To ask for stupid reasons you've been told off at work?

[chailatte123]

I once asked a member of the Senior Team if she had dyed her hair.
Apparently this was very rude.

Another hair dye one. My manager in my previous job had a go at me because I didn't dye my hair. He asked if I dyed my hair and when I said no he refused to believe me. I stuck my head in his face and pointed out the light smattering of greys. He was upset because I was three weeks older than him and he had been grey for years.

For not responding to an email sent by a lawyer at 6am until I got into work at 8.30. In those days we had no access to work email unless in work.

Years ago a colleague was having a disciplinary meeting after being on a performance plan, I was a supervisor at the time and part of my role was ensuring she had training to support the performance plan.
She asked me to come to the meeting with her as support which was agreed with HR / senior managers. I know my role was to take notes for her to make sure she understood any decisions made.
During the meeting they said she’d made no improvement on one aspect of the role despite having had training from me on xxx dates. Immediately she said she hadn’t had training form me around this. HR asked me to comment on this and I said this was true, I couldn’t have provided this training as I was on annual leave on the dates mentioned though someone else may have done so in my absence. The training they mentioned wasn’t part of her performance plan.
The meeting quickly finished and there were furious with me!! They said I should have agreed with them and I’d undermined them. Not sure how they expected me to lie when I couldn’t have given training if I was on A/L and the training wasn’t even in her performance plan.
The person in question left fairly soon after of their own accord but I’m glad I didn’t lie to hasten her departure.

I got told off once for stirring my boss’s tea with the same spoon I’d stirred other peoples’ coffee with. She was allergic to coffee and I could have poisoned her apparently …

Except I didn’t do it because, although not allergic, I don’t like it myself when that happens (I can taste the coffee in my tea). She wouldn’t believe me. Nobody in the office liked her much.

Once I got told that I acted like "the friendly neighbour who's just popped in to help." I didn't know what to make of that then, and I still don't.

I was once loudly bollocked by a very unpleasent manager for not answering the phone in a busy call centre - the problem being that I was there for an interview and the receptionist had sat me at a desk to wait for the director I was due to see to come back from lunch. Not only did I not work there (surely he should have registered that he'd never seen me before) but I was actually interviewing for a senior role that meant I would have been his manager's manager. [Despite being offered the job, I didn't take it as the whole place was run by idiots like him who believed that strutting around like a peacock was a good substitute for knowledge and competence]

I was also publicly repremanded and threatened with losing my job in M&S one lunchtime for not knowing where a certain article was. I wasn't wearing anything that resembled a M&S uniform or a "managers' suit" and I didn't work there either - but in their defense I suppose the customer concerned wouldn't have known that.

At 8 months pregnant I got told off for going to the loo too often. Trying to explain that a 7lb baby was doing somersaults on my bladder cut no ice.

Some of the pettiness described here is incredible! I feel very lucky to have (mostly) worked in respectful environments.

I do remember when I was quite new in my previous job, being in a training session taken by my line manager's line manager. A colleague asked me something and I replied, only to get a bollocking, for talking, by the trainer. I didn't think she even knew my name at that point, but she obviously did, because she used it to tell me off in front of everyone 🤦‍♀️ I sat in deathly silence for the remainder of the session, feeling a bit like crying!

Put me off her for ages, though we have a good relationship now (having both moved up the ranks).

A colleague once took a candid photo of a few of us at a work event and uploaded it to social media. I was in the photo. I didn’t know the photo was being taken. I didn’t know it had gone on Instagram. But I got pulled by management and got a huge telling off. I was dumbfounded. I said “you do know… it wasn’t me who took it? Or…put it online?” But their reasoning was, the person who took it and posted it was a new starter, and I was more experienced and “should know better.” I didn’t do anything wrong!

Many years ago, in my first teaching job, it was the end of the school day. I had a little group of 7 year olds at my desk, giving them their purses with dinner money change. The head teacher strode in and wanted to speak to me. I asked him to wait until I'd finished with the children. He actually jumped up and down, making the floor shake( he was very large) and shouted that he wouldn't be told to wait by a newly qualified teacher! Two little girls burst into tears. After all that it was only an enquiry about the new maths scheme.

Worked checkouts in a supermarket many moons ago. It was winter so freezing cold with the doors constantly opening and closing. I wore black uggs under my (baggy) trousers to keep my feet warm, I was sat behind a till for 99% of my shift so no one saw them and my trousers covered them so at a glance you couldn’t tell I was wearing boots. I had worn them for the last couple of months with no issues. One day I was walking to the back after my shift and a shop floor colleague, same pay grade as me clocked them and commented that I wasn’t meant to wear them, I briefly said it’s freezing by the tills and they keep me warm and thought nothing of it.

