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38 Pointless, Infuriating, And Bizarre Office Rules That Make People Say, ‘Are You Kidding Me?’
You're a functioning adult. You can manage a mortgage, raise a tiny human, and even assemble IKEA furniture without crying (mostly). And yet, you get to work, and a new rule comes down that suggests the company trusts you less than a kindergartener with a fresh box of crayons.
This is the soul-crushing reality of corporate absurdity. An online community asked people to share the most baffling office rule they've ever encountered, and the responses are a hilarious and deeply relatable look at what happens when common sense takes a permanent vacation.
More info: Reddit
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#1
I can't have a key because a previous employee lost their keys. Anyone hired after that person cannot have keys.
If I'm going to be the first employee on the property in the morning, one of the managers will leave a key under the doormat (overnight), rather than allow me to have a key.
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#2
Our mandatory HR trainings repeat at least a dozen times that gentlemen's clubs are not appropriate venues for corporate events. Then the same thing, using the same exact words, is repeated a dozen more times in other mandatory trainings.
It is not surprising at all, but it leaves the impression that someone, probably some VP, did something to necessitate so much repetition of this exact warning. A trillion dollar corporation by the way.
Michael Largey 1 hour ago
It leaves me the impression that the new employees are usually both predictable and male.
#3
“You shouldn’t knit at your desk during your break as it looks unprofessional to your fellow colleagues”.
In a call centre, mostly employing under 25s. Guy on the next team is currently wearing dark shades, hungover to hell and smells like a brewery, but sure it’s my knitting that is the problem….
Many of the most infuriating rules are the ones that have nothing to do with work and everything to do with control, disguised as "professionalism." The online thread was full of these, like the bizarre bathroom policies, where employees need to report their “business” like kindergarteners.
Most of these rules are masked as trying to improve productivity, but it's clear to see it’s all about enforcing a weird, arbitrary standard that slowly chips away at your soul until you're ready to burn the whole place down. Most of the time, you’ll just find yourself asking, “Who cares?!”
#4
"energy drinks aren't professional, it makes the doctors think you don't wanna be here"
Well good. Cuz I definitely don't.
Michael Largey 1 hour ago
"Your whole Payroll Department exists precisely because we don't want to be here."
#5
When I worked in a call centre many years ago, you had a small red flag you had to raise if you needed to go to the toilet. I kidyou not. Well, I tried not to do a number two whilst on shift tbh.
#6
I drink too much water from the cooler, so while everyone else can still use the watercooler you need to bring your own water. also because you drink so much water you use the bathroom too much and we are going to start counting the time you spend in the bathroom and subtracting it from your check.
I was young and quit. I wish I got it in writing and sued them.
The shift to remote work should have been a glorious new era of trust and productivity. The data shows that remote work can boost productivity by up to 77% and drastically lower employee stress. Companies that embrace it save money, and employees are far less likely to quit. You'd think, faced with this mountain of evidence, that companies would lean into this win-win situation.
And yet, some companies responded to this newfound freedom by building a digital prison. It gave rise to a whole new category of absurd policies. We're talking about paranoid surveillance software that tracks your keystrokes, the dreaded "camera-on" mandate for the entire eight-hour day, and rigid lunch break times that are monitored down to the second.
It's a management style that's less about results and more about a desperate need to see you sitting in a chair, looking busy. It's a perfect, self-defeating loop: a system proven to boost morale is dismantled by rules that destroy it, all in the name of "productivity."
#7
At the printing factory I formerly worked at, hey sent a a memo to all of the on floor workers that the all the parking spaces in front of the building were for office personnel only since all the offices were located in the front part. That of course irritated a lot of the workers. Soon after, on all the bulletin boards, the company posted tips about how to exercise and improve your health. One of the first things listed was parking farther back in the parking lot to get extra steps in. The union went to management and kindly reminded them that majority of factory workers basically were on their feet all day doing manual labor and perhaps it might be very beneficial to the office staff to park further away so they could get their steps in since they mostly sit in chairs all day. Parking policy was changed back to first come basis pretty quick.
#8
Leg skin must be covered in a layer of fabric at all times. If you’re wearing a dress you have to wear pantyhose, and even if you are wearing pants and flats, you need to be wearing knee-highs or socks. Literally got a write up for being out of dress code because I didn’t have sheer fabric covering my ankles.
The battle over the office dress code has become a full-blown identity crisis. As Fortune magazine points out, the old, rigid world of suits, ties, and pantyhose is mostly gone, but the new world of "business casual" is a lawless and confusing wasteland. Does a nice t-shirt count? Are sneakers okay if they're clean? This ambiguity has become a playground for micromanagers who make it up as they go.
Has your company banned the color red because a manager thought it was "too aggressive?" Or is there a strict "no open-toed shoes" policy that still applied during a 95-degree heatwave when the air conditioning was broken? It's a desperate attempt to control a workforce that has decided it would rather be comfortable than conform to a dress code written in 1987.
#10
A CPA firm I worked at as a senior tax accountant, our team’s supervising partner required he review outgoing emails before we sent them. I got written up for emailing “thank you” without permission.
