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.

Because a customer refused to leave a phone number and wanted us to write to them instead. The customer was deaf.

Early 90's and my first job was working in an office. You had to address the MD as Mr Smith. If you called him by his name or didn't address him at all you got a bollocking. You couldn't just say Good Morning. It had to be Good Morning Mr Smith. I once got bollocked for taking a tray of tea to a meeting in the boardroom - I had used the wrong tea set. Apparently it HAD to be the Eternal Beau tea set no ther one would do.
They had also only just started to allow women to wear trousers to work then. Most of the other female staff members still wore skirts. I wore trousers every single day and it used to wind the bosses up no end!

Oh and last one - I had to apologise to a coworker who over heard me saying ‘why did she put her hand in it’ after she got her hand stuck in the confidential waste bin. Apparently I had embarrassed her! I still don’t know how or why she did it!

I’ve not read the full thread yet - just about to, my favourite topic - just have to say that @takehimjolene has my favourite username ever. Well done!

What were you supposed to say, @MyCatIsTheHeadChef - Good morning Exalted Beings, colleagues and minions?

mmmm.... if it's a shared space you shouldn't really be imposing on the others, no?

I was told off in a very severe meeting that I’d disappointed the board by not thinking outside the box about gift giving to our clients. I had also two weeks before been given a list of the gifts we were allowed to order and to not deviate from it!! Idiots. The whole company management were toxic. Luckily I and then another ten people left soon after.

Back when I was teaching, the Head called me in to the office to tell me off because I hadn't made enough effort on a pyjama day and had merely draped a dressing gown over my clothes instead of going the whole hog and wearing my actual nightwear.

OP I had a similar-ish one, I emailed in sick around 6.30am as I has horrendous ear ache, but it spread all down my jaw and I could barely open my mouth to speak. Line manager replied to my email. But got a telling off when I went back for not following procedure as I emailed instead of called, and was told if it did that again I could face an emergency conduct review.

Also a couple of years ago, my team were on a conference in another city, and a junior member of staff took a selfie of herself and a trainee and uploaded it to Instagram during the working day. I had no idea this had happened, didn’t really know the women that well, didn’t follow them on social media. I got hauled into the office (I was the most senior person on the trip) the following day and received a bollocking for “allowing it to happen.” I didn’t even bloody know it had happened! My manager told me she wasn’t going to discipline the women who had done it as they were a junior and a trainee, but I was facing potential disciplinary action for allowing them to do it 🙄

i off for being too loud in the office. It was sending a coworker “over the edge”. (If you knew me, you’d know how quiet I am!) Nothing about her having a personal vendetta against me… but I was taken into my directors office and everything 😂😂

I was once told off for not attending a meeting that I didn’t know was happening because I hadn’t been invited to it because I didn’t know an email group existed that I should have been a member of and therefore should have known that this meeting was taking place and that I should be there.

(Lack of punctuation deliberate!)

Got a row for whispering. Got taken into a room with my boss and her boss to reprimand me.

I'd been whispering with a colleague about a way to do a piece of work as we'd had a talk earlier about being more efficient.

Same bosses. Business had a 'dress down Friday' code. Building with about 300 people in the organisation. First Friday in and I wore jeans. Boss and boss's boss reprimanded me as I should have known that the team, of seven, did not participate and wore business suits - non customer facing.

I left shortly after and was contacted by my two predecessors to say the two bosses were the reasons they left too.

It wasn't a shared space, that's why I wrote 'working on my own'

I was told off for being friendly and again for going home at the right time. Both by the same person

Did you work for an insurance company by any chance?

Had a fairly important client coming in for a first meeting with us, where it was important to give a good impression. Client was based ~30 miles from our office and she was driving to us. Meeting was scheduled for 11am, I was leading it, with my manager joining to support (aka check I would do it correctly 🙄). Client was caught up unexpectedly in some sort of traffic incident and she was an hour late. I was due to be on a Teams call for a fairly unimportant internal meeting at 12pm, which many people regularly skipped due to other work commitments - such as client meetings - taking priority.
Client finally landed at 12pm and I made the decision to skip the Teams call as I didn't think it would be professional to bin the client off after 2 hours of driving to get to us, for a genuinely unimportant bi-monthly internal meeting.
Was told off by my manager for not attending the internal meeting. Looked quizzical when I asked her if she would have preferred I left the important client waiting in reception for an hour after her drive, rather than easily shift my diary to accommodate her.
Stupid cow drove out most of her department in the end.

There were no others present to impose on, that's what "working on my own" means.

HR Manager told me off for hitting the return key twice after the last sentence on an email and my Kind regards

Exactly my thoughts!

I got told off once by the office manager for using the 24hr clock on a document logging a work call; it was obviously too difficult for her to work out the time. The same woman also told me off for using too much Sellotape 😆

OMG! Did you sign an NDA? I so want to know who she is!

Had a bully in our team but our boss worked at a different site at the time, i don't like bullies so one time i decided to record the bully red handed, during the act (she was giving grief to another team member, telling them how shit they were)

Ended up showing it to my boss who was thankful and would get it sorted.

She had obviously spoken to her boss for advice because later in the week i was pulled in to a meeting with them to say that "if there is a problem you need to put it down in writing and that i need to apologise to the bully and if I don't it will be taken further and i will be put on a disciplinary"

Sure, its probably against policy to record someone at work but it sure as hell is not illegal, plus, id have expected leniency when its evidence of your co-worker being an absolute cunt to a junior member of staff... Management told me to delete the video and didn't even ask to see the content but was told again if there's more problems that i should send an email of what happened (you know, so the bully can outright kie and deny everything)

Fucking bell end, at least that manager doesn't work there anymore, my direct manager was so apologetic!

Because i refused to stay and put out 12 cages of a delivery that turned up about 15 mins before closing due to the Truck breaking down. I literally ran round in that 15 mins putting out everything that was empty on the shelves so I could gap check. Made sure the cages were out of the way and everything I knew wouldn’t go out put upstairs out of the way. The following day I got called in for a disciplinary. Oh and in the same job I also got told off because my nails were apparently too long. They were just over my finger tips so I purposely went out and had nail extensions put on in the most garish colour along with dying my hair a colour supposedly banned in the work place.

The clock wasn't changed in my office within an hour of me getting in after they went forward. I did have more important matters to attend to at that point, like my actual work! My manager doesn't sit in my office, it's me and another colleague and neither of us cared about the clock. One of us would've done it when we got a minute.
There's loads more but it'd be too outing. I am looking for a new role, but it's not easy out there.

I was told I wasn't getting promoted after all because I had taken a lunch break that year and so obviously wasn't sufficiently dedicated to the job. It was lunch with a client.