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Whether we like it or not, there are many rules we have to live by. From laws to regulations to unwritten customs everyone should be aware of, they surround us everywhere we go. But while some of us are team players who follow these suggestions and hope they will serve us well, others believe they should be broken, bent, stretched, or at least somewhat creatively interpreted.

However, there’s a whole other category of people who decide to spread a bit of chaos into our lives and almost beg for others to enforce brand new restrictions for their actions. So recently, Redditor TheBlackTemplar125 decided to find out what these troublemakers did to achieve such outcomes and raised a question on Ask Reddit: "What rules were put in place because of you?"

People rolled up their sleeves and delivered over 16K responses full of hilarious examples and the stories behind them. We have combed the thread and picked out some of the best replies that stood out from the crowd. Continue scrolling, upvote your favorite ones, and don't forget to share your own experiences with us in the comments!

#1

30 Troublemakers Reveal What Rules Wouldn't Exist If It Wasn't For Them Military school I went to. After me, an adult is required to check the parade cannon to ensure it is clear, and closely monitor the students as they load it.

There is to never be another flaming rubber chicken flying over the parade grounds ever again. Circa 1989.

RjBass3 , Todd Van Hoosear Report

#2

30 Troublemakers Reveal What Rules Wouldn't Exist If It Wasn't For Them In middle school i would use sharpies to tattoo myself, other kids thought it was cool so i started charging $1 per drawing wherever they wanted. Principal found out and after i wouldn’t stop, she put a ban on sharpies for the entire school. even the teachers couldn’t bring them in. i’m a tattoo artist now.

Orbitalconfusion , Nihal Demirci Erenay Report

#3

I got the Ryan’s Steak House buffets in Louisville, KY to put baby changing stations in the men’s bathrooms back in the 90’s.

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It's no secret that craving for independence and autonomy is almost wired into us from a young age. After all, one of the very first words we learn in life is "no." But while it can serve us well and help us lead a fulfilling life, it can also awaken the inner rebel within us to loudly protest any request that comes our way. To learn more about our urge to revolt and refuse to take orders from others, we reached out to Dr. Simon Rego, Chief of Psychology at Montefiore Medical Center/Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

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"It’s not that people don’t like being told what to do," he told Bored Panda. "It’s more about whether what they are being told to do aligns with their particular 'rules' (i.e., beliefs) about things." The licensed clinical psychologist explained that the closer these demands line with our own set of "rules," the less bothersome it feels. However, he added that when others require us to do things that clash with our own belief system, it tempts us to act out (i.e., break the rules), which could potentially get us into trouble.

#4

30 Troublemakers Reveal What Rules Wouldn't Exist If It Wasn't For Them School dress code. Girls must wear skirts. We lived in the country. Kids had to walk a half mile on a dirt road to catch the bus. Told the school that in cold weather my girls would wear warm clothing including pants. The changed the dress code.

Hogh school wouldn’t let my daughter take auto shop. I talked to the school. They let her in and the following year auto shop was open to all.

These incidents occurred in the 1960’s

Free-Cartographer-26 , billow926 Report

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Kathryn Baylis
Community Member
1 year ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

When I was in 6th grade, in 1971-1972, mini skirts were still in style, and we wore them with knee socks. But when it was really cold, our legs just froze. Now, back then elementary school was still first through sixth grades (junior high was seventh to ninth, and high school was tenth to twelfth). As sixth graders, we were the oldest in the school, so set the style for the younger kids. Being fed up with the dress code forbidding girls to wear pants, all the sixth grade girls decided to break it, and designated a day when we would ALL wear pants in protest. That day came, our legs were nice and warm in pants, the school administrators realized the world was not going to come to and end because girls weren’t wearing skirts, and that part of the dress code was broken. My first act of civil disobedience (but far from last, as I still protest against anything I consider unjust), and it was a heady experience!

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#5

30 Troublemakers Reveal What Rules Wouldn't Exist If It Wasn't For Them As a kindergartner I once fell asleep in the bus. When I woke up the bus was in the garage and I had to yell to get someone to get me out.

So to this day every bus driver in my school district needs to walk to the back of the bus and check every seat before they park the bus.

