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?

I wouldn’t have even lasted a month in these places tbh

Supervisor left 6 weeks after I started.
Made some veiled comments about it wasn’t the same department any more.

Think it might have been directed at me.
Others had started to go to the loo without asking.

I used to work somewhere where until very recently (ie well into the 21st century!) men weren't allowed to answer the phone. If all the women were out/in meetings/already on the phone, the men had to just sit there dumbly as the phone rang and rang around the office. It wasn't an excuse for laziness either - sometimes a man would pick up the phone anyway (so that a client wasn't ignored!) and would get a bollocking from the MD if it was him calling in.

This is more petty than weird.

Aeons ago I had a summer job at a Butlins, in the food outlets. Worked the graveyard shift first (9pm–4am or some such) and was told to help myself to food and a drink for dinner during my break.

Next shift I worked was the pre-graveyard one (2–9pm I think). Assumed I was entitled to food on this shift too, and no one had said otherwise, so helped myself to some chips and a burger and sat to eat in the staffroom.

Supervisor came in, looked horrified and cried 'You don't get a free meal on this shift!' and took away my burger and chips.

Not as bad as these but something that probably wouldn't happen now. I was on a grad contract at a big audit firm. I got a call from a partner's secretary asking was I unassigned and if so could I come to partner's office as he had some work needed doing. I was bricking it, expecting it to be some highly complex accounting and worried I wouldn't be able to as I was a first year trainee. Got there. He said "can you drive?" I said "yes". He said "Great. My car is at Heathrow and I can't remember where I parked it. Can you go and find it for me." I literally spent a day of the firm's time walking around LT parking at Heathrow and driving the car back to the office.

Also, same firm. I once had to photocopy a 160 page document 100 times to distribute to all the staff that didn't yet have a laptop (yes, I'm old). The irony was that it was about the new "paperless office" policy.

This is probably outing as it's a story I tell regularly.

Temp work as a student, I went to work at a packing/handling warehouse.

We'd receive shipped boxes of small leather goods -purses/wallets and the like.

Boxes of 144 pieces were opened at one end on the processing table. Inside were boxes of 12, opened by the next person in line. Inside that, 2 pieces per plastic bag - taken out by the next person and item passed to me. I placed a store branded price ticket inside the item, then passed it on to someone who bagged them back into the bags of two, then onto someone else who packed them back into boxes of 12 and finally into boxes of 144 which were sealed and shipped out.

Seven people employed to add price tickets to the items before they reached the shop floor.

Call centre where every second away from your desk accumulated a little number at the bottom of the screen indicating how many seconds I would have to pay back at the end of my shift. Someone watched us go to the toilet and make a drink etc and we were timed. If you were late this was also added to this number. Hand up to use the toilet and I was number 2810 or something. I lasted 4 days and I told them why I lasted only 4 days too. When they told me which insurers we were providing breakdown recovery for I was shocked.

I got a telling off for being pregnant too. And then they wouldn't allow me time off for my antenatal appointments unless I moved them to the hospital in the city that I worked in. Oh how my midwife laughed when I asked her that. They then moved me offices to a city a couple of hours from home so I took them to a tribunal for unfair dismissal and won. I was more than pleased to see they went bust a year or so later.

The office refusing to employ a cleaner and having a rota for the employees to clean the office and the toilets, so the money saved could be used for the "directors" to have a night out a few times a year. (5 directors for 8 employees...)
What female employee doesn't love cleaning the male toilets to save her boss money... (and vice-versa, what male employee doesn't love cleaning the female toilets...)

Same office refusing to buy new stationery, so sending someone waste hours in a file room to collect all plastic pockets, paperclips and anything suitable.
I am for recycling, but why couldn't each staff member remove the bloody pockets every day before sending the documents to filing...

Same office sending very angry emails if staff dared used more than a drop of milk as it was "paid by the company" and people should buy their own instead of wasting company resources.

I worked for a large retail office where looking on any shopping websites was restricted to lunchtime only hours - fair enough but we were a retail office that needed to look at our competition!

I've also walked out of meetings which were a total waste of time.

Temp job. I was the audio typist for a team of about 15, all of whom spent their days dictating letters to different clients, which I would then type up. Fine, except that they were repeatedly dictating the same 5 or so form letters, over and over and over and over. The job of that entire full-time department of 16 could have been done by one person in a couple of hours a week.

Temped for a while in an office where the office manager was an ogre and crazy with it had sole control of the remote control of the air conditioner - and she was menopausal! Staff sat shivering rather than ask for it to be turned down. Oddly the photocopier had its own air conditioning unit in its small room.

This woman was a total nutjob and yet staff were two cowered to challenge her petty rules.

1. No one to wear perfume, she wasn't allergic just believed it was a waste of money.
2. No plants, flowers etc (especially for some reason hyacinths) in the office - again waste of money
3. All pens, pencils, notepads, staplers, rulers etc had to have their individual 'owners' name printed out on paper and then sellotaped to them - no sticky label for the job, white paper and sellotape only.
4. THE POST - my goodness this was nearly the death of me😃.

Each morning a new page in the A4 'post book' had to be drawn up into columns by the person who was on the rota for 'POST' that day. No preparing future pages ahead in quiet moments, oh no far too efficient.

