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Gaming the system is as easy as one, two, three. First, you learn about the things it allows and prohibits, then convince yourself that no universal moral values exist, and finally, figure out how far you can stretch those boundaries without getting caught. Just don't underestimate the importance of the last point. Once you find a loophole to exploit, it can be pretty hard to step on the brakes if needed. When Reddit user FOB_cures_my_sadness posted a question asking people what rules were made because of them, it received over 5,200 replies, proving that if you're not careful, they will catch up.
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#1
No singing *Les Miserables* at work. That first song with the prisoners working. Me with a mop.
Edit: Earlier in that shift, I brought about a rule against "Bohemian Rhapsody" too.
RELATED:
#2
My high school used to have a d**g project where we’d have to give a presentation on a certain d**g. There was a little thing on how it’s made, like in a lab or it’s a plant or whatever.
I misunderstood how in depth that part was supposed to be.
Long story short, I spent fifteen minutes teaching the entire freshman boys health class how to make black tar h**oin.
They don’t have that part of the project anymore.
KatSaidWhat 1 month ago
Yeah, I got both a B and a lecture when 15 year old me did a project on d***s having just read Go Ask Alice... Apparently my work was good but REALLY not suitable for my age or the class. It might have been a precursor though...
#3
The library started putting up signs about "Authorized computer activities" because I remotely rebooted the computers of noisy kids over and over. To be fair, it was a *library*.
#4
There is a required pin to change profile pictures on the classroom iPads now. This is because I decided to change every staff member’s profile picture in the school iPads to a smiling, old Mexican man on April 1st.
#5
The place I work used to have unlimited coffee for their employees. Three weeks after I started working, there was a sign above the coffee maker that stated that employees were limited to 3 cups a day.
#6
"Students are prohibited from organizing, advertising, playing, observing, or otherwise engaging in any form of rummy, blackjack, Texas Hold 'Em, 5/7 card stud/draw, Pai Gow, or poker during lunch period. Poker chips and cards are prohibited from school grounds except when required for specific, pre-approved activities or projects. Violation of this policy is subject to expulsion and referral to law enforcement for illegal gambling."
This was middle school, decades ago. Our first (and last) Annual [school district] Texas Hold 'Em Tournament, presented by Jr's Bait Shop, was a resounding success.
#7
My cousins and I were banned from playing near glass surfaces when we were younger
When I was six my cousin told me I wasn’t as strong as him because I was a girl, and proceeded to hold the handle of the glass back door shut from the outside. I was pushing on the door to open it and somehow ended up with my left arm through the glass. My mom walked in and was horrified. Ended up getting 13 stitches on my arm, but at least my cousin will never forgot the sheer strength of determined women :).
Brian Droste 1 month ago (edited)
I wasn't banned from glass surfaces but 4 of my siblings and I were playing hide and seek. The back screen/glass door was the safety area. There was a small hill a little way from the door. After the count down was done, I went up the hill to see if I could see any of my siblings. I seen one of them peeking around the corner of the house. I came running down the hill and put my arms out thinking the glass door would stop me. Nope. Went right through the glass and cut my left arm. Cut my arm in three different places. I don't recall how many stiches I had. Had to be rush to a doctor. Side note, the Doctors name was Dr. Green. I remember this was because he had a name of a color. When he was examining my arm, he flashed a light on my arm. I remember ask him why he was doing that,. His response, to look for pieces of glass in my arm. I was probably 11/12 years old at the time. Plus this was how I learned my left and right side of my body.
#8
No aluminum bats on campus.
Spanish class Piñata party gone very wrong. Still have the scar.
#9
When I was a kid we had a contest where we got divided into teams and had to design and build solar-powered model boats which we were then supposed to race on the pond behind the school. We had an odd number of people so I was put on the one team that had 3 people instead of 2, and I got stuck with a pair of idiots that just wanted to f**k off the whole time, so I asked if I could just be on a team by myself. I made my boat a catamaran design, made in one piece out of insulating foam, and made it an airboat instead of trying to fiddlefuck a water propeller (I used one of the little red plastic props off the old balsa fliers we all loved as kids)
My s**t TROUNCED the field, so they ran the race three more times with the same result, then made a rule that you had to be on a team defined as "more than one person" to compete. Right, it's totally unfair that I had no one to help while you other a******s did. Unfair to THEM, somehow. :D
Edit: minor typo, plus: Just to make it worse there were several teams where a parent had clearly done the entire project for the kids involved or bought a model and just fixed the project kit to it. Most other designs were made out of wood, or lacked any way of trimming out the steering or thrust to account for a crosswind or tendency to track crooked while mine drew basically no water and the pylon with the prop on it could be rotated.
I hadn't thought about this in years but now I'm a a little butt-mad all over again. :P.
