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“Scarred A Manager So Badly They Banned It”: 83 Dumb Work Rules That Exist Because Of One Person
Workplaces need rules; if not for employee safety, then at least to ensure people can do their jobs smoothly. Nevertheless, workers tend to hate rules that management imposes unnecessarily. Dress code rules are a common annoyance, with 44% of workers claiming they’d quit if the code didn’t align with how they present themselves.
Yet some rules get implemented because one or a few people just don’t know how to be a person the right way. These are stories about ridiculous work rules caused by someone’s mistake or sheer ignorance. They come to you from an online thread where one netizen asked, “What’s a rule at your job that exists purely because one idiot ruined it for everyone?” From no open-toe shoes or shorts in the office to stealing trays of food during work events, these dumb dumbs just had to go and ruin it for everyone.
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#1
Retail job went from “just don’t have holes in your jeans and make sure your shirt doesn’t have swears printed on it” to business casual (slacks and button down shirt at minimum) because too many people showed up in pajamas.
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#3
We had an account at the grocery store across the street for buying coffee and snacks for the break room.
Then the new guy decided to put all his groceries for the month on the account. That ended that real quick.
#4
In the late 80s/early 90s, 2 of my cousins worked at the same grocery store. One of them dared the other to like the inside of the freezer section. His tongue got stuck. 10 years later, when my brother and sister were getting jobs, siblings were not allowed to work at the same store.
#5
No more working from home because a coworker decided to not even bother to log in and pretend to work. And apparently somehow thought no one would notice.
I actually worked at home and loved it. We all got punished for her being lazy.
#6
We can’t use the break room stove because someone lit their food on fire on the stovetop after walking away from it.
#7
At my old job, the company used to cater lunch for people’s birthdays. The person whose birthday it was would pick a restaurant, and the company would pay for everyone’s lunch. We were a small office of only about 12 people, but the person in charge of ordering would deliberately order almost double the amount of meals we actually needed so she could take the extras home.
Eventually, she wasn’t even trying to pass them off as leftovers. When the food arrived, she would immediately take the extra meals, hide them in her office, and then distribute everyone else’s orders. Management eventually caught on to what she was doing.
Needless to say, that was the end of the company-paid birthday lunches.
#8
No shorts to be worn. Due one idiot wearing short shorts and showing everyone [too much]. Was a traumatic experience having lived through it. He has left the rule remains.
#9
In my previous job, people in my team were going to get an extra wfh day. That didn’t happen because one individual was baking cakes for her side hustle during work hours. Showing all the evidence on her instagram.
#10
I used to work at one of those huge destination liquor stores way back in the day. After the yearly inventory audit, they would take all the bottom shelf wine and mixers that weren't selling, put them in a cart at the front end, and let the employees take whatever they wanted. I never drank any of it, but I'd give stuff away to my more boozy friends.
Then one day Linda decided it wasn't fair because she wasn't in the first day it was all set out. Mind you, there was never anything good in there, we're talking about stuff that didn't even sell at-cost. It was all ridiculous wine brands nobody had ever heard of and pre-mixes that tasted like 100% sugar. And it would sit there for days. But Linda made such a stink that management decided it would be better to huck everything into the trash compactor instead.
#11
For years my corporate card was paid by the company after I submitted my expense report with my receipts. Then we had a major change. The employees would submit expense report and then get cut a check and they had to pay the bill. This was annoying and slightly scary given I didn’t know if I was late due to reimbursement time if it would affect my credit score. I set a meeting with our finance head to ask what’s up….
Turns out a scheme in our Chicago office ruined it for all of us. At Super Bowl time several employees went to stores and bought giant TVs for their respective parties. Afterward they reboxed the TVs and returned them for a refund to the corporate card. They figured they’d just cancel out the transaction and delete it and nobody would be the wiser. Not so.
#12
My favorite ever. An actual company rule on paper.
No drinking before lunch and only 2 drinks while on the clock.
It was a property management company. The entire job was a complete fever dream. But the office had a stocked beer fridge and one guy would literally drink 6-10 beers a day starting right when he got there.
#13
Told my two reports if I was out of the office, I didn’t mind if they went home a little early, meaning like and hour or so.
Had to go to a conference an hour away for a few days and they both stayed home the whole time. My boss walked by my department the first day and was like “WTH?” lol.
We had a really good thing going and now there’s eyes on us!.
