Ridiculous demands from work

[marymarkle]

What ridiculous demands has a workplace made on you?
I left a job a few month ago that insisted I print off and file every email with clients, even though all emails with clients also had to be saved in files on a server. And it really was every email, including emails arranging meetings.
Surely there must be other ridiculous workplaces out there?

@ClaireBeauchampRandleFrazer

I can sympathise, in my last job we had someone who ran to work and back. His sweaty kit littered the place - often on the comnunial kitchen radiator

Worst part, he wore loose fitting short shorts to run in. As part of his 'warming doesn't exercise, he put one foot on a box or similar and then stretch his legs, dips down and out to the side in a sort of arch ... stretching his groin he claimed. However, his baggy shorts and lack of underwear gave us a daily glimpse of his penis. Complaints to our male manager got us nowhere.

These are all batshit and wonderful!

"not allowed to answer the phone even if I was the only one there. I did and got told off. I carried on answering the phone. "

That reminds me of when I worked for a well known international computer firm.

The world HQ CEO tried to phone someone - anyone! - in our department one December afternoon, eventually being answered with:
"Nah mate! It's Christmas Eve. They're all down the pub!"

A rocket of nuclear proportions was dispatched to our UK CEO
We all got phone training and had to answer any phone we heard within 3 rings, to the extent that even waiting to check in at hotels would make some staff twitchy if the phone was ringing.

Oh yes, yuck - I used to work with a guy who was very dedicated to his exercise regime and used to like to "air" his sports clothes, including his jock strap, on the chairs in his office. And he wouldn't move them when we had to sit in there for meetings. shudder

oh god hodge that sounds awful! you'd think the company would have had a word??

How are people allowed to put sweaty clothes on rads and stink the place out...... that’s disgusting ....plus a penis peep show on a daily basis .... that would make me want to puke in my coffee cup. If a woman was flashing her Vag everyday in the office I bet something would have been said.

I used to be a nursery nurse, when I was heavily pregnant I was made to hoover the garden

@Gwenhwyfar

"I'm impressed that you don't ask your boss to sign and then make the copy and take it downstairs yourself."

The way I look at it is that it's a stupid rule, and I don't see why I should waste all that time on it. My manager thinks it's silly too, so wasting her time will make her put a stop to it sooner.

WhatsApp-Ing the shoe pics is brilliant 😂😂

Another office I worked in for a new manager who thought he would overhaul the place. He made new rules, some of which made sense (like no smelly food at your desk, we have a huge kitchen/breakout area so absolutely no need).

He went too far by telling us what to wear though. Our (national) organisation has no dress code, and the vast majority of people manage to use their common sense and dress decently and also to dress appropriately when they were public facing. Of course there's always one - one person in our office didn't use their common sense.

Instead of speaking to that one persons, our office manager outlawed shorts and flip flops. It was summer, and the office can easily reach 40 (no air con). Anyway the day after the new rules came out you've never seen so many shorts and flip flops - two guys even wore skirts because they were find apparently. The rule was put to the side the following day.....

"No snuff"

Signs up everywhere, hopefully referring to the tobacco product, not anything more unsavoury.

Not a ridiculous rule exactly, because in a nuclear power station you can't ingest anything in the dirty zone, and you have to be washed off and change clothes and back into the clean zone if you want to eat, drink, apply lipstick or whatever. But FFS WHO TAKES SNUFF IN 2019?

Just remembered another one. Same former employer I mentioned upthread. An 'awayday' was organised, clearly by a committee of colleagues immature enough to still be nostalgic for school PE lessons, at one of those snowdrome-type places. Presentations in the morning, compulsory 'fun' in the afternoon i.e. skating, snowman-building contests, a potentially dangerous activity involving dragging people up a slope on a sledge. Great fun for the todger-waving male managers who proceeded to act like arses by snowballing seven bells out of each other and tripping each other up on the ice. No thought given, as far as I could see, to the fact that some people might have health or mobility issues that made these activities a no-go.
One gentleman had a (fortunately mild) heart attack during the skating activity. Colleagues weighed in to help, of course. This incident was spun in the next departmental meeting as 'a great example of everyone pulling together as a team.'

Not an office but an old boss used to leave blank cheques out for me to write. She would write on a post it note who the cheque was for and the amount, I would them have to write this info on the cheque for her to then sign. Apparently it was below her to just write out the damn cheque!

Head Office sends me my photocopying in the mail.

It's usually just a few more copies of the forms I need to fill in every week.

There is a photocopier on site but I am not supposed to use it because it belongs to a different department...

I used to be an admin assistant.

We were called upon when the toilets were blocked/dirty

Had to fill the vending machine every morning (then moaned at when office work was late being completed)
I remember being on my lunch break once and a member of staff staring at me for ages then rudely telling me "the machine is broke". Still kicking myself for going and fetching the keys to fix it for him.