#11
Everyone having to eat lunch at the same time, to encourage “team morale”.
#12
Someone stopped by the office on the weekend to pick up something they forgot. New CEO saw them with their shirt not tucked in and went completely insane over it. Now we have a policy about tucked shirts at all times.
For every baffling office rule, there is a ghost. It is the ghost of the legendary chaos agent, who did something so spectacularly ill-advised that management had to create an entire policy just for them. These rules are scars, the lingering evidence of a past workplace disaster. This is the "why we can't have nice things" person, and their legacy is a baffling line in the employee handbook.
You're scrolling through the corporate guidelines, and you see something that stops you in your tracks, like the person in the thread who mentioned their company had a rule explicitly banning the use of a private jet for business travel. You are left to wonder, with a sense of awe and fear, who was this person?
Was it a rogue salesperson who took the concept of an "expense account" to a glorious, new altitude? Was it a secret billionaire intern who genuinely didn't understand why they couldn't just pop over to the London office for lunch? These policies are corporate fossils, the preserved evidence of a single person's glorious, unhinged moment, a quiet monument to the one who truly flew too close to the sun.
#13
“No working from home when you’re sick. You can only take a sick day”
This week I’m sitting at home sick because 3 coworkers who were sick came into the office because they weren’t allowed to WFH. Their work in the office? Sit at a computer and talk on the phone and be in Zoom team meetings.
This is a government job in Vancouver, BC.
Crystal M 1 hour ago
Nurse in the US, the rule is not to come in sick with anything communicable (common sense), however, during the winter holidays when everyone is sick with respiratory viruses, if you call out, you are written up. Make that make sense. Constant Infuenza, RSV, and COVID outbreaks.
#15
Everyone in the accounting dept must come in on saturday even if their work is done because operations and sales are sad that they have to work and feel it is not fair.
At the end of the day, these rules are fun to look at as an outsider, but they are proof of the complete and total breakdown of trust for everyone involved. They are what happens when management stops seeing its employees as capable, creative adults and starts seeing them as a series of potential problems that need to be legislated against.
Whether it’s banning a color, monitoring your bathroom breaks, or creating an eye-in-the-sky policy, the goal is rarely about improving the business. It’s about creating the illusion of control. These rules are a shared, universal groan in the breakroom, a reminder that sometimes the biggest obstacle to getting work done is the work itself.
#16
We were suddenly told we had to tell someone we had to go to the bathroom. A five person office. Needless to say we ignored the order from day one. It was a county government office. Go tell the administration office you made up that rule and we'll see how it goes.
#17
I used to work in the administrative side of one of the parks in Florida. Hurricane is about to come right at us. We get a memo from my boss saying that we will receive updates thru our phone about when the park will re-open and it is MANDATORY for us to be here to help the maintenance crew and custodial staff clean up the park before we re-open. If you miss that day you have to call in beforehand to let them know and you'll lose TWO days of PTO. And if you don't call in beforehand you will be fired. And if you're not here on the day it re-opens, you'll be fired.
So basically don't plan on fleeing the state for you and your family's safety. And if you're without power and your home is flooded your main priority is to let us know and get back to work the next day (as the admin staff we were salaried employees).
And when we helped with the cleanup the maintenance and custodial staff were like '*why are you guys here? This is our job?'*.
#18
You can not charter a private plane. Not even when you fly it yourself. I wish I met that legend that caused that rule.
#20
I got a new, young, inexperienced boss at my last job. Brand new to management. Made it so all call outs had to go directly through him instead of the office manager (me) even though no one could ever reliably get a hold of him. I would still pick up my personal phone when it was called by our seasonal staff, and I got in trouble for that.
One day one of our seasonals didn't show up, and I started asking around the office if anyone has heard from her. I was worried about her safety because she has never no-called, no-showed before. My boss came out, asked me to come into his office, and whispered that she called out that day.
He was a really weird stingy dude who had no business being in management.
#21
In order of priority, we were to use company cars for our visits to clients, then public transport, *then* private cars. There were several problems with that:
1.) At the site I worked at, there were only 2 cars, almost always blocked by the same 2 co-workers.
2.) For insurance reasons, we weren't allowed to take them home, so they also were kind of impractical. All of us co-workers tried to take over clients as close to our homes as possible and I had lots of clients in my village. So I would have lost a lot of time I wouldn't have had bringing that company car back to the site and then getting back home.
3.) Most clients lived where public transport was practically non-existent.
So we all ignored that stupid rule until the company cars were moved to another site.
#22
Not really an official rule but my boss said we all have to say “good morning”to each other everyday because one lady in the office got hurt that certain people didn’t say good morning to her.
#23
Not office but used to work in hospital sterile processing dept. Basically wash and clean all of the instruments. We had tons of them. One night our overnights guy decided to label each and every bin with what was in it. This would have taken a normal person days. He did it in one night. We had label gun taken away and nobody was allowed to use it unless you're a lead or manager. Later found out the dude was using illegal substances. Explained a lot.
#24
Having to yell stranger on the floor when / if a homeless man snuck in to a hundred person call center. AT&T.