#14
I was self-employed for 35 years. Finally, a Fortune 500 recruited me to come on board. Hey, what wasn't there to like? Easygoing boss who respects my abilities, steady pay, and fantastic benefits. Plus I was 100% WFH. I'd only make the twenty-minute drive into the office for the occasional meeting.
It was great. Because I spent a huge chunk of my life as self-employed, nobody ever had to supervise me. I knew what I was supposed to do and just got it done. I typically was at my desk at 8 a.m. and worked until I'd gotten everything done. And, in truth, it was a snap. I was typically done by 2 pm, chiefly because I'm efficient. Rave reviews, raises, you name it.
But there were people who [used] the hell out of the WFH policy. As in they'd do nothing all day and collect a paycheck. The C Suite began demanding that employees show up in the office three days a week. Maybe not stay all eight hours, but swipe in.
So, here it is, a perfectly fine Thursday morning. I am caught up on my assignments through September. There is literally nothing I need to do at the moment, pending approvals and my supervisor getting back to me on a couple of assignments. But I am about to hop in the shower, drive downtown, sit in my cubicle, and wait until lunch so I can drive home again.
#15
I worked at a daycare where someone was drinking on the job so they told us we had to have clear water bottles. Because THAT solves the problem!
If you think the opacity of the container is the only thing keeping your employees from drinking on the job, maybe hire better people.
#16
About 20 years ago my entire 13-story building was evacuated three times over a five or six week period because of burnt microwave popcorn setting off the fire alarm. Microwave popcorn was permanently banned after that. (So technically it might have been the result of three idiots, not one.).
#17
Worst one was from a job like 20 years ago:
No taking your work truck home when on-call.
Had a fun telecom job supporting a utility control network (large SCADA system, today we'd call it an Operational Technology Network but the company didn't use that term back then). We had telecom gear spanning multi-hour drives in any direction from our city, and on-call meant if something was down we'd likely have to drive a couple hours into the mountains to go troubleshoot gear and punch/re-punch down wired circuits.
This one idiot stopped at the grocery store on his way home, didn't put his truck into park, and while he was talking into the store his truck rolled into a Porsche (don't remember what kind of Porsche).
After that we weren't allowed to take trucks home anymore. Which meant when we got paged we had to spend 30-45 minutes going to the office to grab a truck before making a long drive out to whatever site was having issues.
#18
About 15 years ago I worked on an old growth survey project for the Forest Service. They made it very clear that if we ate in the vehicle while we were driving and were caught, we would be fired.
This is because a former employee had been driving a windy road next to a river, choked on his chips, and plummeted into the river.
#19
As a security measure, everyone was supposed to lock their laptop before leaving their desk (say, to go to the bathroom). As a fun way to make it stick, if anyone found an unlocked laptop they’d quickly change the background to a picture of David Hasselhoff and/or send an email from that laptop to the whole team promising to bring donuts for everyone the next day. We called it “getting Hoff’d”.
It was awesome until one guy without a sense of humour got Hoff’d and instead of learning a lesson went complaining to their boss’ boss’ boss that it’s unfair to have to buy donuts just because they forgot to lock their laptop.
Yep, end of an era.
#20
No massage gun use on coworkers.
Now that probably sounds like an ok rule at first. Massages on coworkers is sketchy territory. Here's the problem. Hand massages are fine. If you use a massage gun which separates the giver and receiver. Thats the problem.
We had someone who had a literal sign up list for massages during downtime. 50 people would sign up daily. There was a waitlist. Massages only given when all work was done. They were professional and taking care of fellow Healthcare workers backs.
One person who didn't even get a massage. Got offended that there was someone using one. No incident. No problem. Literally just didn't like it.
Now only hand massages are allowed.
#21
One place I worked at used to do BBQs every quarter as long as we hit certain metrics. That was until one day my boss saw 3 different members of the same family taking ALL the steaks being cooked for one shift and Saran wrapping them between two plates to take home for later.
After that we only got 75/25 ground beef burgers and we were only allowed two each and they had one of us managers policing the break room the whole time.
#22
At my old job, we had a rule that nobody was allowed to take leftover food home after staff events. It sounded ridiculous until I found out why.
One guy apparently used to take the entire tray of food home. Not a plate. The whole tray. Then he started showing up early to events just to pack food into containers before everyone else had eaten.
Management eventually made a blanket rule that leftovers had to be thrown away.
