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.

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.

She sounds toxic. She could easily reminded you in her text that you need to call in to avoid a warning.

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!

Sounds like you did her a favour pointing out the mistake before she made it again! 🤣

Aged 20, a manager at one of the main supermarkets accused me of letting the hems down on my trousers on purpose to conceal the (apparently inappropriate, but they were just black trainers) shoes I had on. They were the same shoes I'd worn every shift for 6 months, and my hems were coming loose only because I hadn't stitched them up very well (they were too long and I was too poor to buy different trousers). I pointed all of this out to her and she just looked angry.

Same job, was accused of faking illness when I felt unwell and asked to leave during a shift. Apparently security reported that my BF had been waiting outside for me the whole time, suggesting we'd planned it. I was totally perplexed about that one as it was all completely untrue so I didn't see it coming. In fact I'd had to sit in the staff room for 20 minutes waiting for BF to come and get me. It was one of those where you're so stumped by the unexpectedness of the accusation that you literally have nothing to say.

Both times were for things I hadn't even done. I was very young and not that great at standing up for myself. Would be a whole different ball game now.

In my current job I got a telling off by my manager for speaking out of turn at a meeting with external people. She spoke to me separately after the meeting and I thought that one was fair enough, I could see where she was coming from, I appreciated the feedback and used it to improve my performance.

I was booking flights for a visitor and I needed approval from the director who was stuck in a meeting. I left the office as it was the end of the day. The price went up by £80 the next day and I got a huge telling off.

She then flew business class to New Zealand.

for shooting my friend across the desk with a banana gun and making a pow pow noise.

I always used to tell pupils, about 9 or 10, that we don't 'add a zero' to multiply by 10 and one father, a padre, told me in person I was wrong! Apparently decimals don't count.

I was working in a telephone sales environment and got told off for talking, literally my sole purpose! Didn’t last much longer before resigning.

A client, let's call him Bob, who was one of several with a very specific accent, demanded of one of our directors that I should always recognise his voice when he phoned in (I was on our very busy reception). Director was really embarrassed to ask this of me and when I, baffled, asked how was I supposed to tell Bob from Clients B, C, D and E, he said "I know, I know, they all sound exactly the same, but please try". My solution was to say, when anyone with an even vaguely similar accent rang, "oh is that Bob?". 9 times out of 10 it wasn't Bob, but at least I was "recognising" him when it was him.

Bob is dead now, but in later years after I had left that job, he set up a well-known and worthy charity in our country. I never gave them a penny!!!

I worked for a toxic cowbag.
She told me off for delegating a task and not delegating in the same sentence.
And confirmed it in writing.

I find the term ‘wild’ triggering as a cowfolk from the Wild, Wild West.

I was once taken to task by my programme manager for not being very "accommodating" about booking a meeting room for a colleague. Should add that I was the PMO and in charge of governance and finance for a €39 million project, so not the team secretary (and also presided over important meetings with potential vendors and stakeholders - think C-level - when Prog Man couldn't).
I explained why I had pushed back on the request - it would have been my booking and, had circumstances changed, it might have been difficult to rebook. This was accepted.
A few days later the person complaining came to speak to our Programme Manager. Sat on his desk (what the actual) with his back to me as we sat facing one another. In the course of the conversation, complaining person just turned round to me to give an order - not even a polite request. Very poor language, not impolite, but bordering on curt and dismissive. He clearly did not know that I had oversight and input on project finances and staffing LOL!
What he didn't know was that Prog Man and I had exchanged a look, which told me that the previous complaint was totally thrown out of court :-)
I believe words were had, but not with me :-)
There are some real assh*les. Nasty colleague was sure he would be extended, he wasn't :-) :-) :-)
Should add that I did not feel humiliated in the slightest, because I was not in the wrong and acted completely professionally.

Worked in a small supermarket express store. Freezer broke.. Busy on the tills I asked a quite new lad to empty everything into a freezer in the warehouse... All good..
You'd think right?
Boss next day said the loss was £400. He had used a fridge in the warehouse.. Apparently I should have actually showed him where to put the stock..
Yeah right because a 20 year old fully functioning man doesn't know the difference.... Obviously not..
Shop had a thief issue. Everyone was a suspect..
Boss eventually caught as the thief..

I was late to a team building event 60 miles away from my contracted place of work.
It didn’t start until lunchtime so I went to the office to do some work beforehand (pre Covid).
I then got the train to an event with a colleague but the train broke down on the way. We were both reprimanded like naughty children and it was clearly intimated we had “bunked off”.
If they wanted to they could check the IT systems and trains to see we were genuinely getting some work done before the event started and then the train genuinely broke down. 🙄

Thats ridiculous 😂 imagine you would've been told off if you'd ignored her calls too!

I’m surprised there aren’t more teachers on here, schools are notoriously pathetic!
I got called to my boss because in a practical lesson (food tech teacher) I had given a kid an egg because theirs had broken on the way to school. The funniest thing is that someone actually took the trouble to report me!

this makes no sense

Was sometimes working on my own doing routine tasks so I brought in a radio. Was told that if I wanted to listen to music at work I should go and work in a biscuit factory.

I was given a massive stack of paper and asked to photocopy it about 10 times. I got told off for ‘overloading the photocopier’ and causing it to overheat. No idea how I was supposed to produce 10 copies without, y’know, using the photocopier.

I was also accused of being ‘disinterested’ in a task I’d been given by my director because I read the paperwork whilst eating an apple!

Once got very told off for not greeting a colleague when I arrived at work. I had greeted her, she greeted me back but because the manager was in a different room, she didn't hear.

It absolutely wasn't up for discussion and she very loudly bollocked me for answering her back.

Such an odd woman, odd manager, odd rules 🤷‍♀️

I got a formal warning because I started a meeting I was chairing with the words 'Good morning Colleagues'.

Apparently as there were people present at the meeting higher in the hierarchy than me it was presumptuous and inappropriate to refer to them as colleagues. They were my betters.

I took early retirement aged 49 and joined a recruitment agency as a temp. I work as and when I like and if the office is filled with toxic shitty people I'm simply not there long enough for it to be an issue for me.

I had the same thing happen to me during a retail job I had as a student. My usual boss went sick, and the new one complained about my lack of enthusiasm on the shop floor. That might sound fair enough, as customers could well prefer to see a friendly face, but I worked early mornings and was long gone, job done efficiently, by the time the store opened. They wanted me to smile at the shoes and lingerie as I was putting them out.

We'd landed a the companies largest order, my boss invited us to the pub at lunchtime as a thank you.
Upon returning I was told off for being late back, He had driven me.

This was a massive bugbear of my boss so it is wasn’t stapled ‘correctly’ she’d pull the staples out and re-do it. As petty little revenge every document I stapled and gave her was haphazardly stapled. It gave me a small
amount of satisfaction watching her remove the staple and re-staple, if I could have stapled it right on the centre of the docs I would have!

I assume that is because she had no friends?!

I had similar - she called me and a fellow coworker (and the only other female on the team (it was me, coworker and horrible manager in a team of 15) the ‘witches of Eastwick’ because we didn’t invite her out with us after work. In our time.

This was despite the fact she openly despised us, and even had my coworker put on a performance plan because she wasn’t up to speed on a project (that she came back from maternity leave in the middle of so she had no chance). I hated that woman!

Years ago my daughter's friend was told off at Morrison's because she was swiping too fast and an elderly man had complained.