#10
Tarantulas are not permitted on school property.
#11
I was going to my first guitar lesson at school so I asked someone where the band room was and he pointed in its general direction. I tried to open the door that led to the room he pointed at, but it was kind of hard to open. So I pushed harder, and a giant bookcase came crashing down onto the floor. I don’t have any idea why they put a huge bookcase in front of a push door. But now there’s a permanent sign on the door that says: “DO NOT OPEN THIS DOOR—EVER!!!”
TL;DR: I accidentally pushed down a huge bookshelf and now there’s a super angry sign on the door.
Beak Hookage 1 month ago
Or they could have been really radical and just locked the damn door, but what would I know?
#13
Coffee was banned in the training room at EarthLink after I spilled a whole cup into a CRT monitor.
#14
My senior year in HS, I had an English teacher who allowed all work to be turned in up to the last week of class. I turned in pretty much every assignment right about then, apart from the end-of-unit projects.
Next semester, all the work for all units was due at the end of the unit.
#15
I recently just beat cancer at 13. When I would stay at the hospital they would have to test my urine. Capri suns made me pee better, and the floor had Capri suns on the floor. Long story short, I depleted the Capri sun supply on the whole floor twice. The cafeteria ended up making a rule that you have to order Capri suns through them.
#16
In elementary school, 2nd grade I think, I had to pee really really bad, but I was in music class and my teacher was singing us a song ans playing guitar, so I went up to her anyways and asked to pee and she got upset. And since then she would remind us all that we can't go up to her while she's singing to ask to pee. I just didn't want to pee my pants, woman.
Regina Holt 1 month ago
And you would have gotten in trouble if you just got up and left the classroom.
#17
Students are forbidden to jump out through the windows.
#18
If you can solve a rubik's cube, you're not allowed to have one in class.
#19
Only two servings of fried okra allowed at my college cafeteria. I went to college in the south. I had never tasted fried okra before. I went crazy and ate plateful after plateful.
#20
Coworkers must respect the costume choices of others.
Kim Kermes 1 month ago
What did you do, wear an interesting costume or have a hissy about one?
#21
No more Pictionary at Grandma’s house.
My sister and I were on the same team. I pulled “9/11” (my aunt made some really odd topics). I drew 2 tall lines for the buildings and the. Started to draw a plane/bird as two arches. I got halfway through the first arch and she got it. A giant fight erupted with my big Italian family they we were cheating.
This was, of course, not the first or last game banned by my Grandma. Our highly competitive and argumentative family isn’t allowed to play spoons (bloody nose), apples to apples (old people don’t get younger people choosing the funniest answer, not the correct one), or musical chairs (broken arms).
#22
Birds are not considered a “pattern” on polos for school dress code, I had a shirt with toucans on it and the Dean called me out in front of the whole school.
geezeronthehill 1 month ago
How about polo shirts with the little horse above the pocket? How far down the road to idiocy were they willing to travel?
#23
My high schools marching band is no longer allowed to
Stack bunk beds at the dorms we stayed at for band camp
Bring video game consoles to band camp
Visit the girls dorm at band camp period
Sit next to the opposite gender on the band bus trips
All the bags need to be thoroughly searched for all band trips
*Note : This was not my sole doing, but the combined efforts of basically my entire senior class in the band.
#24
No "obscene or disturbing" costumes. For halloween last year in school, I applied makeup following some YT tutorial I saw to make myself look like 2face from that Batman movie. Looked like my face was ripped off.
Marla Singer 1 month ago
I once won a work costume contest with a similar zombie face makeup. People were disturbed. I did it for fun and didn't know it was going to be judged. Pretty sure they didn't do any rule making afterward though.
#25
My high school made us leave our backpacks in our lockers because my Spanish teacher tripped over mine and sprained her ankle. She was on crutches and everything. She was a raging b***h, but I still felt really bad.
Hellcaste's Wife 1 month ago
That wouldn't work at my son's school. They don't even issue lockers there anymore, since they only get 4 mins between bells.
#26
The lacrosse team I played for in college isn’t allowed to drink on team trips anymore.
Huddo's sister 1 month ago
My sister is a Rover Scout (over 18s) and they are allowed to drink, but not allowed to post any photos of themselves drinking even at non-scout events.
#28
There was supposed to be a cap on vacation time at one of my previous employers.
I don’t know why no one ever picked this up (it was a startup, still people had left before I did) but the vacation kept accruing. When I left instead of 2 weeks in the “bank” there were 5 weeks in there and they had to pay me. I’m sure they could have jumped through hoops but there wasn’t anything in the handbook that had a cap in writing (although we were told it was 2 weeks) so they just paid me. The fact I didn’t leave on bad terms helped a lot I’m sure.
