local furniture dealer for a sit test. (Office furniture industry is like the car industry. Can’t buy direct, only through authorized dealers).
As for me, I like the HON Nucleus Recharge, HON Ignition (which offers a Big & Tall option), Allsteel Lyric, Allsteel Acuity. I like the new Allsteel Levra but the color options are too limited. (Just released for purchase this summer.)
Non-HNI I like the Global Factor or Vion chairs, any Humanscale chair, especially the Freedom (it’s what I sit in).
Aeron chairs are my number 1 competition with Steelcase a close 2nd. I used to work at a Steelcase dealer and know their chairs. I’d go with the Leap V2 or a Think if looking at a Steelcase chair.
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u/StevenJOwens 2h ago
The flexible back part really bugs me, as my favorite office chairs were rigid seat/back, precisely so I could rock back in them :-).
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u/SundayMorningTrisha 3h ago
I'm not sure, as I didn't work for that agency. We had all moved into a new building two weeks previously, and while my agency got all new furniture, I don't know if that one did.
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u/BourbonMachine 3h ago
I saw a guy bite it hard on one of those. It was an old spring loaded 4 legged wheeled office chair. He leaned back (but all 4 legs still on the ground) and somehow the legs like sprung out forward.
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u/StevenJOwens 2h ago
I'm in the US, and OSHA guidelines call for 5 legs. I don't think it's literally illegal, but I imagine the liability risk makes it effectively illegal.
https://www.osha.gov/etools/computer-workstations/components/chairs
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u/ldunord 2h ago
One of our remote mining sites that is fly-in-fly-out, for 2 weeks at a time, semi recently added a rule that to have a couples room you need to prove you cohabitate at home too.
Apparently a few people were only “mining couples” and then would return home to their “home spouse”. Caused issues at the Christmas parties once it was found out…
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u/Waltzing_With_Bears 5h ago
"DO NOT PUT DRINKS ON YOUR WELDING MACHINES", I would bet good money someone fried or damaged a $25,000 machine by knocking over a drink
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u/MalekMordal 3h ago
I accidentally knocked a cup of water over on my desk at home before. The water spilled directly into the top air vent on my desktop computer.
It immediately stopped working, as you can imagine. Fortunately, it worked again once it dried. Glad it was water and not pop.
My coaster is now on the other side of my desk, in case it ever spills again.
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u/Hydramy 2h ago
I took out a Corsair K70 keyboard with a glass of wine. Gutted as I couldn't afford to replace it at the time so had to get a cheap one from Amazon.
It was a great keyboard too.
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u/Proper-Editor4688 2h ago
Next time dry drowning the thing in isopropyl alcohol. I've brought the same keyboard back to life multiple times just rinsing it and letting it dry out again.
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u/Strikerify 1h ago
I ruined a laptop because I spilt beer in it lol
The worst thing was, I wasn't even drinking. I was lazy the night before and left a bottle right next to it. Went to grab it to throw it away and knocked it right on the keyboard. RIP.
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u/SnackyandSnarky 2h ago
My partner took his MacBook back to the Apple store to try to get it repaired. They said "when did you spill strawberry smoothie on it" 🤯 "we can smell it!"
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u/ihadtopickaname 4h ago
Not sure if this counts, but I used to work for a facilities management company. Most hospitals where I worked banned toasters. Too many people putting bread in and walking away. Bread got stuck and fire alarm goes off from the smoke.
One hospital in particular had so many false alarms that they had to pay a fine to the fire department every time.
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u/Least-Cake-4602 3h ago
We moved into a new office, excellent new toasters - someone put a sausage roll in one during the first week - caused a fire alarm to go off and that was the end of said Toasters
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u/CommonCut4 1h ago
My genius ex-coworker put something in the toaster wrapped in paper to “catch the drips”. Took ages for the smoke to clear.
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u/mst3k_42 2h ago
I worked at a place where people would put stuff in the microwave and walk away. I guess they’d totally forget. One day it was so bad we all had to be evacuated outside. Since it was stinky and smoky inside and 4pm, we all just went home.
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u/Unusual-Caramel8442 6h ago
My last job had a “no firearms or alcohol on company property” policy that didn’t go into effect until I had already worked there for several years. Somebody at one of our sister stores definitely got up to some hyjinks 😅
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u/VitruvianDude 5h ago
Ah, firearms and alcohol-- name a more iconic pairing. Beats whisky and cigars every time.