#25
1. "Unless it's a life-threatening emergency, you should be coming in. No excuses. And you have to make sure to provide proof of said life-threatening document."
2. "No medicines allowed inside the company. If you're sick, we'll check for approval to see if you can spend an hour in the sick room, but you have to work".
3. "Hold your pee until break. You're costing the client revenue with your non-productive aux selection. (Breaks have to be checked with the TL or SME)."
4. "You get one more No on the survey response, we will put you on offline (meaning the day's hours are not counted and you get docked from your monthly paycheck)."
Need I say more?
#26
When I recently worked in corporate for a major company y'all would know, under the dress/grooming section it was started that women were not to wear ankle socks with skirts. WHAT? .
#27
Only VPs and above could have chairs with arms and cubicle sizes were literally measured and constructed based on your job title. My immediate supervisor had to relocate across the building from us because the only cube they had near us was too big.
#28
At the restaurant I worked for in a 4 Star Marriott, the F&B Director decreed that hourly employees could only eat in the employee cafeteria.
No protein bars, snacks or anything like that could be consumed at the restaurant, you had to walk across the 870 room hotel to the cafeteria.
But we worked eleven hour shifts with no breaks. There was no time to get to the cafeteria, let alone order, sit down and eat. So effectively we were prohibited from eating for eleven hours.
Oh, and the entire management team would routinely eat right in front of us. Sometimes they'd be gracious enough to tell us they left us some, and there'd be a couple slices of pizza with bites missing and a half eaten burger.
We just traded alchol to the kitchen for food when management wasn't around, which was 99% of the time.
#29
Not my workplace, but I have delivered to an office that had a small bit of black text on the glass door: "Packages accepted at mailroom only."
The receptionist would refuse to sign while pointing at the effectively invisible message, and redirect the courier across the elevator lobby & around the corner.
One decently sized sign with an arrow that could not be missed as you got off the lift would have saved a great deal of wear & tear on the poor receptionist.
Or authorize them to sign & have the mailroom clerk clear the basket as they pass the desk.
#30
Not some much office rules but as an RN my hospital thought it would be a great idea to have us go to meetings where we fit together PVC pipes as some sort of BS. Another time they dragged us out in the woods to do a ropes course and I had to pee and ropes guide said I had to ask the group and i said. Nope, Not asking permission to take care of a basic need. I hung out at the bathroom till they were done with swinging around like Tarzan. And no I don't trust my cowokers to catch me.
#31
Overtime can only be done in the office. Previously when we needed to work overtime, we could take our laptops home and get things done.
When I was hired, it was during Covid so we all WFH. Then everyone had to go to the office. Our boss decided that “no one really did much” when they worked from home so all the OT hours we put in were not necessary. Or, we could just drive to the office and work if it was vital.
I told my supervisor I would not be working OT (it wasn’t required but if we didn’t work it, things got way out of hand).
They didn’t like that I pointed out all the salaried people were allowed to keep up with their work by taking their laptops home. It was us hourly wage saps who had to drive to the office to work OT.
Two weeks after the announcement, it was rescinded and “during season” everyone was allowed a few “pre-approved” overtime hours.
#32
I worked at a college in finance and we had a tyrant of a boss who decided we didn’t need office keys, so we had to wait until he got to work to let us in. That lasted about a week because he was late every day. The VP had complaints that the cashier window was opening about a half hour late every day. We got our keys back and he was eventually fired.
#33
I had 136 hours to fill on the schedule between 2 locations and only 4 employees but we weren't busy enough to hire anyone else.
#34
I had a manager require that I ask for permission to go to the bathroom
I have IBS and no one else was required to do this.
Michael Largey 1 hour ago
I had a student with IBS. I gave him a desk by the door and told him "If you have to go, just catch my eye and go. If you can't catch my eye, go anyway." Worked fine.
#35
Before you request a litigation hold from IT you must have approval from legal. Right. Which I get but if you read my signature block? I’m deputy director of legal.
#36
Being told we had to throw food away in a small containers attached to our trash cans. Hardly anyone did it and the few that did found out quickly that these compost containers were not being emptied as promised. Yes, it got stinky fast.
#37
I work for the government. People get weird and twitchy about government paperwork so if members of the public are around, any paper trash (post-it notes, blank envelopes, stuff like that) has to be called “evidence” and it goes in an “evidence bag.” Then we throw it away with the rest of the trash. It feels stupid as hell, but it cuts down on complaints.
#38
After leaving school I joined the military as a weapons engineer, due to health and safety requirements the management had to put up No Smoking signs in the explosives areas, like no kidding, Sherlock!
Day 1 lesson 1, Weapons training, "DO NOT SMOKE AROUND ANY TYPE OF EXPLOSIVES!" That was drilled into us daily, yet some jerk who has never worked with explosives and sits on his tushy all day somewhere in headquarters decides we need signs!
Michael Largey 1 hour ago (edited)
Stupid as such a sign sounds, there are people stupid enough to need it. And when you caught them at it, their defense would be "Well, then someone should have told us!"
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