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.

Similar- told i wasn't getting the job because they felt I'd use it to move on to something better (!)

But why?

I’m struggling to understand how it even came up at home. Was she sensitive about money, or offended about the religious implications (which seems incredibly unlikely)?

No idea. It was very odd

I used to work for someone like that. He’d ask what the fastest was that I could possibly get something done. I’d look into it and say, for example, Wednesday end of day. He’d say great, can I have it Wednesday morning?

Obviously you can lie once you know he always does that, but it just adds extra stress and confusion to an already demanding job.

I work in a diverse environment and was invited to a colleagues wedding, I’m white british ( this is relevant) and the wedding was a big Muslim do. I was asked if I’d like henna on my hands to get into the spirit so of course said yes I’d love that. Got pulled into the office at work and told to “scrub it off” as it looked dirty and unsightly. Asked if my colleagues had been told the same and was informed no. Went straight to HR and it’s still being investigated 🙄

@Mousewoman 😂 Superb.

Haha- :) it just seemed a very random thing to genuinely accuse someone of.

I had a bollocking from the CEO for pointing out the grammar mistake in a job advert. It stated we were looking for two English teacher's! This wasn't the first mistake by this person but apparently I was very unkind to point it out.

I've been a Civil Servant for what seems like 100 years.... In my first job I worked for MoD on a secure site, where there would be random security checks by the MoD police as you were entering and leaving. It was always obvious when us women were going to get checked as a female MoD police officer would suddenly appear when they were very rarely there.

Anyway, as I'm leaving at the end of the day I get selected for the security check. She's very pleasant and friendly. But, one of our senior managers attended all security searches.

She goes through everything in my handbag to check that I'm not taking anything out that I shouldn't. I then realise that I have a packet of cigarettes in my coat pocket, I get it out and open it to show her that it only contains about 3 cigarattes. She has a good look, laughs and says she doesn't smoke. The utter knobhead senior manager tried to tell my boss that I tried to bribe an MoD police officer with a cigarette when I wasn't taking anything offsite. My boss laughed thankfully.

Bribe the MoD police with a single cigarette? Was this during rationing or something? 😂😂

People are so weird.

For highlighting in pink in Word 🧐 🩷

For using the format painter 'too much' in Word also

Speechless really

Work experience in a little pretentious overpriced high street independent shop that sold cheap arse market clothes at grossly inflated prices. Had about two customers a day, rightly so. I got yelled at for not cleaning the skirting boards in the morning when I had cleaned them the night before. No customer had been in since.

Her fuckwit husband also yelled at me for cleaning the mirrors with a product labelled ‘glass cleaner’. Apparently it wasn’t for glass and that should have been obviously.

Telling someone 'I like your hair' is unlikely to cause offence, but asking whether an aspect of their appearance is artificial rather than natural is a bit risky, especially where a trout-pout is involved.

I worked in social services, the tea/ coffee area was disgusting. No one ever washed their cup at the end of the day so all the dirty cups stacked up getting mouldy. It absolutely stunk. I quickly started bringing my own flask of coffee in. One day at a team meeting the manager suggested a rota for cleaning the cups at the end of each week. I said I brought a flask so I wouldn’t participate, I got told off for not being a team player.
This was the same woman who would give me 10 children on my caseload which equaled at least 10 hours of work a week (probably more like 15), plus a 6 hour on call a week, training, reports, assessments, meetings, emails/admin, a 3 hour training session every fortnight . I was supposed to work 18 hours a week. I usually ended up doing 35 hours If I tried to discuss it in supervision I would be asked “how can I support you to achieve better time management?” I got sick of earning less than minimum wage for what was a very stressful job.

I also once got told off for not adding myself to a group email I hadn’t been told about and had no idea existed.

Sock colour
Nhs worker here ..

Or a POW camp Didn't the inmates bribe the guards with cigarettes? (The Great Escape has obviously scarred me!)

I was told off in my annual appraisal once that I didn't make the tea enough.

It was a small office of 6 of us and we took turns to make tea but I drank tea a lot less than everyone else so didn't often participate. I was considerably the youngest, which my boss, who was slightly odd seemed to think was relevant although I wasn't the most junior member of staff and she thought I needed educating on office etiquette (it was my first office job). I was so surprised by that statement I didn't know what to say.

Wrong thread, sorry.

For being unable to unlock a locked door to which only management kept keys. Apparently it wasn’t rocket science and I should have been able to use my initiative to do so. I think they were having a disagreement between themselves which I interrupted when I requested the key.

I once was disciplined for telling my line manager that someone (who I had no control or influence over, but had to pander to) had changed the date of an event.

I was out for lunch with client who informed me that they want to change the date of event. I tried to talk them out of it. As soon as lunch was over I rushed back to office to let my line manager (and everyone else who needed to know) that demanding client had changed the date of event. In this instance changing the date of event meant it gave us an extra 20 weeks to prepare but almost clashed with something.

Line manager pulled me into a separate office to a) tell me off for changing the date and b)lying about the client being the person who wanted to change the date.

I tried to stick up for myself but was getting more and more annoyed/upset and ended up walking out so I didn’t say something I’d regret. Line Manager then complained about me to HR!!!

Thankfully HR said I did the right thing (I’d told another manager I was leaving for the day and why).

I Honestly didn’t change the date of the event. Demanding client did!

Line manager was a liability and was eventually given the opportunity to leave.

One manager told me off for asking too many questions and not using my initiative.

The reason - I was required to write a court report. These have to be in a specific standardised format from your organisation. When I'd looked through the company systems, the files supposed to contain these were empty, the links to documents were old/broken. I asked around the office if anyone had an old report I could write over, no luck. Manager kept insisting that I just find the file until I put my laptop in front of her and showed her they didn't exist and asked her what she wanted me to do. That's when she told me I asked too many questions and needed to be more independent...

It was quite a rural location and she'd moved from a big city that I knew, I later asked colleagues from there if they knew her and they said she had always been crap and they think she said shipped off father ted style where she could do less harm!

I was told off for taking my team out (after work, with my own money) to celebrate their hard work passing an audit because managers in other services might feel they had to do the same.

At 23 I was told off because I ‘lacked gravitas’ by a much older male manager well yes, I was 23.

My favourite is NOT being told off by a manager. I was dragged into a side room by my manager and was told that I didn’t need to worry that I’d get in trouble at work for the fact that my housemate (shared house), who didn’t work where I did, had shagged my deputy manager’s boyfriend. It hadn’t occurred to me I would be.

The child might have asked if famlies share advent calendars. The implication was that the Mother wouldn't bother spending on a calendar. Children who need support doesn't always equate to scum families. Anyone who has a child with SN will have a tale of someone in education overstepping. It was a odd question.

She does, that's how I know where she is over a decade on. She remembers us renegade lecturers really well. She was blessed with a couple of us, she says. We get Christmas cards even now 🙂