The colleague only went and grassed me up. The next day I get pulled aside by a hr person, who was nice about it but told me although she understood why I was wearing them and she personally didn’t see the issue, it had been reported so I had to change them.

Technically I was in the wrong, but I wasn’t the only person wearing such footwear on checkouts, my direct manager never said anything about it and being young just assumed it would be okay especially if my manager didn’t seem to care/notice and others were wearing similar. I thought the colleague who reported me was a complete jobsworth after that.

I once got pulled into the manager's office, she had a very serious face and voice and asked me where I had been, why did I not come back after my lunch break immediatation- the implication being that I had been sciving. I had been on a training course-- that she told me to attend! Boy did she look stupid.

Used to have a boss who was an absolute nutter. Expected her team to mind read and be in two places at once but was incredibly vague with her instructions and very forgetful (though adamant she wasn't). If you didn't learn how to cope with her sharpish you didn't last long.

One day we were going to host some clients at the Lloyd's Rugby 7s. She wanted me to complete a task first so she set off and I was to follow as soon as I could. 10 mins later she called and asked me to "just" do something else. I said I'd get to it as soon as I'd done first task and she was annoyed, because she'd already forgotten task 1. 5 mins later she called and asked if id done second task. I said no, because I keep being interrupted by the phone but she was oblivious. 10 mins later she called and said she'd arrived at the rugby and why wasn't I there!?!

Telling my client that people in the town we lived in just didn't like the product she was testing on them. Obviously I was way more diplomatic than that but she was hounding me for my low recruitment numbers. I just couldn't get enough target market people for the £10 she was offering. It was very very early days of the product in the UK Vs her country and the product tasted shit. She made a complaint to my boss that I was rude about the product being rubbish. I thought I was being diplomatic saying there weren't enough target people rather than the product was shit!

Oh and at another role I was told I was too enthusiastic and it was showing other people up 😂

I got suddenly taken ill whilst out on my own in the works van and had to call an ambulance. Managed to call my boss to let them know and got into trouble for not waiting with the van until someone could come out and get it before calling an ambulance (I was miles away) and then for not driving the van back myself first. Ambulance crew arrived and took over the phone call to inform my boss that I was being taken to hospital and she tried to tell them that I either had to wait or one of them had to drive the van back - she politely got told to do one 😂.

Me too, I often compliment male colleagues on their snazzy ties!

The last of a woeful career of people complaining about my looks and tones in schools was when, the school having failed to hire a senior person, I was being left to do work above my pay grade and outside of working hours. A training session (out of working hours) had been planned and I asked if I could skip it. Being told no but it was short I said ‘oh good because I’ve been handed all this work to do’. It was considered rude and I got a big ticking off. Went home that night and submitted my job application out of the sector. Schools. Where teachers’ egos and socialising matters far more than education, work or ability.

When younger I worked in a US summer camp- Camp America. I was in the camp office. The owner was a very difficult old lady and the boss was her awful son.

I would have breakfast at 730 with the housekeeping staff, so I could start in the office from 8am. All the kids would come once we had eaten and have their breakfast.

One day the horrible boss man (old lady's son) said to me 'my mom has decided to allow you to eat with the kids and start 30 mins later each day'. I remember distinctly the wording 'decided to allow you' and the fact that I was disappointed because I enjoyed the earlier, quieter breakfast with my housekeeping friends. However, I did as I was told.

A couple of weeks later, the mean lady boss pulled me during breakfast and said 'why are you here, you start at 8am in the office!'. I replied that her son told me to come to the later breakfast then start work later. She called him over and HE DENIED SAYING IT! I was gobsmacked but what could I do, tell the boss lady that the son was a liar?

I will never forget that, horrible slimy man he was. I was mortified. At least I got to go back to my nice quiet early breakfast.

Oh and once she yelled at me for moving a stapler in the office. 'Don't ever touch or move anything in here!

I got told off for not taking and distributing the minutes of a meeting - that I wasn't even attending.

For posting something on our company intranet without my manager’s manager’s review.

I hadn’t - I had made it very clear in my message to her that this was a test link for review before I set it live.

she also had a go at me for not replying to an email on my day off when I was in Ikea with no signal. I replied an hour later. I was so glad when I left her.

For being 1 second late. The stern email literally said logging on at 9.00.01

Horrible call centre job

How totally ridiculous.

Yeah, I would. In fact, I did just that on Wednesday after one of the account managers came in. I said ‘your hair looks nice, different to usual’ and he replied ‘yeah thanks, I went somewhere different’. Everyone then moved on with their day because we’re not all pappy and chronically concerned with things that are not rude.

As a teenager on a casual job I got told off for handing in my notice to go to uni... Apparently I wouldn't make anything of myself if this was my approach to work 🤷🏼‍♀️😆