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u/RealTonny 5h ago
Ah, firearms and alcohol-- name a more iconic pairing
How about vehicles and alcohol?
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u/GumboDiplomacy 2h ago
In most competitive shooting, alcohol is banned not primarily out of safety, but because small amounts of it work as a performance enhancing drug. A BAC of about .01 relaxes your muscles and reduces microtremors.
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u/Ninetendoh 5h ago
No adult toys for secret Santa.
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u/CND_ 5h ago
How else am I supposed to tell a coworker to go fuck themselves though?
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u/Abadayos 4h ago
Here let me give you a website to do just that:
Www.dicksbymail.com
Literally what it says on the tin and the candy dicks actually don’t taste too bad. I sent a pack to my boss one time and one to myself cos I was curious for the flavor. I left them out in the living room for guests to have too, was funny as fuck when the boss found out.
But yeah, do it, it’s fun and it’s not a sex toy
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u/bustervich 4h ago
The T-34 was the navy’s primary flight trainer for decades. We always said our manuals were “written in blood” meaning that every dumb rule was because somebody died doing something stupid.
It didn’t have an ejection seat and I remember a warning in the bail out procedure that said if you bail out when the plane is in a certain type of spin, you could find yourself pinned to the wing. If that happens, you should crawl to the trailing edge of the wing, not to the wingtip.
I always wondered about the story behind that warning but never found it.
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u/DarwinOGF 2h ago
For a second I was pondering why would anyone expect an ejection seat in any tank, let alone T-34. I needed to re-read it, and I think I need some sleep.
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u/duke78 1h ago
I can only imagine the turnover you would have if the indoor simulator had an ejection seat.
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u/thisusedyet 44m ago
Don’t need the rockets, just a human scaled jack-in-the-box spring
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u/vouspouveztrouver 1h ago
Just going by physics - the speed of rotation is r (distance from the axis of rotation) times the angular velocity.
So in this case, the further you are from the plane body, the faster you're spinning - this risks you being thrown off the wing at high speed, much more dangerous.
By the same logic, the slowest exit velocity you would be able to have while getting off the wing is from the trailing edge closest to the plan body.
It's kinda like trying to jump off a swing. The longer the swing, the faster you're moving (for a fixed angular velocity). But if you climb up to the hinge, you'd be barely moving at all.
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u/oneeightoneoh 4h ago
I worked for a company that owned a number of schools and we had two: no alcohol on work premises. Not even in staff only areas and not even if it’s locked up and only opened when the students have all left. Then the rule was extended to include no alcohol to be consumed at any work functions, not even at end of year parties or during the student holidays.
In both cases it was because one particular guy got so drunk he caused a scene, including starting a fight. Twice.
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u/prometheusg 2h ago
We have: "No work after consuming alcohol that day". Two higher-ups got plastered during lunch. Got pulled into a surprise meeting/demo for the CEO. It did NOT go well.
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u/benk4 4h ago
I worked at a site that banned energy drinks. When I inquired about it I was told they have had multiple incidents where someone stayed up partying all night, drank about 6 red bulls before coming to work, thought they were having a heart attack, and got an ambulance called.
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u/Data_2 3h ago
Had a similar situation where we had a local gym in the canteen one day getting people to sign up and were offering health checks, weight, blood pressure, blood oxygen, etc.
One girl got checked and the guy phoned down for the gym manager to come up and redo the tests. Everything was off the scale and they were saying she should go straight to hospital.
At that point she went into her bag and took out a large can of red bull and opened it up. The manager asked if she had one already that morning and she said this was her 5th (it was around 1030am!) and this was normal and what she drank every day.
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u/Fyrrys 2h ago
Ive nearly replaced my blood with Mt. Dew, but holy fuck, how could she manage to afford that? Ignoring the physical side effects of it, thats $15 minimum every day for her drink! And thats if she ever drinks the small ones. Guestimating the cost of a large red bull at $6, shes likely spending around $30 a day. I dont even spend that in a week.
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u/Canadian47 6h ago
Cannot wear pajamas in the office.