So instead of telling one guy, “Dude, leave some food for everyone,” they made 40 people watch perfectly good food go into the trash.
#23
Individual webcams must always be on during meetings at all times whether you are in office in a conference room full of other people in the meeting, or working from home. I understand wanting work from home people to have on webcams, but I have a few issues with.
- If you have a meeting with 100+ people and everyone has on their webcam it can get laggy as hell.
- It can be overstimulating and distracting too when people are sitting there with kids and pets on their lap and I'm just sitting there like 'this is a regular occurrence can a manager say something?!' Also can be distracting when everyone in a conference room has their individual cameras on and are huddled together just lots of movement going on.
- If the meeting isn't super pertinent to me and I have to go to the bathroom everyone has to watch me walk away to the bathroom in my own house.
Now why do we have this rule? Because people were taking their kids to the pool or going to get their nails done. The worst offender though was a girl who started her own business going live on Tiktok and walking around Marshall's auctioning off popular products and live shopping while she was at work and on meetings on her other phone.
#24
No one is allowed to use the disposals any more because some idiot backed up a sink and flooded the floor below.
#25
One person spilled coffee on a keyboard and now we have a no drinks policy in the office, such a bummer.
#26
My company offers lunch - including a salad bar, sandwiches, pizza, a weekly special, sushi on Thursdays, food trucks, etc - for free. Retirees were formerly allowed to swing by and get a free lunch.
Well one guy took it to an extreme and would take more than any one person needed on a weekly basis.
CEO had enough and ended the benefit for all retirees.
#27
No magic erase pads. Because someone tried to magic erase marker off a child’s face. Kid got injured, staff member got fired.
#28
No Roller skates on plant.
Ammunition factory and some legendary gentleman that worked night shift brought in his Roller skates one evening to be more efficient.
#29
I run monthly hiring events for my work. We now require RSVPs for all attendees, which has decreased turnout by approximately 50%. Why? Because one man has some sort of weird obsession with us and keeps coming in under different names and using disguises. He has changed his hair cut and color, glasses, worn hats, worn masks, etc. He has made employees feel extremely uncomfortable and is not stable, and made my job so much harder.
#30
No summer barbecues at work anymore because someone referred to it as “meaty man day”. Dinged as both sexist and anti vegan.
The person that called it meaty man day was a woman. And vegetarian (but not vegan).
(And she was just being funny, not throwing shade or complaining).
#31
I worked at a place that had a rule that you couldn't bring bows, arrows, or crossbows on the premises. Apparenty, some of the shop guys had set up targets in the woods behind the building, and were firing out one of the rear emergency doors on their breaks.
#32
One company decided to put a mini-golf in the floor so people can relax and talk and have a meeting while doing something fun. The idea was great. Until somebody, because there is always somebody, decided to flex his range skills and launch the ball 20 ft over the heads of the people working.
The next day the mini-golf was an artificial grass space with pillows.
#34
I work in a large store and like most we have a giant safe/ money dispenser for the cash in the store. I used to be able to get into it to work on it when bills would get jammed. In extreme situations we might have to call tech support but 90% of the time I could unjam it and we could go about our day.
Then someone at another store in another city gave away about 50k to a phone scammer. Now none of us are permitted to open the machine to work on it during business hours without another manager's verification and calling tech support for them to open the doors to the machine remotely. One idiot and an entire corporate chain has to change all their security policies and make everything harder to navigate.
#35
My old job has a rule of no sleeping with the owners daughter…I was 19 (daughter was 18), I was pissed at him for making me work unpaid overtime driving her home while he worked late. He ended up going home to check on her after neither of us answered our cell phones and I didn’t return the work truck…well he walked in on us and fired me on the spot, I must say it was worth it. I was planning to quit the following week as I was leaving for Air Force Basic Training in a few weeks and had not told them (figured they’d let me go as soon as I told them).
#36
Had 2 of em
1. No birthday cakes. We used to have 3 people make cakes for all 200 employees. Someone went to HR cause theirs was store bought.
2. Someone decided not to go onsite for 6 months. It's now no longer self managed but required 3x a week (different company from above).
#37
Management would get a person a birthday card, $20 gift card and cupcakes for the department all paid for by the company. Of course everyone in the department would sign the card and that is an important part. You see, the employees were never asked to chip in for the party stuff - it was a company morale booster paid for completely by them with no desire to be paid for by employees. But one person felt that since they circulated the card that the management **could** have asked for a donation and that he felt he shouldn't have to donate to the celebration so he complained to upper management.
