Strange / silly rules at work

[melpomene]

What strange or silly rules do you have in your workplace?

Here are some examples from the office where I work:

• My colleagues asked if we could have a small bookcase, because we have heaps of reference books on the desks and a bookcase would make it much easier to store and find them. We were told that it is against the policy to have bookcases or shelves, and that "if we got a book case then people would put things on it".

• They provide pencils but not pencil sharpeners, so when your pencil gets blunt you have to throw it away and get a new one.

• In the canteen, they sometimes serve vegetable curry. They also serve rice.

However, you are not allowed to have vegetable curry with rice. You are allowed to have vegetable curry with a baked potato, or chicken curry with rice, but not vegetable curry with rice .

Has anyone else got any silly rules?

Just got through this whole thread its really cracked me up!

Most of my work places have been ok but there's been a few that have been a bit ridiculous strange.

In an office I worked in we could only use pink highlighters and blue pens never black. The cleaners weren't allowed to touch anything on our desks which for some reason extended to the area around and under our desks even though there wouldn't be any work about. Once I left some screwed up paper by my chair to see if the cleaners would pick it up. 2 weeks later I got fed up and threw it away myself!

I was a manager in a shop where staff weren't allowed to take time off in December (busiest time) fair enough but we weren't given a very big staffing budget so there were never quite enough people in. May as well have allowed some people holiday! We were also expected to work 50+ hours a week when our contracts said 40, the extra 10 were unpaid but we should do it for the love of the company! This was also a company that cared more about their 'ethics' than their staff. Hmph.

Doh sorry, double post!

When I first started work at one company I was told the official dress code was "a smart dress or skirt". I'm a man. It was a job working in the company's nursery and nobody had ever thought that a man might work there.

The rule was changed.

i work in a hotel where we throw so much food,the first day i was there i cried seeing all the food thrown in the bin,then a few days later i was told that if i ate lunch i had to pay for it,not much 3pounds,since i worked in the kitchen i vowed never to pay for any food ,ever,especially when they were throwing enough food to feed 5 families, the boss knows and he has never asked me about it,others however do pay..

The other one is we get a shoe allowance at work,you have to buy the shoes first and bring a receipt then they will refund you the money,however if you ask them for the money first to go buy the shoes and give a reciept,they won't..We don't get it..

ROFL at the concept of tights as pubic hair nets.

I remember that when temping in one place the ink cartridge on my printer ran out.

I was told to go and see X in the IT department for a new one.

I did, but X looked very flustered and said "But I'm afraid I am far too busy to come and change it for you till this afternoon."

"Um," said I, "Well just give it to me and I'll change it myself."

"Are you sure you could do that?"

"Er yes."

So he gave it to me with a dubious look and I changed it and got on with my work. He called in later to check that I had managed to extract one piece of plastic from a simple printer and replace it with another piece of plastic. And indeed I had.

A couple of weeks later I had a panicked visit from one of the secretaries. Her boss had got a new answering machine and she couldn't get it to work. She had phoned the IT guy pleading for help, and - overworked once again - he suggested "Have you tried asking BalloonSlayer?"

So I went into her office, read the instructions and got the answering machine working. She was stunned at my technical brilliance and overwhelmed with gratitude.

I have never before or since in my life felt more like a Rocket Scientist / Superhero than when I was working in that place where people were totally incapable of changing ink cartridges or reading instructions.

I once worked in an 'iconic' building designed by a very well-known architect - we weren't allowed to stick anything up on the walls as it would compromise his 'vision'. WTF?

I used to work for a company where we a single departmental manager overseeing all the UK offices; and she HATED our office with a vengence.

She would bring in random rules that only applied to us, like we must all wear suits to work, then she would come into our office in a gypsy skirt! Our dept wasn't ever allowed to be unmanned, but then she would tell us to cover the dept where she was based, so they could all go out to lunch together. This happened all the time. Her petty behavior got so bad that she even tried to stop us going on short evening seminars run by local professionals. The reason? It wasn't fair, as her office staff couldn't go on them because they were too far away. So our professional development had to suffer - because it wasn't fair!?!