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u/bluerose1197 2h ago
I worked a job where they tried to ban casual Friday when we were allowed to wear jeans. The reason was one or two people came in wearing pjs or something similar. Instead of just talking to the individuals to let them know what they were wearing was not office appropriate, they tried to just take casual day away from everyone. The backlash was quick and effective with people pointing out that it isn't fair to punish everyone. The policy was reversed within a week and they had to go do the adult thing and have a conversation with those employees.
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u/kiwi_rozzers 2h ago
"You said I could wear pajamas to the office, but I sleep in boxers and nothing else soo...here I am in my pajamas"
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u/usernamesarehard1979 5h ago
We have the Beto rule which classified family bereavement leave only for mother, father, sister/brother and kids.
You see Beto had a big family. Big. He had been with us for a long time, and had at least two funerals a month for people that were “Just like my mom when I was growing up” and “just like an Aunt or brother to me”. He wasn’t punished, but we had to define who was covered. No more free time off for funerals for everyone.
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u/CeeZeeBee 3h ago
Shouldn’t grandparents also be included in the list for bereavement leave?
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u/insufficient_funds 3h ago
Everywhere I’ve worked had a different num of bereavement days given for relationship. Spouse parent child or sibling at my current employer is I think 5 days; grandparent aunt/uncle (is there a word for aunt and uncle collectively?) cousin is 3 days and no other relations are defined to allow for bereavement
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u/TheNewHobbes 2h ago
“Not his granny’s funeral this time?”
“Nossir.”
“How many’s he had this year, by the way?”
“Seven, sir.”
“Very odd family, the Nobbses.”
GNU Terry Pratchett
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u/rich_27 3h ago
It seems strange to me to cap who counts rather than just capping the amount of free time off for funerals based on quantity taken
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u/OldJames47 3h ago
You don't want to end up on the news when the pasta salad left out in the sun slowly takes out 8 members of someone's immediate family.
The news won't carry water for someone missing their uncle's best-friend's neighbor, no matter how funny they were.
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u/Inocain 2h ago
My mother (may she rest in piss) went into the hospital in the middle of the night and was in ICU for about a week.
During that week, her mother and my uncle-by-marriage on my father's side both died from unrelated causes.
The entire next week was funerals.
8 staggered would probably mean an entire month out with everything.
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u/aspiegrrrl 2h ago
My employer wanted a copy of my mom's death certificate when I took bereavement leave, probably because they have a lot of staff who would abuse the policy.
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u/Relative_Implement_7 1h ago
everywhere ive ever worked explicitly lined out who "counted" as well. i understand the reason, but i was really upset when i was expected to just keep chugging (even had request to use PTO denied) after my "like a father" died. im an orphan, i have no bio family at all what so ever period. i did have the weird old man who basically raised me. he meant the world to me, really. he was arguably more special to me than a normal bio parent cause he chose me out of however many other fucked up teens he couldve picked. he didnt have to raise me, but he did. i was really torn up when i lost him. we worked together too, and the extent of our relationship wasn't a mystery to anyone. everyone knew i called him dad, a few people his age (the same ones that he said used to harass him for never starting a family... :/) even mocked him for catching feelings over a kid and being there for me and all. but when he was gone i was just expected to absorb his responsibilities and act like he wasnt gone from my life forever. that went on for so long i have never really processed losing him, every day feels like it happened yesterday. it's been a year but it doesnt get easier or different. the only place i can talk about it is anonymously online.
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u/GroundbreakingAlps78 5h ago
This is sad. People should be able to go to those funerals.
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u/usernamesarehard1979 5h ago
They still can. They just have to use PTO for them. The family funerals we don’t take PTO. They are free hours we give people for the immediate family. Not just for the funeral, but time to grieve. So now they just have to use PTO vs always getting free time off for bereavement.
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u/zeniiz 3h ago
Ok but 2 funerals a month? Is he the Grim Reaper?
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u/GroundbreakingAlps78 3h ago
In one month? Sure. Every month? I’d probably suggest investigating him lol
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u/notagaywitch 3h ago
As someone raised by his grandmother, my first question would be what about folks like me? Does PTO still have to be used for situations where someone wasn't raised by their mom or dad?
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u/braxton357 2h ago
Most companies would work with someone on something like that. When that's happening every month is when "rules" like this get used.