Seems like a good rule to have.

pikkdogs , Ant Rozetsky Report

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Dan Padgett
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I did this as an adult. Worked a night shift and fell asleep on the bus home (about an hour away). Woke up in the depot. The driver was nice enough to drive me the 15 miles home.

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#6

30 Troublemakers Reveal What Rules Wouldn't Exist If It Wasn't For Them Back in the day a radio station had a weekly trivia contest. The prize was a free pizza and movie rental.

Somehow my mom figured out which book they were using for the trivia questions. She bought it and memorized all the answers.

Each week we would call in immediately. Sometimes we were the first but even if we weren’t it didn’t matter because other people were usually just guessing. We won almost every time.

Even though we changed up who would actually make the call they eventually figured out we were all from the same household. So they made it a rule you couldn’t win if your family had already won in the last month or whatever.

Up till then, we enjoyed a lot of free pizzas.

cavendar , Kristina Bratko Report

According to Dr. Rego, if it’s a mild clash with a less important belief, "we may feel a mild emotion (annoyance). If a bigger clash with a more important belief, we may feel a more intense emotion (irritation, anger, rage)." He thinks that the cause for these behaviors is mostly related to how strongly and rigidly we hold our views. For example, "How important is the belief and how flexible are we with the idea that our beliefs are the 'right' ones and the 'only' ones that matter."

Psychologists call this need to revolt a psychological reactance. Essentially, this feeling emerges from our brain’s reaction when there’s a threat to our freedom or any restrictions to our lifestyle. It is especially noticeable when new guidelines are put in place, whether at home, school, or work, often leaving us upset and frustrated. Sometimes, when our psychological reactance gets out of control, we can find ourselves in the middle of heated fights with coworkers and arguments with loved ones, which can create even more troubling problems.

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#7

30 Troublemakers Reveal What Rules Wouldn't Exist If It Wasn't For Them In history class in high school, there was about 10 of us really close friends. We would take every opportunity to make “your mom” jokes. A couple months into class the teacher made us sign a “treaty” promising to stop making fun of each other’s moms. We signed it, and started making fun of each other’s dads.

MoreMegadeth , Shawnee D Report

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KJ
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Good workaround. I can just image the teacher sighing heavily as they give up.

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#8

30 Troublemakers Reveal What Rules Wouldn't Exist If It Wasn't For Them No sign language during silent lunch punishment

My lunch period was so loud we got put on silent lunch for over a month straight. I decided the only clear solution was to teach my entire table sign language so we could still talk without getting in trouble. Apparently it was "unfair" to the kids who didn't know how to sign, so we had to stop.

future-unperson , SHVETS production Report

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KJ
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

What a stupid rule to enforce, sign language should be taught to all kids, useful knowledge to have.

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#9

“No bouncy balls in the bathrooms.”

In middle school we had a school store that sold supplies and these tiny bouncy balls (I still don’t know why).

The bathrooms in this school were narrow and made of brick from floor to ceiling. I discovered that if you threw a bouncy ball in the bathroom as hard as you can it would bouncy until the end of time. Get 3-4 of your buddies in the bathroom with a ball of their own, you now have an epic game of life and death. It became the most popular sport the school has ever seen. People were even placing bets.

When one kid had to explain that his bruises didn’t come from his parents my operation was shut down.

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While it’s important to recognize when our rebellious side is acting out, it is okay to believe strongly in things, Dr. Rego argued. However, if you want to become better at handling your turbulent feelings, he suggested it would be helpful to be flexible with your way of seeing things. "In other words, it’s possible that many different beliefs can exist at the same time, without any of them being right or wrong. The more we are able to understand this, the less we will get upset when people don’t share our beliefs and the more willing we may be to consider someone else’s opinion when being told to do something," he told Bored Panda.

"We all have our own rules based on how we were raised and how we’ve experienced life. It’s much easier to manage our emotions by being flexible with our own beliefs than to try to force others to change their beliefs or assume that everyone sees things the way we do," Dr. Rego added.

#10

I used to work for a company that had flex hours, you could work all you want but no overtime. So I would work 4-10 hour days and then take three day weekends. That lasted for about two months before my employer made a rule that we had to be there five days a week.