New rule: birthday celebrations are banned.
#38
Nobody besides bartenders behind the bar. Sounds okay in theory until you’re slammed and you want a server to help out with sodas or something. Welllll a younger server came behind the bar and was drinking from a soda nozzle none of us knew existed. He got very very very sick.
#39
Beer taps weren’t turned on until 4pm. Used to be all day, but apparently too many people couldn’t understand that you’re not supposed to drink all day at work. Yes this was in tech. And yes it’s probably stupid to have any alcohol at an office.
#40
No bladed box cutters (only the little ceramic nub ones). Some girl reached blindly into a LABELED box that had a CLOSED box of razors in it and wigged out and filed a report. All our workhorse ergonomic box cutters were banned.
We worked in a warehouse where we opened hundreds of boxes a day.
#41
No using glass pipette.
In a chemical lab.
Because some stupid idiot on *another site on another country* have a glass pipette broke and it scratches their finger.
#42
Someone complained that the company hadn't raised amount of the food voucher they started giving to employees during covid. They stopped them altogether.
#43
We could bring snacks to share until one guy left open food out and got ants now everything has to be sealed in the fridge.
#44
Two from our school board:
1. High school teachers used to be able to leave early on exam days and complete their exam marking at home. One teacher used that time to do some home renovations and injured themself. They decided to file a workers compensation report since it happened during school hours. That was the last time we were able to leave early to mark at home.
2. Not every course had a final exam and students in those courses were told to stay home on exam day. A student at one of the schools got in trouble with the police and was arrested. Mom was outraged that they were not in school at the time and used a lawyer to make a complaint about the fact that their child was supposed to stay home. The following school year, the policy changed and teachers in courses with no exams still had to provide some sort of evaluated activity during the exam. Teachers now had to do pointless busy work and students were forced to come into school on a day that could be used to study for other courses or just to sleep in.
#45
I worked at a giant data center. It would take up to 15 minutes to walk from one end to the other of a single building. We had Razor Scooters (unpowered) to make transiting faster. Until one idiot got caught doing stupid things on one.
#46
During Covid we had office breakfasts. Every week one section would would cook breakfast on a Friday for the entire workplace. It was so much fun and we really enjoyed the time getting to know colleagues we wouldn’t normally meet.
Until one woman decided it should be a competition between the sections! So each Friday became more and more elaborate, people began planning their sections breakfasts weeks in advance, spies were deployed across offices, there were sabotage attempts and HR had to step in (I was HR at the time)
Because of one person, what started as one guys really sweet and thoughtful way to bring us all together over the pandemic, turned into arguments, tears and a total disaster.
#47
No hoodies at our casual clothing office.
Someone was stealing parts in the hood.
I hate whoever that was forever.
#48
Blue Jeans Friday went away. When it was announced, it was clearly stated that tops had to cover the jeans at all times even when the wearer lifted their arms, no visible midriffs/muffin tops. The announcement said *specifically* that it was a trial to see if people could adhere to that rule.
It lasted for ONE Friday. Not just one idiot, apparently about half the building couldn’t read. We got the email cancelling the trial on Monday morning.
#49
My job used to give a stipend if using your cell phone was part of your job duties. The stipend was a flat $75 a month. My cell phone plan was $45 a month so it was a nice extra $30.
Then they had to investigate some employees in another part of the company. Text messages were subpoenaed. They had to sort through personal and work messages.
Now everyone has a company phone. Its an iPhone 15 even though all our work apps are Google. I hate iPhones and I hate having to carry 2 phones.
#50
I had to lock the supply room door at my last office because one guy would lose 4+ pens a day and kept taking more.
At first I tried just stopping him specifically and telling him he wasnt allowed more pens. But he started having other people get him pens.
It might not sound like a big deal, but we bought really nice weighted metal pens because we did a lot of paperwork still. The things cost $4 a piece, so $16 a day, $80 a week, $320 a month. And this was at a relatively small company, my monthly supply budget was only $600 and this guy was pissing away half of it. Before he showed up a box of 20 pens lasted us 2-3 months.
Im honestly not convinced he wasnt doing it on purpose, or selling them or something. I dont understand how you lose 4 pens a day that often.
#51
My old QA job had an explicit "no samurai swords allowed at work" rule. Yes, beer was involved.
#52
We had to start signing out tools because one guy kept taking them home and forgetting where he put them.
