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

[NoEffingWay]

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 .

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 .

[quote Lolabray]@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[/quote]
I always offer a cuddle if they need it, but I always ask them first. I’m a parent helper though, not employed. I have read all the safeguarding policies and done a course, but if they need a cuddle to feel better then they need a cuddle.

Bollocked by my department head because I didn’t know why a colleague was off sick.

Bollocked by same man because Ofsted preferred my lesson to his.

Bollocked for being signed off with raging tonsillitis. Same twat.

And worst of all, bollocked for not being back at work ten days after emergency surgery for a ruptured ectopic pregnancy.
Looking at you, Rob, you twunt.

I got too off for working too efficiently and helping others who were more busy (I can’t stand just sitting with no work to do) - apparently it would look like she didn’t need the staff? But she then wanted me to just sit at my PC and “look busy” in case senior management walked by? Bat shit crazy.

I had a retail job in the late 90s. I only did weekends. I got told off for being late once because I didn't see the rota, which was pinned to a notice board in the staff room, had been changed on a day I wasn't in. No call, nothing. Apparently I should have just known.

Last year, during the first lockdown, a couple of people in my team (of 12) were having laptop problems and were actually struggling to work. I sourced alternatives for them from various bits of the organisation and spent my lunch break and an extra hour (which I made up at the end of the day despite the fact I was already working about 60 hours a week) driving round delivering devices. I was told off for helping my team and driving around. I was the only person in my team with a car.

Same boss, before the lockdown came and just after the coronavirus outbreak was declared a pandemic, insisted that I needed to have "improve sickness absence in the team" on my PDR. In a pandemic. Wouldn't budge. I took that to HR. I told them if, in a pandemic, I could improve sickness absence, then I shouldn't be working for that organisation anymore and get myself a role as Chief Medical Officer. Boss still refused to entertain a more achievable objective.

I don't work there anymore. That was the last in a series of straws.

I’ve been told of for going in to work too early as I was desperate for the toilet… I had a 30 mile each way commute. Some days it could take me 35 minutes, others an hour. So I would set off accordingly to allow for traffic. Apparently this was very unreasonable of me to not be able to predict the traffic on a daily basis, and I should go to the McDonald’s down the road to wait until precisely 5 minutes before my start time.

This was just the first of many signs that the employer was INSANE! I was rather unceremonious dismissed some 4 months later for a litany of wrong doings that included doing my job thoroughly, “sticking my nose in” and highlighting a regulatory issue that could’ve resulted in the business being shut down, and being simultaneously “too friendly” and “not friendly enough”.

I can laugh about it now, but I’d just got the keys for my first house and lost my job the next day. They even tried to hold on to £300 worth of my own medical equipment that was engraved with my name…

Beginning of the Covid outbreak, working in a nursery.
Manager was having the morning of for important matters -having her nails done-so I was in charge.
Member of staff comes in with a dry cough and feeling horrible, I duly sent her home and for a PCR test.
When it came back negative 2 days later and she returned to work I got a major bollocking for sending her home as it inconvenienced her having to cover staffing. Asked what "advice" I was following.
I replied The Government's.

The landlord of our massive tower block decided to refurbish the tower, we rented a floor in. I went to the open meeting for all the people in the block and reported back, I was asked to do this.
When I told my boss he actually screamed me about these proposed changes, it was nothing to do with me. He was usually pretty decent so I put it down as a bad day!

Another really awful manager refused to let me swap a day off to go to my child's sports day, the following week she needed me to swap my day off to suit her which was never previously an issue. Obviously she couldn't then ask me so spent £000's on something I would have done as a matter of course.

For having my team continually meeting their targets and not having any disciplinary issues with them....apparently it made the other team leaders "look bad" . They never met targets and were always on their teams back even for minor issues such as signing along to the radio. If ever anyone needed proof that a happy workforce is a productive workforce they just had to walk onto the shop floor and there it was.

Eating a banana at my desk

I had an email telling me off because I was signing in at 7:50am but putting on my timesheet that I was starting at 8 and that because we use flexi time I should be putting the time I come in the building.

Any other job I have had I would always arrive 5-10 minutes early so I just presumed I’d do the same here, come in a bit earlier make a cup of tea, log on etc ready to start work. I’m not complaining because those 10 minutes add up and at the end of the month I get a nice early finish.