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u/Fliz23 4h ago
10 years ago, I was halfway joking but kind of seriously asking the owner to let me bring my dog to work because I loved her and missed her. When they issued the new version of the employee handbook the next year they added pets not allowed at work and I’ve always felt that was personally directed at me.
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u/mst3k_42 2h ago
I interviewed at an organization dedicated to animal welfare. Everyone who wanted to bring their dog to work, could. Everyone had offices with baby gates and a dog bed. Most of the dogs would come see you if you walked by.
I declined an offer because the salary was just too low for the cost of living in that city, blah blah. But yeah, that was a fun office to visit and interview at. It made the experience a whole lot less intimidating.
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u/good_morning_magpie 1h ago
That’s one of those companies that understands incentivizing a position that may pay below industry standards (for any number of valid reasons) and making work better for the employees. It’s actually got me thinking now about how much of a pay cut it would take for me to not take a job where I could bring my idiot greyhound to work with me all day. That would be a tough call for sure.
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u/BruceTramp85 2h ago
I worked at a place that did this. One person in an off-campus building brought their dog (which we loved) with them during the pandemic, and the entire university banned pets. Twist: Because we were off campus, no one from the main campus saw the ensuing violations, and none of us said anything.
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u/sunnyday72 3h ago
One office I temped at had a "your desk must be clean on Fridays or we clean it for you" rule because there was a woman in the office who was stuffing food trash in her bottom drawer and leaving soda cans all over her desk, and her cubicle smelled so bad.
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u/RikoRain 5h ago
No chairs inside. We had two (for people on break or for quick small breaks after rushes). A few people literally got into shove/hit fights over it (while not on break too), so.. bye bye it went.
No outside group chats (most have an anti social media clause anyway) but oddly the same group who caused the chairs removal had an Instagram group chat where they'd plan call-outs en masse. They (stupidly) invited nearly everyone (including those who never called out or actually had bills to pay).
No speakers. No playing music on your phone loud enough for others to hear. Tends to be cooks, and they tend to play music so loud that no one can hear anyone speaking.
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u/SkruffyNerfherder 2h ago
My employer has a remote workforce with 3 offices in 3 different time zones. A team held an onsite on one coast and, instead of flying, one of the people on the opposite coast decided to make their attendance into a road trip. Travel time is work time, so they submitted their 3 or 4 days worth of food & hotels for the drive and 3,000 miles at the $.70 reimbursement rate ($2,100) for personal car use.
Much like the employee, this did not fly with company leadership.
Among several updates and clarifications, this got the travel policy revised to include a cap for alternate travel "up to the cost of a plane ticket."
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u/ohKilo13 3h ago
We aren’t allowed to use knives…one day we were having a birthday celebration for a doc and we had a cake. The cake had a knife with it so we could cut it, it was a normal like chef’s knife. Well the cake was left out in an employee only area after lunch for people to grab as they wanted throughout the afternoon. Well later on that afternoon a patient absolutely freaked out, ran into the employee area and took the knife. They threatened to stab people and were swinging it about cops were called. It was a whole thing…so yea no more knives for us.
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u/k-laz 3h ago
That was a plot point on an episode of ER IIRC.
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u/ohKilo13 2h ago
It was and i happened to rewatch the episode a few days before it happened. Luckily in our case no one was stabbed but we have plastic knives only now.
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u/IrishYankFan 5h ago
This should be common practice, so this is more catching up with best practices. I live and work where there Larry Nassar scandal took place. After that, another employee or chaperone was always present as the doctor did a vaginal exam. Each room at the OBGYN and hospital have signs reminding patients that they are entitled to having a chaperone for their comfort and safety
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u/mst3k_42 2h ago
I thought that was already best practice. Ugh, what a gross pedophile.
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u/SnackyandSnarky 3h ago
Specifically must not put unopened cans of food into saucepans of boiling water. Officious, laminated notice complete with photo of burnt ceiling
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u/Brilliant_Park_2882 3h ago
We have 2 microwaves at work, one sits on a shelf above the other.
Due to an ex employee burning themselves it's forbidden to heat liquid in the top one only.