Once the columns had been neatly drawn up and the post had arrived, it was opened and each letter individually listed in the book. Who it was addressed to and who it was from. These letters were then date stamped before being but into tiered filing trays sitting on a trolley. The 'post person' then wheeled the trolley around the room and into two small adjoining offices, distributing that day's letters and collecting letters that would be franked and sent out from the office that day. This collection was done before the 11am coffee break, the letters then franked after the break and left for the postman.
No one other than the rostered person could touch the post, post book or franking machine. So letters created after lunch had to wait a day before being processed. Out going post was recorded in the book, from, to, date etc and most bizarrely a column for where in the country the letter was going e.g. Peterborough!!!
In my 4 months there - when I ached to speed up the process, no one ever referred to or required any of the information contained in the post book. Needless to say all full post books were filed away 'just in case'.
How the office manager had been allowed to create and impose the system amazed me, the sheer inefficiency of it cost the organisation thousands.

How the office manager had been allowed to create and impose the system amazed me

If you start with the assumption that all office managers should be made redundant, you will be right a lot more often than you are wrong. There are ones who add value. They are extremely rare.

I was a product designer for many years. At one point we had a manager who needed us to identify on each project sheet exactly how many minutes we'd spent on each section of the task. This was in the days before apps that help you do that. We had to set a stopwatch.

Woe betide you if you spent 2 minutes and 45 seconds on admin on one project, when you managed to do all the admin for the previous one in 2 minutes and 38 seconds.

Why did you spend an extra 7 seconds? Explain yourself.

Fortunately that old git moved on and the next manager was happy to have things loosened off a fair bit.

As an office junior I had to stuff envelopes, the HR manager would watch me through her glass partitioned office and if I tapped an envelope on the desk to ensure the address was showing through the window envelope she would come marching out of her office and give me a huge telling off in front of everyone. Apparently if I had to tap the envelope then the paper inside wasn't folded correctly! Years later while working for a different company I also got reprimanded about being pregnant, demoted the next day after informing the MD, refused antenatal appointments and even telephoned by the MD during a scan demanding and shouting at me that I had to leave and come back to the office. I had my leave signed off so he knew where I was. I eventually filed a grievance and won a tribunal case.

CantSleepWontSleep2019

That sounds beyond crazy!

Was person 1 in the line, who opened the boxes of 144, standing there, bored out of their mind, waiting for person 2 to open 12 boxes and pass them on to person 3 before person 1 could open another box?

Otherwise I am imagining a huge backlog building up!

ReflectentMonatomism That's a bit unfair. I doubt you'd like it very much if someone came along and said everyone in your job should be made redundant.

As with all industries and job types, there are always some people who give others a bad name. But to say that Office Managers don't add value and should be made redundant is pretty rude.

Years ago I got a summer job in a law firm. I turned up in tailored black trousers and a white blouse. Half an hour later the managing partner called me into his office and informed me that all female staff were required to wear a skirt. I thought he was testing my legal knowledge and laughed. Unfortunately he was deadly serious. My next words were pretty much 'Right-o. Bye then'.

I remember my first weekend job having to loads of delicious, leftover cakes in the bin at the end of the day. So disgustingly wasteful. The bin was allowed to eat them, but we weren't.

I’ve worked in two “no talking” workplaces (sod that - I had everyone chatting normally within the month!)

Also had a new manager once who said we had to announce where we were going if we were leaving the room. “I’m going to get some water”. “I’m going to office next door to talk to someone about some work.” It lasted two days - the manager lost enthusiasm for it when one of my colleagues stood up and announced “I’m going for a shit!”. We bought all his drinks for weeks after that!

Our boss has just sent an email round saying it is unacceptable that people were late into work today (he himself didn't arrive until 11am)

The roads were gridlocked here today because of the snow and it took most people several hours to get in. Many schools are closed and we all had to make last minute childcare arrangements.

If we are a minute late tomorrow our pay will apparently be docked.

All it has done is pissed people off and added more stress as there is nothing they can do about the weather.

This is not-so-lighthearted - -In a job with many vulnerable clients I was told that I was 'not allowed' to use any other interpreters apart from designated ones because they 'brought in the clients'.

Oh and I was 'no allowed' to contact clients directly. I had to go through these dodgy as hell 'interpreters'.

I left and reported the firm.

My boss emailed me at 3am asking for a research note that he needed that morning.

He noted in the email that she was aware I had a client meeting (at the client's offices) at 6.30am so I would have to have the note to him before that.

Cracking work life balance.

I worked in a nursery when a little boy had a seizure, no history so I called an ambulance. He was blue lighted to hospital 20 mins away so I obviously sent a member of staff with him. He was 2 years old.

Tbe owner of the nursery refused to pay for a taxi back for the staff member- maybe £10/£12, despite me having access to petty cash.
Same owners limited blue gloves for nappy changes.
I paid for taxi and I left not long after. Owner has now sold nursery

My first job (reception) I had a huge book I had to write every single incoming call in, who it was, who they spoke too and their telephone number. It was a nightmare. Another job no one could speak to each other, couldn’t wait at the photocopier to take a turn using it, you had to sit and wait at your desk. The coffee machine was by the loos, if you needed to go to the toilet you were expected to ask everyone if they wanted a drink from the machine first then use the loo and get drinks (which had to be poured from plastic cups into China). All computers had to turned off at lunchtime then wait ages to boot back up after lunch and if we had visitors we were to rush and empty our waste bins even If it was one piece of paper. I actually got bollocked once fo4 returning from lunch and answering a colleagues question as I walked past her desk to mine, it was a miserable fucking place to work