Then I used to come in at 4am to avoid traffic, skip lunch then leave at noon, and nobody noticed for about six months but they figured out I was not coming back after lunch and changed the policy so I could not come to work until 8am.

So I started working lots of extra time and started banking my flex time and saved up about 430 hours by October (10-hours a week of OT) and was informed by HR that I could not roll it over in the new year, so I scheduled a 12-week vacation. Yeah, they made a new rule over that too.

When COVID hit and I had to stay home, I figured out I could do a side gig, so I got a second work from home job and worked both until I got caught, and they laid me off. After that there was a new rule.

I just like hacking the systems they set up, they were so difficult to work for that I wanted to figure out a way to make it work fo me.

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Alethia Nyx
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Errr, you were laid off for having two jobs?? Why? What kind of toxic hell hole was this.

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#11

30 Troublemakers Reveal What Rules Wouldn't Exist If It Wasn't For Them Not a rule but a reminder to "please be respectful to our guest speakers". I was on a Zoom call and I didn't realize my cat umuted me when he stepped on the keyboard. When the guy asked if there were any further questions I said aloud to myself "yeah, can we wrap this s**t up so we can all get on with our lives?"

disapearingelephants , Compare Fibre Report

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Lexii M.
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I remember joining a work call thinking I was muted, while my little brother was playing the tuba lol

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#12

freshman year of high school, I had to give an oral presentation on a random Greek god. this was at a Christian school, for context. I got Dionysus, so naturally I spent many hours researching on YouTube how to act drunk (wasn't much of a partier, so I didn't know) and pretended to be absolutely wasted for my presentation. it was a great success but my teacher unsurprisingly banned Dionysus for the following years. it didn't help that Dionysus was basically the god of orgies and b********y too, if I remember correctly

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Call Me Mars
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Yep, Dionysus is the Greek god of wine and sex and other things its so funny.

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We managed to get in touch with Redditor TheBlackTemplar125 who was kind enough to have a little chat with us. When asked how they came up with the idea to raise this question on the Ask Reddit community, the user revealed that they sometimes go on the platform to read captivating horror stories. One particular tale caught the user’s attention when they noticed an unusual rule that was put in place. You see, someone in that story passed away, so others decided to create a regulation that would prevent that from happening. "That's where my idea originates," they told us.

#13

I graduated with my PhD in April 2020.

As graduation was virtual, they asked us to take a nice picture that would pop up when they read our names off. The email said family that had been integral to your journey could be in your picture.

So I took a picture with my dog and sent it in.

The next day they sent another email that said you couldn't have pets or family in your picture.

I never sent them another picture so they used it.

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#14

No typewriters in class.

I was kind of a s**t kid and while my school allowed us to use laptops, I would play videogames. Primarily Warcraft 3. In class. No sound or anything so I wasn't being a complete nuisance, but I wasn't doing my work.

A teacher told me I couldn't use my laptop.

I happened to have a 1950's Remington Quiet-Riter portable, all-mechanical typewriter. It was anything *but* quiet, with all of the TAKKA TAKKA TAKKA TAKKA... DING! you'd expect from a typewriter.

After one full day of studiously taking notes and doing my assignments via typewriter, my teacher said I could use my laptop as long as I didn't bring the typewriter to class.

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Shelby P
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

surprised they didn't just hand this person a pencil & paper and say no tech...

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#15

30 Troublemakers Reveal What Rules Wouldn't Exist If It Wasn't For Them My high school biology teacher added "briefly" to all of the essay questions on his tests and quizzes because, if I was bored, I would write unnecessarily long answers in really small handwriting just to take up time.

He pointed out the word "briefly" when handing out a test and said to me, "I added that for you." So I made my next answer even longer out of spite.

HawaiianShirtsOR , Ben Mullins Report

At the time of writing, TheBlackTemplar125’s post has amassed 40K upvotes and over 16K comments full of entertaining stories of how people acted out and got in trouble. However, the user was surprised to see it blow up as much as it did. "I expected it to get buried among more creative questions," they said. "I just wanted something to read." The user also feels grateful to witness how the community has improved over time: "Ask Reddit has evolved enough so that only original posts will get seen in the hoard of generic posts."