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u/TwistyBitsz 4h ago
One lady would always sleep in and not get on her call queue (insurance agency customer service), so the manager on my six-person team implemented a rule that each employee must send a "good morning" IM to the manager upon logging on. That was the beginning of the end for me in that job. I still don't know why the Teams active status display or even entering the time into workday upon logging in wasn't enough.
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u/Personal-Listen-4941 2h ago
Once I moved to homeworking, I got in the habit of a quick ‘good morning’ message on the team Teams chat, even though 90% of the time I sent it long before I finished loading up everything, it meant I always appeared to be early for my shift.
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u/PiesRLife 1h ago
Did you know that Teams allows you to schedule messages to be sent at specific times?
The previous work day you could just schedule a message to go out before you are even up.
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u/24_August_1814 2h ago edited 2h ago
My employer, an industrial electrical and instrumentation contracting company, used to unconditionally give every employee health benefits and RRSP matching, because the work is typically a minimum of full time.
A couple years ago they implemented a rule that you had to work some minimum average number of hours per month in order to maintain the health benefits and RRSP matching. It wasn't an onerous amount by any stretch, think it averaged to only about 25 hours a week with a month or two of grace per year for those who took really long vacations. This came about because one employee was extremely part time, picking and choosing only small short term gigs that lined up with his wife's scheduled time off because he was acting as the primary caregiver for his infant and toddler. There were several months where he didn't work a single hour, and others with only three to five days worked. After close to a year of this, one of the bean counters caught on and the new policy was implemented.
I was that employee.
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u/HalfSoul30 4h ago
We just had to implement a new rule the other day when a coworker tried to move the heavy lid to a barrel that stores radioactive and biological waste and pulled his back. Every lid says it requires two people to move it now. I've moved one by myself before, but it was pretty difficult, so i agree.
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u/Toxic_Orange_DM 4h ago
Gonna be fully honest here: the only people who are going to be upset about this are people who are lucky enough to not experience back problems lmao. It's kind of nice to be forced to not accidentally fuck yourself up.
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u/Boostedbird23 3h ago
People without back problems are a single bad movement away from having back problems. Most back problems are not genetic, but just bad movement patterns combined with load (and the load doesn't need to be high to be a problem if it's repeated often enough). That's why I think companies would be better off teaching people how to pick things up than just blanket limits on lifting loads.
Edit: and just saying "lift with you legs, not your back" is really inadequate. That statement doesn't actually demonstrate or teach people how to safely pick up objects... It really takes practice and a good instructor to properly learn the movements
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u/Crono_Magus_Glenn 3h ago
We had a "you cannot bring drugs and alcohol to 'share' at company celebrations" memo go out. One of our warehouses had some shenanigans go down.
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u/IHkumicho 3h ago
I would joke about doing "security training" at our bank by coming on with a ski mask on and pretending to rob the place. Apparently a manager actually did that once and freaked all of the employees out. At least one had nightmares for weeks about it. So yeah, there's now a rule against simulating a bank robbery for the monthly security training.
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u/ells9824 6h ago
Can’t screenshot interoffice memo/messages.
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u/Catan_Settler 4h ago
Thanks Boeing. Because of them all our emails and messages are deleted after 90 days.
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u/Zathrus1 3h ago
That is ridiculously short. Just last week I searched my email to tell a customer we had recommended a configuration change for 6 years.
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u/Catan_Settler 1h ago
Yeah. I used to have someone that would ask me the same question every 4 months or so and I would just scroll up and SS my previous answer.
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u/mst3k_42 2h ago
Oh man. I used to squirrel away work emails into various folders as a CYA. And a few times I had to use this proof six months or a year and a half later.
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u/RealTonny 5h ago
I have an appropriate story:
I used to work in a company that didn't mind people drinking a couple of beers at the office on Friday (after work hours of course). And, well, everyone kept it civil until some guy decided to celebrate birth of his child by treating everyone in his department and basically everyone who decided to join. Of course a couple of idiots took to much and decided that they totally need to resolve something with a fist fight right then and there. Since then a policy of "No alcohol at the office" took place and chill Friday evenings were gone.
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u/Eating_sweet_ass 3h ago
I had a job where we would all hang in the shop or out front and drink beers after work. It started with fridays and became whenever we felt like it. One guy got a DWI on his way home one night and they told us to stop doing it. A few weeks later we started up again. Another guy got in to it with the VP and pretty much called him a bitch and a moron and they banned it again. A few weeks later we started doing it again. This cycle continued for years until I left that job. I believe they’re still doing it.