Mop the floors, wash dishes, sent out to buy food and drinks for clients and then had to prepare it and serve it to them

Go out every day to get the CEO his paper (less than a minute walk to the shop) and take it to his office.

Lots more stuff general cleaning, repairs, running errands etc.

Our department was always looked down on as being the least important and were massively unappreciated.

Perhaps this is normal and what's to be expected of a admin assistant? I don't know. I just resented being told to do this stuff as we received no respect at all (left out of bonuses, company meals etc).

I was in a company who did the paperwork for another, unconnected company (UC). The UC were terrible, the quality of what they sent in was bad and so there were mistakes made. We spent a lot of time checking with them as to how things should be.

Unfortunately we had a micromanager owner. He would suggest more and more "improvements". By suggest I obviously mean dictate. And we had to save time any way we could.

Some of these ideas were actually useful. The vast majority were not. It ended up with him being copied in to every single email to them. We had a form to fill in send them the problem. And we got to told off if we wanted time by saying things like "Hi".

This was also a company that refused to let us listen to music through headphones so we could avoid getting distracted. Then complaining when we distracted.

But FFS WHO TAKES SNUFF IN 2019?

You'd be surprised. Quite a few people I know do it; they're avoiding cigarettes and can't get on with vaping. Or they're dickheads who wanted to try to get around workplace rules forbidding smoking of all kinds.

Probably means there is one person in the area who is doing it but they don't know who/haven't caught them in the act.

Panicwiththebisto

Red sparrows!

Anywhere near a certain College? I spent many years there, eventually finally cracking and got out for something more congenial...........

It's obviously far better for any workplace to, you know, treat employees like human adults rather than imposing millions of pointless petty rules and allowing middle management to bully their juniors because it makes them happy to do so.
Though I do sometimes wonder if some of the rules that appear either harsh or ridiculous originally got brought in because someone in management had experience of a pisstaker (lazy, lightfingered, incompetent but who 'knew their rights') and wants to avoid that happening again.

NHS organisation where xmas decs were banned by the Chief Exec because they looked unprofessional.

Another NHS one, colleague got told off for wearing flat shoes, got told she had to wear heels by the Chief Exec who wore such high heels she had to have a cab to every meeting she went to, even if it was walkable.

The high heels thing was crazy, I'm sure if you wore Lauboutins you got promoted.

I think that's the case for many rules, guidance and laws, ReanimatedSGB. Someone, somewhere, has spoilt it for everyone by being a pisstaker or an idiot....

Littlewoods Food Hall in the 80s, I had a saturday job and worked on the cheese and sliced meats, Cheese was cut from huge blocks. I dropped one in the bucket of detergent when cleaning, Supervisor told me to rinse it under the tap and put it back out.

The stock rotation wasn't great, some ham had been left to go out of date so it was put it out on special offer.

When I worked in a shop I was expected to turn up 15mins before each shift for a briefing. This wasn't paid and I'd get into trouble if I was late. I wpuld also inevitably be stuck for 20-30mins at the end of each shift which again was not paid. You'd get called in "For a chat" if you asked if you could actually leave on time on any day.

I also worked in a shop where you'd get a bonus for upselling. I was the youngest person there so couldn't possibly need the money as much as everyone else so the manager used to fiddle the figures so my bonus was given to everyone else but me. I was on about £2 an hour.

In the same place, a member of staff said her purse had been stolen so they called in the police. I was the only person interviewed. I still don't know why. Turned out, she'd dropped it in her car. No acknowledgement let alone an apology. I got another job while this was going on so walked. My parents knew someone who worked there and they'd told them I'd stolen something. I didn't find this out until after I'd left but I think they believed her because of how quickly I left the job. :( I didn't steal it.

I worked in a school with a head teacher would believed that if one teacher did something "wrong" or a parent had made a complaint then all staff were emailed and informed of the fact so none of us committed such an offence. Example included giving too many handouts to students and wearing trainers (after foot surgery). Also favoured members of staff were allowed to send censorious all-staff emails about whatever had got their goat that day, like perceived poor quality of cover lessons and lack of attention to detail in lesson planning (by people who could no idea what was going in a class - one of whom wasn't a teacher). Telling teachers off was the general theme of our before-school Monday morning meetings. Just the thing to get your working week of to a goodstart. The school has had a 100% turnover in staff within 5 years.

I forgot to add that students were almost encouraged to complain about teachers - no matter how trivial. One complaint was that a stinky milk carton that hadn't been washed out properly had been used in a technology class and the teacher had been too slow to open a window. So it reached the point were students realise they could bully disliked teachers by complaining.

Also form tutors used to be forced to ring the parents every two weeks for the whole academic year unti the parents got pissed off (not the teachers pointing it was an unnecessary inefficient use of time). One teacher was denied leave while their father was dying of cancer because "there was sufficient time during the holidays" to travel to see him. Very toxic environment.

Please ignore all typos!!!