Within days of a new manager starting I was told off for saying 'Good Morning' as I passed colleagues in the morning while coming into work and walking to my desk. Apparently 'Good' is 'sending the wrong message' and 'people should be allowed to have whatever type of morning they want or need'. I was also told that as we were an international company I should get into the habit of not saying 'morning' or 'afternoon' or 'evening' because different customers came from different time zones which didn't match ours and it could be confusing for some people if I said the wrong term although everyone in my office building was in the same time zone
After being told off I apologised to my line manager for my error and at lunch I sat in my car on my phone looking for another job.

Lol similar situation, was reading a magazine in unpaid lunch break and was told to put it down and read something work based instead... In a staff rest room so not even any members of the public about.

For producing some work based on my boss's insistence that certain facts were xyz. I challenged her, having checked with 2 other colleagues but she was insistent, so i rooted around to see if I could find evidence to support her assertion, and found old paperwork that suggested she was correct. So I produced the work, gained her approval (so she saw the assets I had produced, including this fact) and went ahead and published it, only to be told by her that I'd got it wrong and how was I going to avoid making such a glaring error in future?

When I told her it was her insistence that this fact was correct that led me to include it, She then said she couldn't possibly be expected to know every detail correctly after only 8 months with the company and I should have double checked my facts (I did. I had also only been with the company a month!).

I looked for another job pretty sharpish.

When I started work in a Drawing Office in the mid 60s all the apprentice draughtsmen (no women in those days) and tracers (these were women) had to line up at the start of each day and show the head draughtsman your clean outstretched hands. Woe betide you if you had not washed them to his standard.

Same workplace, told off my another manager (not my own) because my team wasn't volunteering for an organisation-wide activity to represent the department. There were 25 slots. In a department of 5 teams, my team alone had covered 18 of them. I pointed this out. Apparently because the team had previously not had a good record of helping out, the complaint still stood and she was right to tell me. The lack of volunteering was historic: it has happened before I'd even started. Told my manager whose response was that it was true that my team never volunteered and the other manager was absolutely correct. Apparently covering 18 out of 25 slots was beside the point. We had a similar rate for the previous events too. Again , beside the point.

I'd volunteered for one. Got told off.

Care to guess how many slots the first manager's team had taken? Zero. Pointed that out too. Again, that wasn't the point and it was consistently my team that let everyone down.

Another one from me. I once got told off in very serious tones that wearing a green cardigan on a Tuesday was utterly unacceptable because that’s the day that the big boss likes to wear her green cardigan so we can’t wear the same thing 😂

Also, how are there so many morons like this in power at work? I assume they’ve got family and friends and are they such twats with them too or do they save it for work?!!

@Mixitupalot

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.

What did you say when you said that?

Ffs what did THEY say?

A colleague reported me for being at work.

When I was meant to be at work.

Not me but DP was once given a right bollocking by his manager for having a seizure in front of DP's colleagues. DP should have waited until his lunch break because then it "wouldn't have interrupted his work schedule".

When I worked at Waitrose I got told off for saying hi rather than good morning to my boss, and for saying I was fine but a bit tired rather than very well thank you when she asked how I was. This was 20 years ago and it still makes me feel like shit.

@Toomuchtrouble4me

Snogging a fireman in the basement. Fair play.

I need to hear more about this!

@trappedsincesundaymorn

Not me but DP was once given a right bollocking by his manager for having a seizure in front of DP's colleagues. DP should have waited until his lunch break because then it "wouldn't have interrupted his work schedule".

@Bleachmycloths - the manager in question had no problem with people chatting, reading books or magazines etc, on their unpaid lunch break - I don’t see why knitting was any different. And frankly, why shouldn’t a nurse relax during their break - would people rather they stayed tense, and didn’t go back to the ward/department and their patients refreshed?

[quote Howareyouflower]@JasonMomoasgirlfriend I think she meant the toilet cubicle...not that she was smelly![/quote]
Thank you

To be honest I'm still a bit perplexed by wee-wee gate. Apparently the smell was coming from my cubicle and could be smelled while she was in the next cubicle

There was definitely no pissing on the floor, seat or in my knickers