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 told off years ago for not knocking on an open door and just walking in and saying I had a meeting. She asked me to walk out the door and knock, do this in future even if the door was shut. I did say if the door was shut I would have knocked. It makes me paranoid now and I even said to my now boss, sorry I should have knocked and explained why I said it and she said if I was on the phone I could understand or if the door was shut but she isn't like that.

I got told off in an appraisal because my face is too animated. I never worked out what to do with that.

I was a newly qualified teacher, she was a power hungry deputy head with a stick up her arse.
She told me 'I don't like the tone of your post it note'.
Hilarious

Many years ago whilst working in a childrens nursery as a young worker the matron issues some instruction and I put a notice up in the staff cloakroom “stating by order of Hitler” She went ballistic and it caused a lot of trouble at the time !

Student nurse, in the olden days, working in theatres. We had an emergency road accident case come in and the only theatre free was the gynae theatre. In all theatres there was a list of the glove sizes for the surgeons whose regular theatre it was. As this was the gynae theatre and the surgeon was a vascular surgeon it wasn’t ’his own’ theatre so his name wasn’t on the list. I asked him politely what size gloves he required, he told me and I thought no more of it. Later that day I was walking along the main theatre corridor and was pounced on by the theatre manager. She tore me off a strip asking me how dare I, a student nurse, ask a consultant his glove size. Apparently, I should have walked the hundred yards to his regular theatre to look at his glove size. He was a pompous unpleasant old git so I suspect he reported my insolence!

I’m not surprised. It’s a pretty offensive and disrespectful thing to do.

That us soooo Severance

Was told I was not to make any further complaints about an extremely incompetent person in my department (I was manager) who persistently fucked up. Said incompetent person was the union rep (funny that) and was subsequently ‘let go’ after a year of competency procedures (kept taking off loads of time so impossible to proceed). Utterly ridiculous.

I work in quite an informal office. I have two pairs of identical trousers, one blue and one black. I was told not to wear the blue - no idea why. Lots of other blue in the office an often a lot of denim...

I accidentally bought caster sugar instead of granulated sugar when restocking the tea tray. You’d think I’d shat in the teapot.

My line manager once had to pull me up on the positioning of my paper clips. Her boss didn't like that she had to remove the paper clip to read the document. She wanted me to angle them differently to 45°. I used to give her a couple.of reports a month!

I can believe this!
When I was a student ODP, I had my own nice pair of scissors for cutting tape etc, that I kept in my pocket. They had tape on with my name.
One time, a surgeon asked to borrow them but I was called to something else so didn't get them back straight away. Later on in the day, I asked for them back, and he was nice about it... apologised and gave them back.
I was bollocked by a qualified ODP (that was not even my mentor) for having the audacity to ask a surgeon for my own stuff back. I don't think the actual surgeon had an issue with it.

That is silly. The only difference is the size of the crystals... and they dissolve in tea anyway.

Love Severance 😄

It wasn't a telling off as such, but my line manager awkwardly passed on a message from the Boss telling me not to wear a certain jumper, as she had the same jumper.
My reply was that as this wasn't actually a work issue, she was very welcome to not wear her own jumper. And that if she cared that much about looking unique, she shouldn't buy her knitwear from M&S.
No idea if the LM fed that back, but I hope she did.

I had someone whine that I hadn't started my emails with "Hi", just their name. A man in his 50s; it was truly pathetic. It then spiralled into my manager sending me a 4 page letter about what a terrible manager I was. I never recovered and left a few months later. I still don't know what got into my manager, who I'd worked with perfectly amicably for some years previously.

Why?

I was told by my manager that the business could not afford to waste 2 days on me spending time with a suicidal colleague. Both times I had been called by our counselling service to say my colleague felt unable to keep himself safe and he named me as the person for them to call. I spoke to HR to find out what I should take this time as. I transferred teams shortly afterwards as I couldn’t work for someone who valued the business over human life.

I was told off for wearing shoes with leggings instead of boots - apparently my boss had never been so ashamed of me! Even though it had been absolutely fine for someone in our team the week before. 🤷‍♀️

Many years ago I was hauled over the coals by my community nurse manager for borrowing some morphine (all written up and signed for) from the local hospice in order to allow my terminally ill patient (who had run out of said medication) to die in comfort. Apparently it was against the rules to borrow medication in this manner (controlled drug etc). After she had hauled me over the coals and was about to open the door for me to leave I told her I stood by my decision and would do it again under the same circumstances. She said quietly “yes, well done, and so would I.”

I had been an early childhood teacher for 35 years. When the school closed that I had been teaching at, I was hired at another school. I soon found out it was disorganized and understaffed. One day they put me in charge of a rowdy group of school age kids. Two boys in particular were very disrespectful and rude. They ended up getting in a fist fight .I was the only adult in charge of all these kids(12). I had to break up the fight .These 2 boys were only 10 but taller and heavier than me. In order to give them a consequence for their behavior I told them they couldn't get a treat from the ice cream truck that was coming in the afternoon.When management found out about the consequence they made me feel like I'd committed child abuse. They said OH NO YOU CAN'T TAKE THEIR ICE CREAM AWAY.as if that was unheard of. So these brats got away with their misbehavior and actually got a reward.

I worked with a colleague, (health care professional) I'll call her Lisa, who was struggling for childcare in the holidays. I didn't know her very well but she lived close to a relative of mine and I arranged for my relative to look after the colleagues 2 children at a church kids club that she runs, completely free of charge, for two weeks.
A month or so later I was called in to a meeting with my manager, who was incredulous but said I'd been reported by Lisa because my hair was too long and was touching my collar.
Seriously! I'd arranged free childcare for her and she reported me.
Come the next school holidays and Lisa actually approached me and asked if I could arrange the free childcare again. I gave her a one word answer "No".

” Failed” a lesson observation and reprimanded because I omitted to quiz the children about what they could do next time to get better at the task- they were reception children playing in the sand with different sized cups.

I was observed by a PE teacher, I was Head of Maths and the lesson I madly planned was to teach a low Year 9 set how the bisect a line using a compass. It went quite well in that they didn't stab each other and some managed to draw a circle through three random points. The criticism was that some pupils had to repeat the initial exercise, for greater accuracy. Apparently in her eyes, once they'd 'done it' they should have moved on and when I made the comparison with her own subject where practice improved performance she wouldn't have it.

Mine was that I get things done too quickly. No mistakes, so not sure what the issue was.

What a bully!!! How mean. I’m so sorry you went through this at just 18.