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 used to work for an extremely large blue chip company and the area I worked in was a building of some 650 people. The old battleaxe who ran the stationery department would only issue items on two afternoons a week. As a new starter, I was given a "starter pack" of a pen, pencil, ruler, Tippex and rubber (we are talking late '80s). She treated the department as if the money came out of her own pocket. If you broke the ruler, you never got another one the whole time you were there. You had to take your old pencil stub or pen back to her before she would issue another one. People were known to snap their pencils in two in order to get two new pencils in successive weeks!

I have so many but my 2 highlights are both holiday related. Firstly there was the year that we were short staffed that by the last month of the year between 6 managers we had a total 25 weeks of holiday to take. Only 1 manager allowed off at once no pay in lieu! The second involved a policy of all holidays had to be booked by 31st December, cue approximately 150 members of staff all handing in at least 2 holiday requests on New Year's eve, that policy was quickly dropped.

As a student, I worked for an utterly insane but not very tech savvy boss who was just dying to make partner.

Got asked to stay in for lunch and show him how to use a timer in Outlook to send emails with a delay. Took me roughly an hour to get him to grasp it, too.

Shortly afterwards, he starts sending us all spammy requests - and pontificating about how dedication to the job at all hours was imperative if one really cared about the business. Especially when any of the senior partners were around.

Same boss would also stalk senior partners' diaries for private appointments that overlapped. He'd then put an appointment of his own onto his schedule and set it to private, so that anyone who looked up the important people would get the impression that he was in that meeting.

Sadly for him, nobody else was obsesses with Outlook stalking partners and hopefuls.

My former employer did not permit ladies to wear trousers or men to have beards. Ladies were only allowed to wear sandals if their toenails were painted.

In my previous job we had to start only putting one loo roll into the men's room and they had to come with the empty roll to get a replacement.
It was a bit desparate, but despite a 50/50 male/female split, the men went through about four times the amount of toilet paper as the the women did.
One colleague "helped" himself to the toilet paper, but as he was related to the boss, and good at his job, he didn't get sanctioned.

In my current job, the office manager has set our computers to print everything double sided while we were on the Christmas break.
It would be fine for internal stuff, but our invoices and shipping documents need to be single sided only. Took me two minutes to set it back to the way it was, but really annoying to notice that when you're burried under work after two weeks off.

While working as a lecturer in a large college we had to have not only a lesson plan for each class but one for each student. There were 22 in each class and everyone was working on different projects (graphic design), not only that we had to fill in 10 minute slots for everyone saying what they should be working on that day. The amount of paperwork amounted to three times the hours worked and of course you weren’t paid for that because it was in with your hourly rate.

@DandilionBreak, that reminds me of something that happened in my old job. It's still one of my favourite things.

We were a contact centre and the office was open plan, so any feedback or coaching sessions took place at the team leader's desk, where anyone nearby could overhear.

Some poor woman was being asked to account for why she took 30 seconds longer to 'wrap up' (type her notes) after the call ended, than was allowed.

Deadpan as anything, she went 'I sneezed' and stared down the team leader, who was overzealous and a bit of an idiot, so he barked 'Well, don't do it again! Or tell me if it's going to happen so I can account for it in my report.'

This started a spate of emails from his team, along the lines of 'asking permission to have the hiccups next Tuesday morning at 11:05am following break, because I'm planning on eating spicy crisps' and 'I've just got something in my eye so I blinked a lot and it made me take two seconds longer than my average. Just letting you know.'

I had friends on the team, so I was privy to the whole lot, and it ended up with the operations manager stepping in to clarify that people didn't need to justify every second of their time, and only truly exceptional instances above the average should be mentioned in feedback sessions.

I have several:
My first job on leaving school I was told £x per annum with a review after 3 months, and I was paid x per annum basis for 3 months.
On the 4th month the girl who I was at same school as (but I was a year younger as she had a gap year) and got the same A levels BUT at least 1 or 2 better grades than her, and I started the same day as her on the same pay as her (we'd compared notes beforehand) was complaining how much tax had been deducted from her new wage. I said it must be wrong because mine was only 50p more than it was before. So we compared pay slips and she had had a massive rise.
When I challenged this by asking if I wasn't working as well as her (she had had 3 days off sick I'd had none), and why I was told it was because I was a year younger and they'd made a mistake with my starting pay which should have been less. So unfair!

Another was several years ago I briefly worked for an airfreight company in telesales and the sales manager was a bit odd...he didn't seem to know his way around the relatively new in those days CRM system and kept saying 'ignore that box, don't know what it does' - and as a consequence a lot of the calls I made were not recorded on the system in the correct place, so running a report by, say, postcode, or by activity etc made it seem like I'd done nothing because the ignored boxes actually mattered. I spent an evening doing online tutorials and worked out how to set it up properly - only to be told 'no don't do that nobody else does'. Secondly one day he made me a list of leads, most of them were DIGITAL design companies ie the sort doing stuff for websites etc. thus wouldn't have any need send parcels/airfreight. I said this but he said no you must call them! Thirdly he spent much of the day on his phone, not talking but tapping on his mobile I presume social media hence not knowing how the CRM system worked I assume. Fourthly the whole company was weird, no set prices, no set volume/spend related discounts, so you couldn't say to a company 'based on that volume of business we can do it for x' and then nail them down to using you. Oh no, you had to take all the details, get the quote authorised by the manager then go back to the customer. The problem was the manager was often out playing golf or away, or simply ignored your request for days/weeks - one (large) quote I got the information a couple of days in and 3 weeks later still nothing back. Whole thing was a nightmare frankly, couldn't wait to leave.

