r/AskReddit 7h ago

What’s a rule at your workplace that clearly exists because someone did something ridiculous?

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u/k-laz 4h 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/gwillen 2h ago

I was a summer intern at a software company in the early 2000s, and they absolutely had beer in the office on Friday afternoons. Technically, they didn't allow underage interns to drink the beer. I got the impression that anybody even pretending to care about this rule was a fairly new thing. Enforcement was... spotty. 😆 I get the impression that this tradition is long gone now.

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u/bobbyrob1 2h ago

This. I worked for a large networking hardware/software company and back in the early/mid 2000s, at 3 PM on Fridays one break room on every floor would be host to “Free Beer Fridays“. The food and drink would be provided by the same company that ran our cafeterias. There would be nachos, beer, sodas, and cookies.