#53
Direct from the employee handbook:
"Do not tell (employee mentioned by name) how to do his job. Employees who try to tell (named employee) how to do his job will be held responsible for any fallout caused."
#54
I was the idiot that ruined secret Santa.
I didn’t realize it was a ‘silly’ gift giving thing, and while I was within budget, the gift I got was too nice apparently and we did not do secret Santa in my time there again.
#55
No headphones or earbuds in the building, at all. One person kept wearing them in a not safe area even after multiple warnings. So the company said no one is allowed to use them. Even sitting at our desks, in the office.
#56
A stupid person complained at a meeting that we don't have enough oversight on nights or weekends. Now we have a manager on site on the weekends.
#57
Did a lotto pool at an old workplace. While it never became against the rules per se, the district manager did politely ask us to stop.
One employee thought that by contributing one dollar, she got one thirteenth (total participating employees) if we won. At that time, everyone was putting in 5-10 dollars. She didn’t handle that she got a maximum or 1/61st if we won.
So she called it in as harassment. Every week. Which the DM had to investigate every time. After a couple of months he (very politely, honestly) asked if we could stop, because he was having to dedicate a half day to a nothingburger complaint each week.
…her next complaint was ‘I KNOW they’re still doing it but just not telling me!’
We had legitimately stopped.
#58
Extremely strict IT. No employee can install or even update any programs on our computers and we have to get permission to get them to install anything which they often decline. All because old man Ronnie installed malware that destroyed the server. Stupid Ronnie.
#59
The school district I drive for now has these route number signs on the buses, while the buses already have their own numbers. So now whenever you take a spare bus you have to fiddle with this little board to make it say the right number.
It started when a parent complained about a driver showing up in a spare bus, "they couldn't tell what bus it was". My old district would just print out your original number, you'd tape it in a window if you took out a spare bus, and everybody got the idea.
#60
We can no longer bring beverages on visits with clients because someone spilled their Starbucks on someone's rug.
#61
Work at a movie theater and we have a few...
1. Customers can no longer request posters when we're done with them. We used to have a sign-up sheet, with the understanding that staff get first pic, so there was no guarantee they'd get the poster they wanted. We'd take their number and call them if we had extras. But one guy ruined it by signing up for like a dozen different posters for movies where there clearly wouldn't be extras, and then showing up and causing a scene that was so bad, we banned him and almost called the cops. Like he was screaming, swearing, hitting the walls, etc. because he could get free stuff.
2. We are no longer allowed to speak to customers outside before we open, nor can open the doors for mailmen/deliveries without manager approval. Like we're not even allowed to open the door and say "Hey, we open in ___ minutes." Because we've had more than one instance of customers literally grabbing the door, forcing their way in and refusing to leave if we crack the door open to answer a question. And they always think they're in the right despite literally committing a crime. (Like they literally committed B&E.) It's unbelievable.
3. We don't allow bikes anywhere near the front of our building (and definitely not inside) because we had a group of 14-year-old pricks literally ram through the doors and ride around the inside for about a minute, screaming and causing a scene. (Cops were called; they were banned.)
Honestly I can think of a few more if I really thought about it...
#62
At an old job, they would escort you out of the building the day that you submitted your resignation letter. HOWEVER, they'd keep paying you until your resignation was official.
So your two weeks notice was pretty much a two week paid vacation.
Long story short, someone lost [it] while being escorted out and that was the end of that.
So your options were stay and work for two weeks with very limited system access and get paid, or leave that day and not get paid.
#63
In one of my previous jobs, it was common for us to forward our phone lines to reception during lunch. One employee decided to just forward all his calls to reception, all day, every day. Our receptionist was swamped and rightfully annoyed.
Moving forward, our team wasn’t allowed to forward calls to reception anymore. We had to institute a rotating lunch schedule so that only one person could be on lunch at a time, and that person had to forward their calls to another team member. I remember the employee in question tried to pull the same stunt (forwarded his calls even after he had returned to his desk). The coworker he had forwarded his calls to marched over to his desk, hit the call forwarding button on his phone, and turned it off.
Strangely, he only ever did this to his female colleagues. He eventually resigned, to everyone’s great relief.
#64
We had 2 microwaves on our floor whereas the cafetorium in the building with the bank of microwaves was a hassle to get to and use and people would waste 15 minutes of a 45 minute lunch break heating their food up or going down there.