And another was a good 30+ years ago, a company that offered me a fab job in sales, with a company car. They asked what car I'd like and I said really doesn't matter and they gave me an ancient dodgy ex taxi Mercedes automatic that stalled and spluttered and was THE most uneconomic thing ever. When I complained about it, they sacked another sales guy and gave me his car! I was a bit shocked in a 'surely you can't do that' sort of way but was told he had been warned about his lack of sales and we needed his car for you because you are bringing in the figures! . Needless to say that car was ropey as hell as this young kid had clearly been flooring it, so a couple of months later I pointed out the head gasket was clearly on its way out and it might be an idea to do the car thing properly since they could see the benefit of the work I was bringing in would easily pay for the car and it'd be so much more economical, and could I have a VW Golf and they got me one!

Company I work for now are a little eccentric but I like them, it's fun.

I had a temp job where I was expected to cover the office over everyone else's lunch hours. Which was fine, except that I was also expected to cover the office outside of lunch hours "in case we're busy". So when was I supposed to have even the short break I was entitled to by law? This was met with an exasperated sigh.

I'd love to say this was way back when, but it was last year.

I once got a loud and public bollocking for asking a work related question on my first day in a job. Oddly enough, i never did get on well there.

Worked in a call centre where you had to work back toilet time. I refused, it’s a basic human right to use the loo fgs. Also got shouted at for using too much washing up liquid as a 37 year old woman!

One of my previous bosses was such an awful micro manager. She shouted at me and colleague as there were no blank forms in ‘the folder’ I never even knew we had a folder. If I wanted the form I Accessed it on the shared drive and typed itbthem printed it as did my colleague ‘but that’s not how me and Debbie worked! We printed a stack and used them when needed!’ Ok well that’s inefficient and Debbie shot the craw to a new gaff two years ago!

My current place...,soooo much paper. I got into trouble for not printing all e-mails. I wait until a case is finished and print off the e-mail train. I hate looking at files and seeing the same e-mail replicated each time the chain is printed. All tasks have a bit of paper 📝 too much paper,if a fire ever breaks out the place will burn well!

"I left a job a few month ago that insisted I print off and file "

Are they old fashioned about paper files or did they just want to punish you for leaving?
I used to work somewhere (not in the UK) where the boss went to the toilet with the door open (no.1 only thankfully). Every email received there had to be printed as well, but that was almost 20 years ago now. I wasn't even allowed to have email or Internet for my first two years there - I did office work!

"A particular low point was when I asked my colleague a work related question, and the owner's dad told me off."

I know people who've been told off by their boss's CHILD. I wasn't actually told off, but my colleague told her son to say 'Mum says I have to do the ... filing, because you haven't done it'.

When I was a carer ide nipped into the office for something to be told off for having a pen in my pen pocket

I asked what's the point of a pen pocket if not to put pens in but was told not to ask stupid questions and if she caught ANYONE with a pen in their pen pocket there would be consequences

Still don't understand the point of a pen pocket

"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. "

I know someone who works somewhere where people are docked money from their wages for all minutes not on a call, including when they're typing up the notes from the calls. Needing permission to go to the toilet seems to be quite common in call centres.

"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."

I actually find that pretty normal. I used to have the job of registering the post - on a computer data base and stamping it. Outgoing post also had its own database and every outgoing letter had a reference number and the initials of the people writing/typing/dictating or just responsible for it. We did occasionally use it to look up when something was sent.
In the same place, every outgoing letter had to be filed in 4 copies though. Now that, I do agree was a bit overkill.

to pop into office an hour before an important meeting (not on my day in) to turn on the heating and buy biscuits for the manager and her people she was meeting!

I worked in the public service, a regulatory body, for a few months. I can safety say the supervisor was a demented bullying nutcase. Aside from that point, missed at the interview they were all .. odd. One time a file was posted to the wrong person when it should have been me. I sat less than 5 feet from her. She posted it back to the sender who then reposted it to me. They were all obessed about their heavy workloads yet when people in another office kept double booking the conference rooms their solution was to setup a cross-office between departments to resolve the problem. Rather than sending out a cease and desist email or indeed people could have just stopped double booking the conference room. My favourite was if anyone made an error typing a document on their computer, or heaven forbid, unwittingly gave wrong information to a colleague or worse still, accidently posted the wrong document to the website. Rather than just fix it everyone had to declare their error, usually in a string of swear words or shocked ‘oh my god’ tones. Lastly, my desk sat between two doors into this large open office. One senior colleague gave out to me for taking the longer route to my desk.