The final straw was the instruction to send an e-mail EVERY morning, saying what we were going to do that day, then next day explain had we done the previous days work, and if not, why not, and what we were going to do that day etc. etc. An utter waste of time. Within a few months of her getting the job our entire dept had resigned...and did the company notice? Did it hell. Years and years later, she is still there, and staff join and leave like a revolving door.

Why do these shit managers survive??? Do they know something we ordinary hard working mortals don't?

Just remembered another thing about the iconic building job. I was part of a team that was expressly forbidden from attending the Chief Exec's annual address to employees at Christmas, because we were all freelance (not our choice - the company insisted on it). However, we worked alongside everyone else as normal and, in fact, were the 'public' face of the company; the only thing that was different was our terms of employment, and bizarrely, most of the freelancers had worked there for much, much longer than the 'staff'.

The speech bit didn't really bother us, as no-one wanted to hear it anyway, but what was really annoying was that we were also very pointedly not given the bonuses that everyone else received. Never mind the fact that we worked just as hard as, if not harder than, the other staff, and contributed just as much to the company's success. I left years ago but it still rankles a bit!

We are paperfree in the office. Apart from the memos i get given all the time about BEING paper free.
We must only have laminated photos incase we decide to write on photos (or paper) and steal customers bank details. No mobile phones on either incase we photograph or text details.

However, we are allowed pens, and if I wanted to steal customer cc details I could just write them on my fucking arm or leg ... It's very offensive actually to me.

Balloonslayer- I do stuff like that in my current job. Had to train someone( from a different base) to use the photo printer before I went on mat leave

Balloonslayer, I worked somewhere like that. Although changing printer cartridges was part of my job, the highly paid consultants I worked for used to gawp at me like a bunch of bumpkins every time I replaced one.

Ditto unjamming the shitey printers. I was the fucking Yoda of printer jams as far as they were concerned. Little did they realise there were comprehensive diagrams inside every one, that explained exactly which movable parts to take out

not a rule, as such, but just been put in mind of the email I once got from our Netherlands office which asked me to let them know if they'd got my email address wrong.

Our office is fine, but the canteen is run by an outside company. Among the options are quiche and salad. For the salad, they have about 4 or 5 choices and you are allowed 2. But you cannot choose 2 of the same salad choice.

Oh... just remembered the Safe fiasco. I am the only person in the whole building who can open the safe if the little wheel gets moved. This is the safe we keep patients' money in, pay out for taxis for disabled patients etc.

It once got moved when I was away on a 2 week holiday and staff had to dip into their own handbags to give money to patients who needed it.

my place of work - currently fairly sane.

the throwing-stuff-in-the-skip in clear plastic bags referred to up thread is known as a 'skip meeting' - i used to go twice a day at 10am and 4pm. To get slowly roasted by amanager who obviously wanted to be Alan Sugar but went to work for a suermarket instead.

eg 'why is this being thrown, its not out-of-date'
me ' it has 'left out' written on it. presumaby it was 'left out'.

hom 'why don't you walk around the shop looking for things like that??'
me 'because you would yell at me for not doing my job, boss'.

SERIOUSLY !
we were chucking maybe £30 -£100 a day away, but my department did £220k per week (to begin with, it rose to about £240k before i left)

so with about 0.01- 0.03% disposals, I was still getting rollocked.

that's before i get into their absence policy.

I work in a public facing role. I can't have hot drinks at my desk but can have a glass of clear liquid. That's vodka in my glass then!