#16

30 Troublemakers Reveal What Rules Wouldn't Exist If It Wasn't For Them You can no longer skip to the end of training videos at Wendy's.

I completed about 10 hours of this training when it was implemented, after I'd already been working there a year, in about 45 minutes.

Open, skip, skip, skip, skip, do test, rinse and repeat. I was quite proud of my "estimated time 45 minutes, time to completion 2 minutes".

My store which is a franchise location, got a call from corporate like an hour later. I didn't have to redo any of it though.

Thegungoesbangbang , Batu Gezer Report

#17

I had to sue my school district back in high school just to leave special education after fighting it for over a decade.

Special education students now have the right built into every single IEP to attend any standard education class in their grade level or below, earn the associated credits, and also go to both health education and driver's education. They could do *none* of that before the lawsuit.

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Emma London
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

The school district probably got larger government subsidies for special educations kids.

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#18

30 Troublemakers Reveal What Rules Wouldn't Exist If It Wasn't For Them "Don't trick your siblings or friends into eating soap."

I would cut bars of dove soap into pieces, wrap them in old candy wrappers, and pretend like they were mints. I was 8 or 9.

Applesintheorchard , Akshay Bandre Report

Reading through the responses in the thread proves that many people have a naturally rebellious side. How else would they come up with such shenanigans? Well, it's anything but boring to read how their actions make others shake their heads in disbelief, and TheBlackTemplar125 agrees. They told us that reading about others’ experiences and "picturing situations is fun. But people also like reading something to keep them occupied," the user said and added that they find short stories to be a great way to pass the time.

#19

30 Troublemakers Reveal What Rules Wouldn't Exist If It Wasn't For Them "No makeup".

I went to an all boys school, and apparently this never came up until me and my emo friends rocked up in black eyeliner and lipstick.

DanteWrath , Bruno Bueno Report

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Kathryn Baylis
Community Member
1 year ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

What some adults don’t realize—-or, more accurately, forget—-is that if you totally ban something, teenagers, especially, will double triple down on it because you turned it into forbidden fruit. What the school should’ve done is simply do nothing, unless it got out of hand and disrupted classes. As long as it remained a fad for a few students, it would go out of style as quickly as any other teenage fad.Teenagers go through these phases, where they’re just trying on different styles until they find what suits them best. We ALL did it. When I was young, the newest thing was punk rock. So we had Mohawks, and wore torn tee shirts, big safety pins, and wild colorful makeup, while slam dancing to loud shouted (instead of sung) anti-establishment music. Then we graduated high school/college, put on suits, got jobs, got married, had kids, and took out mortgages. Like every generation before us, we found our own styles, and had our own lives.

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#20

30 Troublemakers Reveal What Rules Wouldn't Exist If It Wasn't For Them I got our HR box taken away at work because the HR lady threatened not to pay us if we missed a clock in or clock out (in our defense the phones didn't always work and the clock in system was really unreliable) and I printed out the law stating that was illegal, highlighted it, and put it in her box when no one was around.

She threw an unholy fit and tried to figure out who put it in her box, and from them on everything had to be handed in personally lol.

Pollowollo , Tim Gouw Report

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#21

30 Troublemakers Reveal What Rules Wouldn't Exist If It Wasn't For Them My older brother got a curfew enforced at Boy Scout camp when one of the leaders noticed him walking around the area in the daytime with his eyes closed, counting steps. He may have just been practicing being blind, but the adults assumed he was figuring out how to get around at night without lights so he could get into some kind of mischief. Which, knowing my brother, was also possible.


PS: If you're one of those people saying "BUT BUT BUT", you're not thinking like an 11-year-old.

Fuck_you_Reddit_Nazi , Mael BALLAND Report

#22

30 Troublemakers Reveal What Rules Wouldn't Exist If It Wasn't For Them My junior high made a rule against yo-yos in class after I tried to do a trick and my yo-yo flew across the room and broke a glass beaker set. I’m sorry, guys.

