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.

Somebody I know (dental nurse) used a latex glove (blown up) to distract a scared 6 year old having a filling and was reprimanded for 'wasting resources'. Told she'd have to pay for it - she told them to invoice her and hasn't heard anything since. Funny that.

I got a row for walking in a corridor with a one way system in a school. I was staff, I had 10 metres to go to my next class (instead of walking about 100 metres, taking a lift down, then walking another 80 metres, then taking another lift up) I was on crutches (awaiting a double knee replacement and in agony). A senior teacher decided to give me a dressing down in front of all the pupils.

I cried a lot that day.

I was being a poor role model apparently.

I worked in a school office for one year as an office admin and PA to the head. God it was weird all round. Head would throw strops if she noticed something she didn't like and go and tell the business manager to come and tell us off.

Example - kitchen staff brought me and colleague a biscuit each that had been made for some occasion. Got told off for eating in the office (no one about, no parents watching or anything like that). Apparently we should have taken turns to go and eat our biscuit in the staff room.

I have a poorly child Calpol and put the syringe in the sink while looking after child. Grave error apparently and nothing should be in the sink.

Also got told off more than once for eating in the office when I was pregnant. Still did it on secret though as being hungry made me feel incredibly ill when I was pregnant.

I was her PA but wasn't trusted with the code to her office so was supposed to check her emails in the morning but had to wait until school business manager could let me in.

One school business manager was moaning at me about something in the office while visitors were arriving for Xmas fair. She then told me to smile at people coming in.

I only stayed one academic year and I only stayed that long because I was pregnant and knew I would go back after mat leave

I’m not pecking at OP, I’m responding to other posters who are quoting me. OP actually accepted it was rude ages ago. I haven’t tagged her once.

I’m currently trapped under a breastfeeding newborn, so have nothing better to do then be on MN. Perhaps you should go enjoy your Saturday, as opposed to pecking at me?

I know I remember we had a “perfect serve” video and when I became a manager I was on peoples ass about that lime, but on this spesific day it was 11am and we’d already had two bar fights and I’d had to call the police about half an hour prior so I think we probably would have been marked down for some other things 😂

I got written up multiple times for 'allowing customers to pack their bags at the checkout' but these customers used baskets, which had to be left at the start of the checkout, so there was literally no option to them except to throw the shopping in the bag or carry it all by hand which would arguably take much longer and lead to a spill.

All these strange people thinking this is rude. Sorry but that’s bonkers. I have never met anyone who thinks dying their hair is a shameful secretive thing. Only if you thought this could it be considered rude or intrusive.

I’m well into my 50s and have never, ever, ever had anyone be anything other than delighted that I noticed they had dyed their hair and commented on how nice it looks.

I once at a training event asked someone with grey hair if they had dyed it as it had a beautiful color to it. Her face lit up in delight and she said she hadn’t but had started using a special shampoo to put a purple tone through it. I’d clearly made her day.

So sorry, your manufacture of offense is at direct odds with the many, many people I have met and talked to.

Maybe one day I’ll meet an oddball outlier like you but honestly, the offense taking will be your responsibility, not mine.

As Head of Business Development I was once asked to attend a director-level meeting to take minutes because I was the most senior manager in the company known to be capable of doing it; the agenda was so sensitive they didn't want any of the secretaries to become privy to the discussion.

The Executive Chair (from the parent company) asked me a direct question about something in my department after the meeting had finished and I answered him. Five minutes later I got a dressing down from my own business unit director for daring to reply. Apparently I had been supposed to sit there and be seen and not heard.

when writing an email to my manager- a woman I sat next to and exchanged several emails with all day every day, I wrote “Hi” instead of “Hi Doris”. She found that rude. It was common in the office I worked in, after the first one or two messages on the same chain you would just relax a bit into a less formal exchange.