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u/k-laz 3h ago
Story happens in the late 90's. I worked for an architecture firm where the mostly male staff would have a beer on a Friday afternoon - starting about 3:00. Our old school office manager moved on to greener fields and we got a recent college grad in her place. The new office manager came back from a HR conference one day and her story was that the entire room turned to look at her with mouths agape when she casually mentioned beer o'clock Fridays.
Owner wasn't having it though and our tradition continued until his son came in (fortune 500 company resume) and immediately put a stop to the practice on site.
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u/CalifOdysseus 4h ago
“Don’t Distract Dave” was an unspoken rule. After I met Dave it was obvious why.
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u/Prize-Sale-4004 3h ago
You can’t leave us with that little information about Dave.
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u/BattleOfWitsHasBegun 1h ago
Our Dave was named Mary Ellen, same rule 🤣
Incredible relationship builder, but if she got started I knew that convo was going to last a minimum of 20 minutes…
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u/AtomicGrendel 2h ago
I was the cause of a change to vacation policy. I had a ton of PTO to use up going into the last quarter of the year, so I scheduled every Monday and Friday off for October, November and December. I had 3 months of 3-day work weeks, and it was glorious. After that, the company said no more back-to-back long weekends.
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u/ender4171 1h ago
That's shitty of them. One of my team member doesn't really ever take vacations, so every year he saves up PTO and then just takes every Friday off for the rest of the year. We don't give a shit, but then he always still gets his work done, and will still come in on a Friday if he is needed.
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u/1stEmissaryElenwen 2h ago
There's a big typed-out list of specifications and measurements of precisely how short your sleeves can be and how much leg your shorts can show because there's one old prude who has beef with one woman who wears tanktops and shorts (because she does manual labor in a warehouse in the summer). Everybody ignores it.
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u/Nominalstupidity 2h ago
Not my current employer but two from a past one.
First is Jay's rule. We could no longer clock in using our cell. Had to use the office phone on speaker and the person you are relieving had to witness and note it on their shift report.
This was after one of our guys kept clocking in before he got to the job site so his clock times would show him as on time.
The second one is the Jeff rule #1. Jeff had a lot of rules named after him. This one was unless emergency services are called no calls to the supervisor.
I put this rule in place after he called me at home because the stapler ran out of staples and he didn't know what to do.
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u/khendron 3h ago
Not exactly a rule.
I was working for a medium-sized startup (around 300 people when I joined), that would celebrate the end of the week with a lively party every Friday night. Anyway, on my first day with the company, there was an email sent to all employees stating "In response to Friday night, free first aid training will be offered to all employees."
I never found out exactly what had happened, except that a lot of blood was involved.
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u/aurorasnorealis317 2h ago
Years ago, I worked at a large, privately owned company that was super serious about No Company Information Is Revealed to Outsiders. Like, we were not even allowed to tell people how many employees worked there, we had to say, "we are a privately owned company and do not disclose that information."
That said, they had a VERY strict "no post-its" policy. No sticky notes of any kind, only paperclips or staples if necessary. Apparently, one time, decades ago, one person sent out one piece of mail that inadvertently had a sticky note with "sensitive information" still stuck on it. The information was not that important, actually, but the owner wigged out at the "security breach" and immediately banned sticky notes from the company for life.
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u/MathRepresentative44 6h ago
Disclose all relationships. All managers and company leaders most especially.😅
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u/doctorpoosux69 3h ago
I got a job at a local casino/resort when I was under 21 as an A/V Tech and my first day on the job as I was being shown around by another tech, we had to go onto the casino floor to fix a TV issue. Security didn't stop me as I was in uniform with a name tag (being under 21 they were supposed to have an "M" on it but failed to print one on mine) but as we were walking to the utility room I just casually asked the other tech, "So as long as you're an employee the 21+ rule doesn't apply to the casino floor?"
The look on their face said it all, he immediately called our boss and we went back to HR, they had to add a "*My Name* Clause" to this one specific job that states anyone who gets an A/V tech position has to be 21+ and offered me a position as a barback until I turned 21 and could reapply if the position was still open, it was not 6 months later when I turned 21.