When I got the check, it was for 9 weeks, not 5. Why 9 you ask? We also had a policy that after 5 years you could take a month long sabbatical. This was considered earned time and if you didn’t take it and left the company, it was payable as unused PTO.
After I left they made damn sure no one had more than 2 weeks of PTO banked, put out a new handbook, and they ended the sabbatical for new employees going forward (people grandfathered in got to keep it).
geezeronthehill 1 month ago
When I left one factory I took my vacation accrual check and bought a used pickup truck with it. (The only way we supervisors could take PTO was to have another supervisor cover our team and project. The math didn't math, so nobody took PTO.)
#29
My old job, my numbers were suffering, and I was told I needed to shape up or I would be done. The way I saw it, there was no possible way to meet the numbers by following the process. It turned out I was right. Everyone else came to the conclusion, but no one challenged leadership. So everyone was doing their own thing, then doctoring up the system notes after the fact to make it look like the established business rules were effective. So I'm like f**k it, I'm getting fired anyway. I documented everything I was doing different, in great detail, showing how my way was faster. Eventually I was found out, and I presented my findings, as well as my evidence of the doctoring everyone else was doing. As a result they asked me to evaluate the processes for the entire department, and I ended up finding numerous areas of waste and inefficiencies, which we implemented to streamline things 2-3 times faster than before. On top of that I was placed in charge of a special "expedite" team, to whom the rules did not apply, and we were given free reign to accomplish our assigned high-priority tasks by any means necessary.
I've moved on to another division, but the policies are still in effect today, and the expedite team is still a thing.
Edit: Skimmed the comments and I figure I'll address some of the recurring themes.
I would say it wasn't "courageous" per se, I just literally had nothing to lose. If you wanted to pin a virtue to it I would say "integrity", because I wasn't going to lie.
I'm not going to reveal any identifying information but this was for a CVO. Basically if you say you're a board certified cardiologist, it's our job to verify that your credentials are all accurate, current, and there are no sanctions against your ability to practice. We don't want people to go sending patients to Dr. Hannibal Lecter or anything.
I'm no longer in that department--I've moved on to IT doing site administration, web development, etc.
And yes, I'm aware of how lucky I am my leadership LISTENED to me instead of just stonewalling! I was kind of dumbstruck, as I was fully expecting an obstinate "We don't care about your facts, we care about the process," line. I'd even taken home most of my personal effects by then, and everything else I could fit in my duffel bag. To find out I didn't need it was not only a relief, but also a bit panic inducing, because I was totally NOT prepared to audit every other function's process. But anyway, that mentality sort of spread throughout the organization, and now we have dedicated individuals whose sole purpose is to sit down with people and watch them do their jobs, and ask the stupid questions. "That looks like it takes a long time, why do you have to do it that way?" or etc. And you'd be surprised how many times (at least at first...it's been a good 10 years now so we've cut away a lot of fat) people just stopped and went "You know....I have no idea. That really doesn't make sense does it?" In project management circles that's known as a gemba walk. You go to where the work is done, and try to find ways it can be done more efficiently, without sacrificing quality. A lot of the time it's because people simply don't know there's a better way. Like manually drawing a chart because they were completely unaware Excel could draw a chart for them based on a data table.
And thanks for the Gold! I just recently started using Reddit and that's actually my first one!
#30
My elementary school banned plastic knives from the cafeteria because my friends and I would steal a bunch and pretend to be in the hunger games and fake-stab each other at lunch.
What do you think ?
Lee Gilliland 1 month ago
It is against regulations to dye an animal any other color than its natural one in the US military. That was my finest hour.
veryvenasaur 1 month ago
I caused a rule to be created on my sports team that "All workouts must be counted using the base 10 system." after I used binary to count my 100 crunches. I am also the cause of the rule that "Juggling is banned in class along with Yoyo's Diabolo's and unicycles."
UncleJohn3000 1 month ago
The local hardware stores have 'a rule' about not cheerfully asking people in the plumbing section if they are 'having a great day!', especially first thing Sunday mornings.
A girl 1 month ago
Oddly specific and I have been that Sunday morning customer
Load More Replies... Lee Gilliland 1 month ago
It is against regulations to dye an animal any other color than its natural one in the US military. That was my finest hour.
veryvenasaur 1 month ago
I caused a rule to be created on my sports team that "All workouts must be counted using the base 10 system." after I used binary to count my 100 crunches. I am also the cause of the rule that "Juggling is banned in class along with Yoyo's Diabolo's and unicycles."
UncleJohn3000 1 month ago
The local hardware stores have 'a rule' about not cheerfully asking people in the plumbing section if they are 'having a great day!', especially first thing Sunday mornings.
A girl 1 month ago
Oddly specific and I have been that Sunday morning customer
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