To ask what your most stupid work telling off was?

[BeatleBattleInABottle]

I need cheering up so if you'd like to share the most stupid reasons you've been told off for at work, that would help!

I've just been issued a formal warning for not following sickness procedures. I returned to work today after being off work since last Monday. Literally "Hi, welcome back. Here's a warning". The reason I didnt follow sickness procedures was because I texted my boss each day instead of phoning in. She replied so she received them. Why did I text? I collapsed on Sunday evening and was in hospital until Sunday. TBH they are lucky I remembered to contact them at all for the first few days. I certainly wasn't in a state to talk.

Same job a few months back. I was organising a conference for 350 people. I needed to confirm numbers so sent a professional email to everyone asking thrm to confirm attendance, dietary and other requirement etc. If they hadn't replied by the deadline, I would phone them. Plenty of time to do this. Nope. Not good enough. I had to recall the email and spend 3 days calling people instead. Great use of time, boss!

Finally, last month, I was sent an email bitching about me. They'd obviously put my name in the address, instead of the subject. I just replied "I don't think this was meant for me". Apparently that was "unprofessional" and upset the people who'd sent it! In hindsight, I probably shouldn't have replied, just to watch them squirm.

Yes, I'm stepping up my job hunt.

I got a telling off for daring to ask to reduce my hours slightly to fit in with my son’s nursery pick ups. She went ballistic and screamed “How dare I dictate to her that I wanted to change my hours”.
Horrible, horrible woman. Left very shortly afterwards.

There are some very toxic workplaces it seems.

OP hope you find another job soon.

One of my bosses gave me feedback at my end of year review that I wasn’t visible enough in the team.

This was when I was working from home DURING THE COVID LOCKDOWN! 😂😂😂

The reason I wasn’t visible, Michelle, was that I was legally obliged to be home. The office was closed love.

I called that bitch every fucking morning in Jan until she told me to stop 😂😂😂

Love a bit of malicious compliance. Visible! I’ll give you a call and waste your time every fucking day, how’s that for visible.

I once got really shouted at by my boss' boss for providing figures for a Board meeting that were completely inaccurate.

I couldn't understand, because I was - still am - a stickler for checking and re-checking to make sure everything is correct. He literally threw the paperwork at me across the desk and when I glanced at it, I saw that it wasn't my figures at all, it was from about 2 years prior (when I was still at school!). I pointed that out and he snarled at me "I don't want excuses, idiot, I want answers!" I was only 18 and didn't know what to say, I burst into tears because it was so unjust.

Wanker. He was the head of HR too!

I was working as a maths teacher at a middle school in another country, but I am a native English speaker. One day I was walking through the English (as a foreign language) department and noticed some egregious language errors in the vocabulary wall display that someone was in the process of putting up. No one else was around except for me and the woman sticking the words up, so I very gently explained the error and corrected the word order, verb conjugations and spellings. It turned out that the display had been designed in their departmental meeting and the head of the English department was not happy that the woman putting it up had not followed the design perfectly. Said woman explained that I had told her it was wrong. The head of department felt that I, as a maths teacher, could not be trusted to know English, despite being the only native English speaker working at the school. I was required to attend an English department meeting and apologise, where I noticed even more mistakes on the classroom walls.

I was told off for being to bossy

i checked if they thought I'd been too abrupt, rude or inconsiderate but no the full extent of the problem was that I a woman was asking my staff to do things. I pointed out to my boss that I was their manager and how did he expect me to do my job of managing the team without giving them instructions. I also asked him to consider if he would of wasted his time coming to visit another manager for being too bossy if the manager in question was a man

A boss once snapped at me to shut up. So I did. Unless spoken to. For a week.

Another boss at the same job told me off for being on time(I usually started almost an hour early to miss the traffic and stayed a bit later) when I’d told her I had to drop my car for repairs on the way in.
Apparently she’d phoned the office - before opening hours-but no one answered. I’d been on my way in, sitting in the taxi at traffic lights, watching colleagues all picking up Starbucks, so they arrived-late-after me.
When I pointed this out she said it was especially disappointing as I was ‘usually more reliable than the others’.
I continued to drive in early and sit in the coffee shop till the official start time, started taking my full lunch break, and left on time.

It makes perfect sense!

As a trainee corporate lawyer in the City I once got told off for making (very very basic) amendments myself to a word document. Instead I should have waited for the secretary to make them.