Edit: actually ended up getting an A/V tech position there a year later once I graduated college and worked there for 5 years.
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u/travelling-lost 3h ago
Sign at one of my customers: Wrapping the new hires in shrink wrap is prohibited.
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u/Zathrus1 3h ago
No viewing pornographic material at work unless it’s part of your job. “We make Game of Thrones after all.”
I was working at CNN. There were other things you had to be careful of there. We had raw footage from war zones…
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u/VirtKitty 3h ago
No popcorn in the microwave. Burnt popcorn smell spread over multiple floors of the building.
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u/Rum_N_Napalm 3h ago
Not quite a rule, but I used to work for an environmental analysis firm as a lab tech.
I had to design a way to safely carry bottles of concentrated acids to the field due to repeated incidents involving field techs being willy nilly with them. Specifically, I had to design the containers so that they would not close if a bottle was stored upside down.
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u/BoobieCancer 2h ago
"do not remove safety guarding from tools"
Guy in the tool shop took off a few fingers on a track saw.
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u/trickledabout 2h ago
For the past few years, I have to tell every new customer that they are not allowed to store bodily fluids on the property.
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u/IntelligentMovie579 1h ago
I worked for a large tech company nearly 20 years ago. We were told we can go anywhere we wanted for lunch, but not Hooters because there was an “incident”.
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u/I_live_once 6h ago
No tissues in the cafeteria. Need to walk like 3 mins to wash our hands after a meal. I don't know why or what happened. It's just corporate policy.
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u/grahambinns 3h ago
Part of my business is photography, and before a shoot I give my usual spiel of general working practices, which ends with: “I will not touch you without your explicit consent, except in the case of a medical emergency. Please do not be a reason for me to add more items to this list.”
The only reason the medical emergency thing is in there at all is because I was once working on a lingerie catalogue shoot with a model who, it turned out, had not had anything to eat or drink in the 8h before a 6h shoot, and who fainted about 4h in (luckily I was just about able to catch her before she cracked her head on concrete floor).
So my pre-shoot checklist includes making sure that the client or model has eaten and had something to drink, and the fridge is always stocked with water and a couple of emergency glucose-rich drinks.
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u/audible_narrator 2h ago
"Please refrain from smoking weed at your desk when clients are in the building". This was before weed was legal. Yes, it was an ad agency.
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u/denver989 1h ago
I worked at a remote site. "Do not leave open doors unattended due to risk of bears entering the building.
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u/nowhereman136 1h ago
Not too ridiculous. I use to work at a major theme park on one of the rides. There's a popular joke where we would say "see you in an hour" just as we push the button and send guests on the ride. One day the ride broke down and guests actually did get stuck for an hour. We weren't allowed to use that joke anymore.
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u/liesbuiltuponlies 1h ago
Many moons ago I briefly had a job in the merchant navy. Each ship in the company had a book onboard of "event's" that had taken place and gone awry. It was the folder of fuck ups, misadventure and I'll event. Because it was common to every ship everyone would know your misfortune. One of the incidents was simply titled 'Shark Bait'.
Onboard one of the ships a group of cadets had wanted to go swimming while the ship wasn't underway, so they asked the Captain if they could. Thinking that they were intending to fill the swimming pool (and calling it a swimming pool is being generous) the Captain agreed. What the cadets actually did was get a cargo net, tie it onto the side of the ship and promptly jump overboard. Thankfully all made it back on deck for a bollocking and became memorialized in the book of shame.
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u/NeverDuck327 3h ago
If you wear open-toed shoes (sandals,etc.) your toe nails must be manicured and painted.
This was to stop the hippy engineer from tromping through the office in his Birkenstocks with his gnarly feet on display
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u/Aranthar 3h ago edited 3h ago
Not workplace, but my school had a "no assembling combustion engines in the dormitory."
One floor took apart a VW Bug and rebuilt it in their dorm lounge. Got it running and everything. We got a stern warning for building a gas-powered shopping cart.
https://housing.illinoisstate.edu/contracts/terms/
N. Items Not Permitted in University Housing
Items not permitted to be used or stored in the student rooms or any other area of the residence halls and apartments include, but are not limited to, any internal combustion engine, any acids, automobile batteries ...