But some silly donkey put microwave popcorn in there for way too long and smoked out the floor besides there was another twit who would microwave fish, even though that's the number two rule of microwaves after not putting cutlery in there.
Anyways those idiots ruined it for the floor about 100 people.
#neverforget.
#65
Im a back up for a daily environmental inspection. I mainly do weekends because the primary guy does M-F every week. We used to go do the 2-3 hour inspection, scan forms and send them to our boss for review then leave. If there were any issues you could just text the forman for the day about it.
Well the previous primary falsified the inspection for the better part of a year, so after he got fired we now have to do a bunch of extra [nonsense] to prove we were on site, including tracking down the foreman for a signature which has taken me upwards of an hour extra at times.
#66
We used to just have to move a card over to show that we were there, but people started coming late and having other people move their cards for them, so now we have to actually sign a sheet of paper.
#67
I can make it worse, how about everyone being idiots?
We used to have a flexi-time system at work, then one day everyone took it apart from me and when the manager called to speak to someone I had to inform him no one but finance and I were there.
After the call, finance walked in and put up a note: NO MORE FLEXI.
#68
I work at a restaurant, and we have a rule of Don't hang tongs on the bar in front of the clamshell grill. we have a taylor crown series clamshell grill with touch screens on the front of them, and a bar across the front as well just above them. a few people hung tongs on the bar and smacked them off the screen and essentially wrecking the screen and costing the company 800 bucks per screen. District manager instituted a new rule that anybody caught hanging tongs off the grill's bar is grounds for immediate termination because it was such an issue of people continuously doing it.
#69
No birthday cakes or celebrations.
Worked in a very large call center - about 1k employees. Team managers had a discretionary budget to buy little awards, or do something nice for the team. A subset of managers would buy their team members a cake, to share amongst the team, for their birthday. Other team managers used their budget for other things.
This resulted in complaints to HR: why does Sally get a cake for her birthday and I don't. But y'all got pizza instead didn't cut it. So....
* No birthday cakes or other celebrations allowed. As in you couldn't even bring in cookies you made and give them to someone (at least according to the rules)
* Every month on the 15th, the company provided cookies to all employees to celebrate birthdays. The 15th because it evenly split the month to remove any bias.
* You got one cookie. There was a flavor selection until one time they ran out of a flavor and people complained. After that, it was a sugar cookie.
* If you weren't scheduled on the 15th, your manager took your cookie and locked it in their desk for delivery on your next working day.
#70
I had rules that only applied to me.
I couldn’t wear leggings. The owner saw a warehouse guy check [me out]. The other office ladies could. They were all heavyset.
I couldn’t use a 2 step ladder. Because “you are too valuable to the company. If you get hurt no one can do your job.” I had to ask other ladies to get ink down from the second shelf. This one became a joke. Is Mr J around? Ok, don’t tell him I used a ladder.
#71
When the clean-up crew at my job changes out toilet paper, they have to put new tp in even if the old tp still has a lot left, and there were handful of people who would take those almost full rolls home with them. Didn’t harm anything, sure you could argue it’s gross that other people had their hands on it but it’s not going in your bathroom so why did it matter? It’s going in the trash at the end of the day.
We work in a factory so it’s not like it’s been contaminated by strangers and who knows what. It’s all coworkers.
One woman complained that it looked trashy and that it makes it seem as though they don’t get paid well enough to afford toilet paper, and the next week they notified everyone that all used toilet paper rolls must be discarded on site.
#72
Got asked to come in 2-3x per week.
One guy showed up three days the first week, then proceeded to not show up for three weeks straight. Now we’re all in office 4x per week.
#73
Our CEO was fine with people coming the office once a week. The official rule was twice, but many people only came once and everyone was fine with it. Especially since our offices are in a new location since covid and are in an annoying place to reach by car or public transports. There wasn't really any checking on whether or not you came in or not and most people did come in once or twice a week.
Turns out two people from customer services came in maybe once a month for a day and those were also the only days they actually worked. When they were "working" from home, they were actually just not doing anything and just regularly connect to Teams from their phones to show "look, I was online". It came to light when they were dumb enough to post pictures of them having drinks outside in the middle of the day on Fecesbook.
They were fired and the CEO was so angry, the new rule is now that everyone must come at least 3 days a week at the office.
#74
We used to get vacation days assigned the 1st of the year, and they were also available as soon as you were hired.
