What's the strangest thing you have been told off for at work?

NoEffingWay · 2021-10-07T17:08:18+00:00

I once got told off for leaving on time, I had done my contracted hours, all of my work was done but apparently leaving on time was frowned upon [hmm]. The same job told me off when I left 'for only working my 4 weeks notice'. I think they genuinely expected me to stay even after leaving [grin].

Yafilthyanimal · 07/10/2021 18:12

Because my email signature was not all in line with the other lines.

I had copied and pasted it from the official document

Mybalconyiscracking · 07/10/2021 18:12

I was told for sending one of my chargehands home, despite telling my boss that she’d been having a miscarriage.
He thought she could have held out until the end of the shift,

SlamLikeAGuitar · 07/10/2021 18:16

One particular shift, I was going through a really emotional clusterfuck, and dropped the ball massively when it came to my share of the cleaning rota.
Following shift, I’d got my shit together….and was told off the next day for doing too much cleaning

insancerre · 07/10/2021 18:16

I got told off for ringing an ambulance for a colleague who was having a miscarriage, I thought she was having an ectopic pregnancy
Apparently the parents might worry (it was a nursery)

Mixitupalot · 07/10/2021 18:19

I got told of just last week for not clocking up enough hours. I had done 67 hours. I get paid for 40!! They can do one now am on the search for a new job.

UntilYourNextHairBrainedScheme · 07/10/2021 18:20

When I was pregnant with dc1 I was a secondary school teacher. My head of department knew I was pregnant and had bad morning sickness.
He told me off for leaving my well behaved year eleven top set (who knew I was pregnant and were lovely) alone for five minutes while I ran to the toilet to be sick. Nothing happened while I was out of the room except some chatting, but he happened to see me run down the corridor.

I asked what I should have done instead and he said that I should have been sick in the classroom bin (not envy).

Aroundtheworldin80moves · 07/10/2021 18:22

I once got a phone call from DH asking me to bring in his thick woolen jumper and tie.
Because it was the 1st October, not because he was cold. It was 25 degrees. But it was October so winter uniform was required...

Vinorosso74 · 07/10/2021 18:22

Mybalconyiscracking that is heartless!
I got told off for not calling to say I would be in late. I was stuck on a tube deep in one of the Northern line tunnels. I did point out there is no mobile reception down there to be shouted at louder that I should have called.

slavetothekittens · 07/10/2021 18:26

Many years ago, I worked in a nursery.....I got told off for looking after the kids too well!

romdowa · 07/10/2021 18:26

For comforting a woman who came in begging us to stop accepting her husband's bets because he was gambling all the money every week. I gave her information on how he could self exclude from all the shops in the area and where she could get support for her self . Apparently I shouldn't have done it as he was our biggest punter 🙄🙄🙄 we were also supposed to try and stall people who wanted to self exclude by telling them we didn't have the forms, I always refused to lie to them and processed their requests straight away. I could see the guts it took for these people to come in and do this and I knew If I turned them away then they wouldn't self exclude.

WithRosesAroundTheDoor · 07/10/2021 18:26

Picking up a child who had fallen over and was very upset. I don't mean putting her on my hip or anything, just lifting her to her feet.
I didn't last long at that school.

VaguelyInteresting · 07/10/2021 18:26

For not having pre-empted that my boss would need an extant version of an obscure document whilst in a meeting with an investor (think, a version of the company literature about 5 years out of date) because it had a particular diagram in it.

Apparently I should have had versions of ALL external facing documents EVER printed in the company’s 20 year history to hand.

I should have known this.

I should have known what these were, who had designed them and how to request copies of them be printed by the designers, where we no longer held stock. No matter the cost.

It was my second month.

number87inthequeue · 07/10/2021 18:28

I was once shouted at in the middle of the office by my boss for not being able to arrange a conference call with a colleague in another country that afternoon. Despite explaining that I had not been able to get hold of anyone at all in the office and finding out that it was actually a national holiday in that country. So the equivalent of not being able to get hold of someone in our office on Xmas day. Apparently I should have tracked someone down who could give me his home phone number. Who exactly I have no idea, and I can't imagine he would have agreed to the conference call.