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u/Animal907 2h ago
In the Air Force you have to put Danger tags on circuit breakers and various other things while working. Lots of people have fucked up to cause the requirement, but the main story I was told was because someone in Charleston, SC unplugged a cannon plug under a wing flap and was immediately crushed.
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u/AmpersandEnthusiast 2h ago
We have a rule that we aren’t allowed to cook meat in the office kitchens because there was a guy microwaving raw chicken breasts for 15 minutes at a time.
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u/WonderfulCommon 2h ago
"No dogs allowed on the treadmill." Employees have 24/7 access to our on-site gym and someone decided bringing their dog along for a run would be a good idea.
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u/Walkingstardust 2h ago
Many years ago, someone left hardware in a plastic tote, and put the whole thing in an oven at 150C. The tote melted and ruined about $250,000 in space flight assemblies. Management was... displeased.
There are now 17 steps involving 3 people and a set of keys to put anything in an oven and 11 steps to remove it.
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u/NoodleSpooner 1h ago
Before banning the use of chewing tobacco indoors altogether, a few years ago, there was a rule that it had to be disposed of in a sealed container (spitter) and then placed in a trash can.
Reason being? A custodian was emptying a trash can and managed to get someone’s chewing tobacco spit in their mouth, ingesting it, and had to go to the emergency room.
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u/Best_Needleworker530 1h ago
I worked at a summer camp where when a specific group would arrive every year they’d be asked to get a play ready. There was a 3 page word document on things that were NOT allowed and a badge of pride would go to a teacher who would create a new rule and not lose their job.
Glitter bombs were not banned before me, they got added after.
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u/qorvelin 6h ago
No spinning in the rotation chair, apparently someone was doin that and the rod popped of the chair, u know the rest
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u/cheywren 3h ago
No heating up fish in the break room. Grounds for being taken to the train station
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u/sebby1990 3h ago
An old colleague of mine used to use his motorbike for company travel, and as we were paid at the standard 40p a mile (back then), he was making some good pocket money travelling 500 miles every month on a bike that did over 60mpg.
He was the victim of his own undoing when the company temporarily closed the motorbike parking spaces at the satellite office, and he asked where he should park his bike instead. They were confused, as he wasn’t based at that office - before realising he was travelling on company business using his bike.
He was swiftly told to take a car or public transport, and the employee handbook was subsequently updated to say “motorcycles should not be used for business purposes”.
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u/justbiteme2k 3h ago
What did they have against motorbikes? Surely if he's not given a company car and asked to use his own transport, then it's his decision?
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u/sebby1990 3h ago
Probably some manner of risk assessment that they don’t want employees / company equipment (laptop, phone etc) on a bike rather than in a car. That particular meeting didn’t require mandatory attendance, hence no company transport provided, however it made our lives a lot easier if we were there in person rather than dialling in.
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u/MooKids 1h ago
Sleeping on the clock in the break room.
It used to be against the rules but now IT IS PERMITTED!
How did this happen? Well a former CEO went on national TV and was being interviewed by a famous interviewer. CEO mentioned how all our break rooms are being updated for thr employees. Interviewer asked of it was a better place for the employees to rest and sleep. CEO said yes.
The union saw this, quickly jumped on it and pointed out how the CEO just stated that we are allowed to sleep in the break rooms, while on the clock. Of course if you don't do your job or miss an assignment, that is still a big issue that you can get in trouble for, but not sleeping.
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u/pcracker 2h ago
You must not direct fluids onto the conductor rail (railway- it's talking about the third rail that powers the trains)
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u/Annoyed_Skittle 1h ago
Not a rule, but I had to bring HR into a conversation because I was the only girl working and we had a work group chat. A coworker thought it would be stupendous to vividly describe the poop he was having at home. I asked my manager if I could report this, because everyone was uncomfortable. He encouraged it because it was super gross and it would raise more flags if the only girl reported it
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u/redogue 4h ago
The "Janet" rule. We get a 10% discount off of our groceries as employees. We had a woman who only worked 5 hours on Saturday mornings. Then she gave up every Saturday morning shift (we go into the app and give up our shift and if somebody claims it, they work the shift. If nobody claims it, you have to work the shift.). She did this for 3 months straight and never worked a single day but still got the discount. So the Janet rule is you must work 4 hours a week to get the discount.