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?

Another company I worked for had a manufacturing plant many miles away and I worked in head office. Occasionally a person from HO might go the plant- perhaps 2 times a year.

We were advised that all office workers now had to wear closed toe shoes for safety. Perhaps stubbing a toe as we walked upstairs to our stand alone office, in the middle of other (non related) offices?

We have to be at work 10 minutes before we start. I totally agree that we should be at our desks ready to start work at our start time, but don't agree that we HAVE to be at work 10 minutes early. We aren't getting paid for that time. The worse thing is a new member hasn't been told this and seems to get away with getting to work on time and then spending 15 minutes in the kitchen making breakfast!

I used to be airline cabin crew.

We could only take jackets off in the cabin manager agreed it and we all had to jackets on or jackets off.
We had to wear nail varnish. It had to be chip free. But we weren't alllowed to paint over the chips in-flight if we got a chip from pulling trollies etc.