The issue she wanted to discuss was not massively urgent and the person she wanted me to contact we very senior. I have a suspicion that if I had called him at home he would not have been impressed and she would have blamed me.

Lolabray · 07/10/2021 18:28

I worked in customer service and got told to get off the phone as was on too long.

Also one day we were ‘shouted’ at about throwing too much waste away in plastic bags and had to empty them and reuse

WorraLiberty · 07/10/2021 18:29

Photographing the work Elf On A Shelf, in lewd, compromising positions and sending them to the work WhatsApp group 🤣🤣

I've already worked out this years poses...

Crunchymum · 07/10/2021 18:30

Saying "OK" in an email to my team lead.

Was something innocuous like "OK I'm happy to go with your suggestion" and got a shitty email back asking me to watch watch tone of my emails / how they come across and how my use of "OK" appears aggressive. She asked if there were any issues we needed to get HR involved with?

Once I stopped laughing (and finished sharing a screenshot with my colleagues who had been picked up on similar non issues) I replied with an apology but explained I always write OK like this and asked how she would prefer me to write it going forwards. She didn't reply.

Lolabray · 07/10/2021 18:30

@NoEffingWay

Seriously.. schools are very much like this. You can’t offer comfort or help a child sometimes but i understand the reasoning with safeguarding etc

Lizzie523 · 07/10/2021 18:33

I was once accused of sighing over the phone. The incident became known as sigh-gate as I was forced to apologise to the sigh-ee in person and everything. It was my first graduate job and I left after a year.

TheGirlInTheGreenDress · 07/10/2021 18:33

I got told off for being too efficient, accurate, and helpful because it made my lazy colleague look bad.

neonorchid · 07/10/2021 18:35

I was once given a bollocking for not calling my workplace 2 hours before the start of my shift to tell them I wouldn't be in.
Unfortunately my 1 year old at the time got taken ill and blue lighted to hospital. After she had shouted at me asking what should I have done. I told her to stick the job and I couldn't predict my own child's illness and that I wouldn't be back at all. Turned out my son had pneumonia!
A day or two later I got a call from HR apologising for how the manager had spoken to me and asking me to return. I never returned and have never shopped in the store again.

Cornishmumofone · 07/10/2021 18:42

I was shouted at by my manager for sneezing. We shared an internal office with poor ventilation. She knew I struggled with hay fever, but kept bringing daffodils in.

SirenSays · 07/10/2021 18:44

I had an absolute witch of a boss who decided I had to sit in a certain place at work all alone. No one else was singled out like this, just me. On a regular basis she would call the phone in reception knowing there was no one else there to answer it. Then when I'd run and answer it she'd have a go at me for not being where she said I should. I left, best thing I ever did. I still hope her arsehole grows tastebuds.

doglikescheeseontoast · 07/10/2021 18:45

It was mentioned in a formal appraisal that I was 'too quiet'. I am partially deaf so was sometimes unable to hear well in what was a busy, open-plan office and tended to zone out and get on with my work, the standard of which was never questioned.

I should have challenged it, but at the time my wife was undergoing tests for what turned out to be terminal cancer (she has since died) so my mind was elsewhere 🙄

Chikapu · 07/10/2021 18:51

I got told off by my manager for being too private, she wanted details of my sex life that I didn't want to share. Apparently not talking about it would make me unpopular!

BumBurnerBum · 07/10/2021 18:52

@romdowa

For comforting a woman who came in begging us to stop accepting her husband's bets because he was gambling all the money every week. I gave her information on how he could self exclude from all the shops in the area and where she could get support for her self . Apparently I shouldn't have done it as he was our biggest punter 🙄🙄🙄 we were also supposed to try and stall people who wanted to self exclude by telling them we didn't have the forms, I always refused to lie to them and processed their requests straight away. I could see the guts it took for these people to come in and do this and I knew If I turned them away then they wouldn't self exclude.

Thank you for being a decent person