Oooh another one, not to write "she noted / he noted" in minutes, "he said / she said" was far superior (this was for a very small office non-corporate environment).

Not to write "dear all" to the board, but "dear board"

Not to staple things diagonally in corner, but to staple vertically in the corner...

I could go on...

Call Centre (wasn't when I started, it was 'an improvement to efficiency'). You had to log out of your phone if you weren't physically attached to the receiver - no headset - and able to pick the phone up before the first ring had finished. They timed how long you spent in the toilet, too - well, they did for three weeks, until I was bawled out for taking four and a half minutes in there when I had already been once - apparently, managers find it quite offensive when they demand to know why you went again and evidence it if you inform them clearly, politely and without an ounce of embarrassment 'Oh, I had to change my tampon as it was beginning to leak after five hours. I'm not sure how I can prove that without either removing my knickers or taking the lid off the blue bin, though'.

One boss was obsessed with control. Every letter had to be proofread by her. Even the standard ones that she had written that didn't have any additional typing on them. She also had to check all calculations I made. Which wouldn't be as bad if I hadn't needed to explain to her how to calculate percentages in order to be able to check my work.

Her finest moment is a toss up between literally following me into the staffroom as I began my lunchbreak to tell me I'd been there for over an hour and I had to go back immediately and standing outside the toilet door, waiting for me to come out. She informed me I'd been in there for four minutes after I'd finished. Yep, she had stood there and listened to me having a piss.

Another boss felt the need to demand I answer his calls at 12.30am in the middle of a week off I hadn't chosen to have to get work ready for a fortnight's time. Not only was that outside my contracted work hours, I didn't get paid holidays, so it was completely nothing to do with me.

The OH possibly had the worst one. He worked for a local authority in the Housing Department. Somebody brought in the Call Centre and computer system (and presumably got paid a fuckton for it). Instead of being able to solve resident's queries, they were timed. If they were still on the phone after 2 minutes 40 seconds, a big red light would flash and if they did that more than once in a day or twice in a week, they were hauled over the coals and threatened with performance management/the sack. The entire point of answering enquiries had been changed to GET THEM OFF THE PHONE NOW. Oh, but after you tell them to fuck off and report it online, you have to make them stay on the line to be transferred to take a seven minute telephone survey. It didn't matter if somebody was telling them that they were suicidal/had taken an overdose, they had to tell them to go online to report their query and they were being transferred to a customer satisfaction survey.

Kind of makes one suspect that the person paid a fuckton got bonuses based upon the number of calls kept within the maximum time and the numbers that completed the satisfaction survey. Never mind the poor bastards phoning up were mostly homeless or about 80 and didn't have internet access, tell them to get somebody else to go online for them and GET THEM OFF THE PHONE.

HR sent its entire staff on an awayday all at the same time, including reception staff, and expected staff doing totally unrelated jobs to offer to take turns to man reception after about five minutes' training. Pressure was put on people to do this so they felt bad if they refused. Not management, of course - just the 'little people'. (This wasn't some tiny office BTW, it was the large head office of a major retail chain.)

1. Working day started at 8:30, must be in the office at 7:30 am to prep for the day. Apparently because I was on a salary I should work as many hours as the owner deemed fit.
2. When working from home I must add my commuting time onto my working day. So must be logged in from 6:30 to 6:30pm. She got notified when we were logged on/off

Needless to say I tethered my laptop to my personal phone, left it open, logged in and seatbelted it into the car as I drove to other interviews. Controlling twat!

I worked for a horrid small business publishing company in the north east (may or may not be named after a spider's home) and the MD wouldn't allow us to have ANY flexitime at all. It was nine to five or nothing.

We were also only allowed 30 minutes for lunch and the nearest sandwich shop was, you guessed it, 15 minutes walk away...obviously the rules were rather different for the managers, and whenever they were away the atmosphere was totally different, really helpful and happy. When they were in situ even visitors to the office used to comment on how quiet it was.

The final straw for me was when we all had a missive from the MD at 4.45pm one Friday, timed to be sent literally as he trotted out of the door, telling us all that we weren't committed enough and those who put in the time and work would be rewarded. When I spoke to a colleague who'd spent many hours that month working unpaid overtime to get a new product out, he laughed and said: "Properly rewarded? So that's what he calls a Chinese takeaway and a can of pop then".

I left very soon afterwards. The average time people stayed there was four months to a year. I did meet some lovely people though, many of whom are still friends, and we all went on to do okay at larger organisations. It did put me off ever working for a small company again.

They weren't keen on honesty, either, at least not in their minions...let's just say they're all in my book of characters for future novels...

I worked for a well known hairdressing college about 10 years ago and written into my contract was that i need to wear all black ( fine ) my underwear should always be a matching set and my underarms and legs should always be free from hair

Brtween children on the 90's I got a job at a Japanese Investment Bank. V highly paid dealer. Was treated v well at interview. Lovely reception and entrance. First day was told all the British staff had to enter via side door, back stairs. It was evident that the British staff were there to fulfil quotas but paid handsomely. I started on Monday; left on Friday. It was disgusting.

A year or two later they were done for discrimination at Tribunal.