FartAttack911 , Opollo Photography Report

#23

30 Troublemakers Reveal What Rules Wouldn't Exist If It Wasn't For Them Local amusement park added a "no blindfolds on rollercoasters" rule because of me.

When I was in middle school, my friend and I thought it would enhance the overall experience if we blindfolded ourselves on the biggest roller coaster at a local amusement park. We got one of those pictures they take on the ride and there we are, blindfolded in the middle of a tunnel, having the time of our lives. Looking back, we easily could have strangled ourselves or worse because we literally just used scarves tied around our heads. Next year we went back to the same roller coaster and they had added a "no blindfolds or loose accessories" to the list of rules before the ride.

idontcare4205 , ANTONI SHKRABA production Report

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Larry Michael
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I'm pretty sure you can actually blindfold yourself with... eyelids. No additional accessories required.

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#24

30 Troublemakers Reveal What Rules Wouldn't Exist If It Wasn't For Them Local jobcenter no longer has working usb ports on public PC's because I found private files on multiple PC's with far too much private information about strangers.

BelthazorDK , Anete Lusina Report

#25

30 Troublemakers Reveal What Rules Wouldn't Exist If It Wasn't For Them I put a croissant in one of those hotel toasters. It soon became engulfed in flames and needed extinguishing. Next day at breakfast they made a sign that said “if you’d like your croissant toasted, please ask a member of staff”

thatbitchlol , Kobby Mendez Report

#26

30 Troublemakers Reveal What Rules Wouldn't Exist If It Wasn't For Them Back in the 1980s we were allowed to pick our own high school classes. My freshman year I picked two gym classes back to back and the school said no one has ever done that before. Only one gym class was allowed to be scheduled after that. I’m kind of a legend.

nuF-roF-redruM , cottonbro Report

#27

30 Troublemakers Reveal What Rules Wouldn't Exist If It Wasn't For Them The valedictorian speech at my high school now needs to be reviewed by the principle before the ceremony for content and length.

swankpoppy , AliHanlon Report

#28

30 Troublemakers Reveal What Rules Wouldn't Exist If It Wasn't For Them Well, I doubt they're teaching the class these days. But when I took "Advanced Programming Techniques Using FORTRAN", our professor added a line to all our projects stating that all programs had to be written in FORTRAN and only in FORTRAN.

When a student askef why he'd added that, he told the class to ask me. I just grinned. I still got a perfect score on the one where I had a FORTRAN shell call an assembler subroutine which did 99.99% of the work. Heh.

HowdyDoobie , wikipedia Report

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Stoopham McFernybabes
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I’m hoping clever programming person out there is reading this and having a good chuckle. I am not that person.

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#29

The school website is no longer accessible out of school hours.

So you know how in harry potter, there are 4 houses and they compete or something like that? Well, our school does that. Every kid is put into 1 of 4 houses and they earn "house points" throughout the school year. At the end, whoever has the most points gets a bonus field trip to someplace cool (previous rewards include Crazy Pins, Sky Zone, and this one place with a bunch of bouncy houses).

Anyways, I was poking around the school website and I found an archive of all the winners over the years. When I scrolled down there was a button that said "Add Points" and naturally, I clicked it.

I was redirected to a new page that had 3 things: a dropdown, a text box, and a button. Select the house, input point value, add points. I added 25 points to my house as a test and saw that it worked. Over the following days, I'd slowly add more points.

Eventually, some teacher got suspicious of my house staying in 1st place for so long (rankings typically change daily--its a very close competition). They checked the logs and saw that there were being points added after school hours.

Unfortunately, they disabled access to the site after 3:00 P.M. on Monday-Friday and you can't use it on the weekends. Sorta my own fault but everything we do on our school computers is tracked so I couldn't add the points during school hours otherwise they would've found out it was me.

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Raumpfleger
Community Member
1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

This might be the worst workaround over a security hole I ever heard about - and I've seen my share! :-D lmao

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#30

At my elementary school, I was the third person to break my arm after falling off the track slide on the play structure.

Everyone treated me as if it was all my fault… But what about Ivan and Bobby, huh? WHAT ABOUT THEM?!

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Emma London
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1 year ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

So was the play structure closed down after the accident or what was the point?

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