My frustration isn’t that she found it rude but it is the level of ‘trouble’ I was in for it. I didn’t/ still don’t consider it rude but if she had just told me she didn’t like to be addressed that way I just wouldn’t have done it again. But she was PISSED. She was insistent that I was wrong, and that I had been rude to her intentionally.

😂😂

as though thinking they’d dyed it meant you had to ask.

No-one even hinted that it meant they 'had to ask' or that they were 'compelled to ask'.

You're reading all these things into it, possibly because you may feel a bit stressed or angry today? That's certainly what I'm picking up here anyway.

Sweet Jesus.

Mine was for 'swigging vodka' from a bottle in front of a class. A teen had reported me. It was water from a glass bottle (obviously!)

My team worked on a contract that specified that 80% of staff time should be spent in F2F contact with clients, almost all of whom were visited in their homes.

When the entire team were bollocked for not achieving this, I pointed out that we covered a large rural patch so spent a fair amount of time driving between villages, we had training, supervisions, case conferences, team meetings and other ad hoc meetings, and we all got a minimum of 5 weeks leave, which alone was almost 10% of our time. I suggested that this meant that the contract with the commissioners was unsustainable and we would never be able to meet that target.

I was taken aside after the meeting and told I was being "negative" and needed to demonstrate more commitment to meeting the terms of the contract.

Three months later, at another team meeting, it was announced that our director had realised that the contract was was "unsustainable", had renegotiated the terms, and the 80% "contact time" clause had been removed. Management had even used the exact same word as I had been bollocked for!

I was tempted to ask if my bollocking was going to be retracted, but thought better of it.

I was asked to step up into a supervisor role, only being paid for it if another supervisor wasn't in for the whole shift.
So paperwork, checking things ect
Then several months later rather abruptly myself and a the others who were asked to step up were told it was temporary and finishing that day.

This ended at the start of this year and even now months later when I don't do the supervisor parts of the job that none of the other normal team members do I get told off for not doing it and knowing it needs doing.

There's no need to be sarcastic. I'm sure most of us, myself included, are perfectly capable of getting on with our colleagues. I just think there are some questions (like the OP's, and the pp who asked a director if she'd had her lips done) that you'd only ask of a workmate if you were also friends with them outside of work. Asking a senior member of staff a question like that if you're not friends with them is just daft imo.

I was told off for not being psychic. That sort of quiet, snarling, but not shouting/screaming because your in a room full. I was not psychic enough to know that there was an updated list, when the latest email had said our departments wasn't ready and we'd be told when it was.

4 years?? If I’d experienced that situation a fortnight in, they wouldn’t have got 4 weeks out of me!! Fuck, they wouldn’t have got 4 more days.

I minuted what was said rather than what was meant. Apparently I was supposed to be psychic.

Me too actually, by someone at the same level as me though so it wasn't serious. I guess I had a resting bitch face even at a young age and trying to smile.

I got pulled into a disciplinary for not keeping the shop floor tidy at the aquarium I worked at….. the other person was constantly in the office with another manager. I had to call if I needed the loo … the queue at the till was constant.
I explained this in the meeting… from then on… no more nattering in the office 😂
I was 16 btw

Same manager had a go at a colleague and I because she had locked us in the building so had to come back to let us out.
we were cleaning all the glass and she’d failed to do a walk round to check if anyone was left behind.

Kathy… if you’re on here… you’re a bitch.

Years ago but it stuck with me. The director asked me print him some letters and put them in his top drawer which I did. Next day tore into me for putting the letters into the drawer. I was beside myself as I felt I’d done what I was told but apparently I should have known to out them in an envelope as somebody might snoop in his office / top drawer! It was my first job ever!

This organisation sounds like what the writer of Ask A Manager would call 'bananapants', not to mention racist. You did well to manage 4 weeks, never mind 4 years - I'd not have been able to resist telling the line manager where to stick it, and ended up being fired!

Sounds like another example of disability discrimination. If you're on crutches you're allowed some adjustments, surely.

PS Are you Welsh?