One guy came in, and three days after declared "My family takes a one week trip to a cabin every year, so I need the week off next week."
There was nothing preventing him from doing this, so HR changed it so you "accrue" vacation days every pay period. So, if you get 4 weeks vacation, you got like 25.92 hrs per 2 week pay period. In effect nobody got access to their full vacation benefits for an entire year.
THEN they started wondering why nobody was taking time off until the last quarter of the year when it was our project season. Hmmm...MAYBE IT'S BECAUSE THAT'S WHEN EVERYONE ACTUALLY HAS ANY VACATION DAYS????
We've since switched to an unlimited PTO policy, but somehow that's worse. If you don't have a finite amount of time to use, people tend to take vacations less and feel "guilty" about asking for time off.
#75
I would buy breakfast for my morning team members on pay day, Mary reported it as favoritism because I didn't buy the night time people dinner, I never worked with any of them.
#76
Not my current job, but my last one. A few people so badly took advantage of work travel that we were forced to use a very rigid booking platform which for the most part did not save money. I had a situation one time where the best I could do on the platform was $1200 for a two night trip. I went to the finance group and pointed out that I could literally get the same trip for $500 if I just used JetBlue vacations instead, with all the printed proof that it was the same flights and hotel. They said no.
The absurd thing was that the booking platform was super vulnerable to manipulation, because on flights it had departure and arrival sliders than could be adjusted down to maybe 5 or 10 minutes, and it only demanded secondary approval if you didn't pick the cheapest flight *within your specific search parameters.* So if you really wanted a specific flight, even if it was more expensive, you could just adjust the departure criteria to match that flight, and it would let you book it without any additional approval, even if it was 3x the price of the least expensive flight on that route for that day.
#77
I was working at a sixth form college a couple of years ago when I was blocked from attending a trip due to the medication I am on (definitely discrimination and against equality act). The thing was there was another member of staff on similar medication but they were going on the trip.
After asking that member of staff if it was ok, I made a complaint asking why I was told it was too dangerous to attend when my colleague was fine.
The next thing I know I am told that thanks to my complaint, they now require every single member of staff to disclose all health issues and medication that they had been prescribed. I still wasn't allowed on the trip and they made it clear to everyone that the new policy was because of me.
If I had never disclosed the medication I was on, none of this would have happened, but the nature of my meds meant I needed to disclose to protect myself if the students ever found out.
That place was so dodgy.
#78
We could no longer directly send contracts to clients for a bit because someone was promising fee rates thar were well under what we offered to make the sale, sending their boss a higher rate agreement for the approval process then using a loophole to put the promised lower rate into the system.
Essentially breaking the rules to get their commission.
#79
Not me, but my version of this story isn’t as funny.
Girlfriend’s stepdad used to work for some sort of road company that dealt with big trucking equipment. At one point, some idiot decided to tie a rope to the back of one, get on skis, and have his buddy drag him around in the truck like a dogsled.
There is now a “no skiing” warning symbol on the back of these vehicles.
#80
I work in medical billing and when we work a patients claim, we will check for any open claims they may have and work them. We figured “oh well we already on this patient might as well do it”
Turns out some people are very over protective of their accounts so now you can only work the accounts assigned to you. If you see anything else open for that patient you just leave it.
#81
Several years ago, management demanded that everyone sign a memo stating that they would not operate any personal vehicles except the ones they owned. When asked what prompted this very vague, weird, specific request, our manager explained that an employee on a completely separate team that didn't even work in the same state as us had let another employee try out his new sports car, and that idiot managed to swipe a building.
#82
I work in a manufacturing facility. The operators have the default option to step through an instruction on their screen if they need to. Lets say something didnt register, but it did get done.
One person was bypassing the most critical step of assembly because he didnt feel like troubleshooting it, or dealing with it. So we took away everyone's ability except low level supervisors.
This person then memorized the credentials of the low level supervisor and kept doing it.
The end result was me making a barcode badge for the low level supervisor of 35 random characters and restricting the system to only accept that.
#83
We used to be able to have an adult beverage or two on the company dime when we were traveling for business purposes. That changed when one under-age (over 18, under 21) employee was served a drink by a restaurant while a large group of employees was eating dinner after finishing up a project for the day.
It wasn't the company's fault, it was the restaurant's fault for not ID'ing everyone, but leadership decided it was too big of a liability and took that away from all of us. Now if we want adult beverages we have to have them on a separate receipt and pay for them personally.
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