In a previous job as a researcher in an out of town office, if i had been to the library or university i was not allowed to go straight home but had to return to the office in case i skived off early. So i had to stop work about an hour before my finishing time to get back to the office first. If i had been able to go straight home they would have got more work done and less travel expenses but i was not to be trusted!

starfish - how on earth did you stomach that one? the implication that that's the only way to make sure you don't skive is feckin outrageous (not to mention, as you point out, stupid)

Hatwoman it was my first job and towards the end of my contract when i got a new manager (previous one was ok but went on mat leave). I just decided it was their loss. Of course they didn't actually use the word "skive" when my college and i were there but lets just say the walls were thin and the secretary was a gossip!

one staff room of the school we worked in, people had their 'own' chairs, ie where they liked to sit. these were pointed out to us when we arrived so we wouldn't sit there.

then we were told we weren't allowed to park in the staff parking area (there was space for us), so we should use one of the 3 visitors' parking spaces - but not if it was likely that there would be a visitor. there were 6 of us and we were, erm, staff, so there all day.

I lived 25 miles from my job. Once I had to go on a training course in a town 25 miles from my home but in the opposite direction. To get ther I had to use a company pool car. You weren't allowed to take the cars home the night before in case you used them for your own personal travel. So, instead of leaving my house at 7.30 for a drive of 45 mins, I was supposed to leave my house at about 6 am, make a 50 mile round trip to pick up the car, drive back past my own house at about 7.30 and then go to the course. However there was another rule that said if you needed to leave before 6am on company business you could go the night before and have a hotel. Which is obviously a lot more expensive than any amount of mileage I could have done in their pool car in one evening.

Luckily my manager saw sense and tole me to use my own car and claim mileage, which I tried to do, only to be told (by the autocratic online expenses claiming system) that you can only claim for anything over and above your usual mileage to work. So I didn't bother claiming. I just left the house at 7.30 and drove for 45mins to the course. But didn't dare tell anyone. Or I would probably have got the sack.

A few years ago I was working for a toy store [large chain, still don't open on Sundays because the owners are Christian and think it's heathen or something] where they had a rule that you couldn't have any kind of facial piercings or visible tattoos.

Fair enough, but then they hired about eight Christmas staff in one go, and five of us had some sort of facial piercing or tattoo, or both, and had come to our interviews with these in view. It ended up with people trying not to open their mouths too wide so their tongue bar didn't show, having to wear black [must be black!] long sleeved shirts under the navy t-shirts, sliding eyebrow rings in and out as the managers came and went...really, really weird place. They fired all eight of us at various times before they even got halfway through November. The reason I was given was, "You don't seem happy here, so we're going to have to let you go."

That was the same place where they put you on a section during the day and you weren't allowed to leave your section, nor talk to any of your other colleagues unless it was to help a customer...even though on most days you got approx. four customers an hour, so you could easily have had a chat for fifteen minutes without a single one even seeing you. Also you were forced to ask if a customer wanted any help whenever you saw one. This was fine if you were a greeter at the door, not so fine if you were in the last section of all [the shop was laid out basically like a big circuit] and the customer had already been asked seven times before they got to you...

Needless to say, I was a bit shocked at being let go, but not entirely heartbroken.

oh, and one office we were told we no longer needed pens, except to write down phone messages. (there was, btw, a fair bit of maths work, and lots of us made notes as we went along, but apparently we shouldn't).

so we were allowed one pen by each phone, and all other pens had to be returned. a box was sent round to collect them. the head of dept rolled her eyes but started. other 'contraband' were rulers, erasers, elastic bands, scissors etc, so she put a small amount into the box & sent it round. it had gone past 3 people before it had none of the things in it she'd contributed, but some chewed up gum, bits of paper and a broken elastic band.

We wait for Brian, He Who is the Only Holder of the Stationery Cupboard Keys to go on holiday, then bribe Dean in IT with biscuits to let us in with the master key. Mayhem ensues, and Brian is always horrified but mystified on his return to find that he is now lord and master of 3 boxes of paperclips, a ream of foolscap OHP film and some tumbleweed.

Thing is, if he'd only let us have the odd pen or stapler the rest of the time, he'd lose far less stuff. But no. He is the only one trusted with the key, and is pathologically unable to give out stationery.