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.

Well obviously but it was during security training by an external company so I'd guess that know what they are talking about?

I think it's probably part of a whole building up a picture thing eg if someone is watching a company anyway (which does happen) and
they see someone wearing their work pass outside and see their name on it (I've seen people's names on their work ID standing in the queue in Sainsburys). Companies tell you not to wear your pass outside the building for a reason.
That person has poor security on their socials and a bit of digging makes it easy to find out what they are a receptionist at the company and even possibly their home address.
The person parks in the same spot every day (very common) and their car isnt there for a week
Individual company email addresses aren't hard to work out
Dodgy person sends an email to the person wland their OOO tells them that they on holiday for a week

Now the bad guy knows that
there isnt likely to be an experienced receptionist on the door so they could bluff their way into the building
The person's house might be empty for the rest of the week

There's a fine line between being security conscious and paranoid.

I had an extra two weeks after the Christmas two week shutdown. So I had put my return date on and a phone number for our staffroom. I returned to learn he’d not been happy about this but my supervisor was also unsure as to why. The boss had got IT to access my emails to remove the out of office!

In a publicly funded organisation, I missed a full stop off our internal notes saying what I had done to verify something worked. I had subsequently closed the ticket as it was completed. My manager admitted that he spent hours each week scouring every ticket I had covered to find evidence of me being crap. No one else. Just me. He would ask for a list of tickets I had covered and then go through every single one. He would then call me into a private room each week and announce his evidence. “Ticket 343. You left a full stop off one of the sentences on your notes”.

That was really kind of you. What a nice thing to do.

I was once teaching a lesson on 1950/1960s politics. I stated that at that time language wasn’t as evolved and therefore the politest way people had of referring to black people was to say “coloured” - it was part of a quiz that the students would have to take (“what term was used to refer to black people of the day”).
A black student complained to my head that I had “dared to call him a coloured person”. Despite my head knowing full well what was on the curriculum that week, he still tried to give me a dressing down; until I pointed out that unless he wanted me to drop the subject entirely, we had to provide the answers to the board certified quiz.
I also got dragged in for “flashing around my baby pictures”. I was only just 10 weeks pregnant, didn’t have any scan pictures yet and I was teaching a module on how to be a good father. I had a few scan pictures from online, printed and stuck to a demonstration board to explain that these were the sort of images that parents could expect of their developing baby. I had them from as young as possible to fully matured to show the full cycle. Apparently my boss was a doughnut who saw a pregnant woman and thought “oh she must be using her own pics”. Idiot.

As a team leader, I got told off by my superiors for inviting Sandra to a meeting. Sandra didn’t like meetings. Sandra had complained there were too many meetings. Sandra kept a pile of toy dinosaurs on her desk and re arranged them in a different manner every day. Then stored them away in her locker every night. I asked Sandra one time what she was doing this bank holiday weekend. Sandra’s grim face said, “I will just have to grin and bear it”.

This is very gross but I working in an Indian restaurant in my teens )90’s) we had to blend the mango chutney , when i opened the container there was a fly in the container. I chucked the whole container (a 2kg vat) apparently I should have scooped it out 🤮.

I did hear a story from a friend, whose relative was told off for doing her job too well. She was a teacher, who had been given the class below the top class, but because of her good teaching, her pupils were outperforming the top kids. You’d have thought the school might be pleased that these children were doing so well, but no - they were cross that they had outperformed the top class.

My boss didn't like the PowerPoint slides I made him and so he threw a screwdriver at me!

This didn't result in a telling off, but a notoriously awkward colleague basically complained the office was more noisy on the days I wasn't wfh. Line manager said 'he doesn't like it because you won the popularity contest' 🤣 He also complains about each of us in turn. We deal with it by humouring him as he's a bit ND and doesn't really mean any harm.

NB As a person much bullied and lonely at school, I was chuffed to finally be 'popular'. Kidding a bit 😉

An appalling psychotic boss I once had when I was young called Ingrid who instigated a Friday jeans and trainers day then took it away from us because we werent smart or "designer" enough. We were all on a basic wage in an insurance office with no clients ever coming in.
Well sorry Ingrid but our clothing was much less offensive than your perpetual bad breath.

My DM got hauled over coals for making her lessons too interesting. Apparently the NQTs that followed her lessons struggled to maintain control of their classes after DM’s lessons because the students said the NQTs’ lessons were boring.DM taught Economics, Business Studies and Careers to YRs 10 to 12. She had years of industry experience and really knew her stuff.
DMs retort to the HT was to invite him and the NQTs to sit in with her classes to see how she did it.

In a very hot outpatients department Patients were complaining about the heat, and so I switched a fan on to cool the area down a bit. Hadn't been used in ages, the motor was full of dust and as it burnt off it set the smoke alarm off and we had to evacuate the building. My boss absolutely ripped into me.

She'd previously told me I should feel free to challenge her on anything I thought she was being unfair with. So next day, heart in mouth, I went back to her and explained that although it my was my actions that caused evacuation of half a hospital it wasn't anything I could have predicted or prevented, and was based on a sensible decision - to improve the environment for Patients who were feeling worse too hot. Nope!! She disagreed she'd been unfair and screamed at me all over again. Apparently it was irresponsible to switch a fan on.

Why do you think the catering trade use those blue plasters on cuts rather than normal ones?

Production machines in factories are equiped with metal detectors, and will automatically stop if they detect a screw, bolt etc, that may have come off a machine into a batch of food/sauce/jam/soup etc. System detects metal and automatically the machine automatically switches off. Well those blue catering plaster are different to normal ones because they have a magnetic foil strip inside and will also trigger the metal detectors. Operatives can fish out the gross, pus covered, bloody plaster contaminating the soup, and the machine is switched back on again. 😁 Enjoy your lunch!!

I once got told off for laughing when my boss tried to exit the room and ended up picking the wrong door and ending up in a walk in storeroom.

Ha ha. I've just remembered that a colleague once took me aside, and had a go at me because I'd agreed to go on the works Christmas do I'd been invited too. 🤣

There were traditionally 2 works nights out. A very twee meal out in a restaurant typically suited to twinset and pearls, with a lounge singer, were everyone was very respectable and all were home and tucked up in bed by 10pm. And then the pub crawl night out which started in 'Spoons and ended up with us losing people as the night went on, staying out til 3am, falling asleep in clubs, buying and losing kebabs, and everyone who made it the end being assigned a "staggering home buddy".

Being a new member of staff I paid up for the booked meal not realising. It consisted of just the older female staff, and they spent the whole night bitching about everyone else from their looks, to criticising one girl who was a single Mother because after several years of dating she moved in with her boyfriend who she wasn't married to. 🙄

I was then also invited on the pub crawl night out and agreed to go. I was told by one of the Bitches of Eastwick that I shouldn't go, and the pub crawl half of the dept didn't really want me there, and I'd spoil their night if I went. WRONG!! I had a fab night and despite having left there over 20 years ago now the pub crawl crew still have regular meet ups and Christmas nights out together despite over half now being retired.

My friend at work had a boss like that. She called in one day to say she couldn't come in because her house had been broken into and she was waiting for the police to come. He CALLED THE POLICE to ask if she was lying. Can you believe that? He was a total cunt of a man. That's not the worst of it.

Teaching job too!

Exactly! I wanted to crawl under a rock.

For telling a colleague (who also happened to be one of my closest friends) the reason why I was off sick - I wasn't off work releated stress or anything work related but apparently I shouldn't have given the real reason 😂