This was at 2am. There was only one secretary around at that time, who was swamped so we had to wait until 4am for her to literally delete a few commas and resave the (draft, not even final) document so we could all go home.

I left very soon after qualifying and don’t regret it for an instant. I don’t need to be owned by any corporation thanks.

Not a telling off as such but my maternity replacement was pissed off with me because I didn't complete a task I had offered to complete by a particular friday. We had made friends during the handover and I spent a month giving her a lift to and from work a 45 minute drive away. She cut me off completely and complained to my boss about me, who didn't stick up for me.

The reason I didn't complete the task? I went into labour three weeks early on the Wednesday and had my baby in the early hours of Friday morning. Whoops, my bad.

Temp job in retail as a teen… got accused of meddling refunds and pocketing the money. They hadn’t even trained me to do a refund on the till therefore I’d never done one.. Refunds were signed by initials of the person on the till, someone had the same initials as me but I got the blame

Still haven't gotten over this, but many years ago I got a massive telling off because a current trainee (who I didn't even know) had been caught plagerising my essay from several years before when I'd gone through the same training program.

I will never come to terms with how they thought this was my fault.

That wins the most bizarre comment of the thread award.

Depends what you were knitting!

Wow.

This was me! Though I wasn't taken aside but shouted at in front of my colleagues. I'd delivered a 4 page fax in the wrong order.

When I was 18, working alone and locking up in a little food place. Had a complaint made by a customer, that I was talking/ chatting when I should have been working. Boss told me who it was that complained (tiny town, and I couldn't remember talking to anyone at all, I'm quite shy) and it was the customer that complained I was talking, too him, he was alone in the shop! 😂

I was once formally warned when I was a TA because a display of children's work I did had the wrong size backing. It was meant to be 5mm and they were 7mm. Had to redo it!

My boss accidentally ordered quite a few of one item and was worried about them selling. The items were put on special offer, he asked me to keep him informed of how well they were selling on his weekend off. I texted him to say how many were sold, he replied was really pleased. Just mentioned to assistant manager (in charge on managers weekend off) that the manager was really pleased with how many we’d managed to sell. She went mental with me for texting him. I explained he asked me to, she didn’t care I was not allowed to text the manager when she was in charge. Wtf

That reminds me of a former colleague who reported our married boss for sexual harassment and was told “So? You’re not married, are you?”

What made it worse was that he had always seemed really nice. I would never have thought it of him. But I totally trusted the colleague who made the accusation, and I found out from a reliable source that he had told senior management lies about her, so her claims had to be true 🙁

Ridiculous! Have always HATED the tea/coffee run culture. I just want to make myself a drink and get on with my work...

I live very close to the city crematorium. Whern I had my dogs, I used to go home every lunchtime to feed them, fuss them and let them out.

One day I was stuck behind a funeral cortège on the way back and arrived a whole two minutes late.

Got a bollocklng. Despite working until 9pm (unpaid) every night the week before. For the company's client deadline

Left soon after.

Civil service, whole team got a massive bollocking from the big boss, no response, questions or comment allowed, then ended with we must all do better and if we don't like it use the grievance policy. Still have absolutely no clue what we were all supposed to have done wrong other than it was "unprofessional", out of order and generally terrible behaviour.

I left soon after.

Staples comment reminds me of my first job. When photocopying you MUST replace the staple on the original copies in exactly the same place so the holes don't show!

Head of the team was on leave and as the most senior member I was covering to ensure the tasks that needed to be completed whilst he was away were done. Had reviewed a form a colleague had completed, and as it was his first time managing this particular type of task, so I was coaching him on what information should be included and the preferences of the department director who would want to quality check before it was circulated to other business stakeholders. I got chastised by my colleague for using the phrase “pen to paper” when explaining who needed to be included in a particular section of the form as contributors to the report. Apparently, that wasn’t how he should be spoken to and that phrase was a “quite a blunt tone”.

I did sense check with my manager afterwards as to whether I had been unreasonable with what I’d sent. He also could see nothing wrong with my message, told me not to worry. It’s now apparent this colleague has form for being awkward and resistant to doing any work that involves learning something new or doesn’t relate to his specialist areas that he is interested in.

You're using the wrong red pen...

Haha! Unamed! Of course I should have been able to find it from a pile of 30 identical ones….