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?

i worked in an office that had the hot drinks rule too. No concern for spilling on keyboard..just 'health and safety' . Not even cooled down hot drinks. ie semi warm drinks. There were plenty of petty rules and i made a rule myself after that..to never, ever work in an office again. That was 7 yrs ago and so far so good.

'no wearing orange' !!!!!!!!!!

MrsSchadenfreude

I had a temp job with the dept. of employment in the early 1990s, one day we had a move around in the office and a colleague of mine, a clerical officer I think moved to a desk a higher grade colleague had been using with had a curved section attached to the desk.

The following day two men in brown overalls arrived and silently removed the curved section.

Loving the egg stuff!

We have lots imposed by our out-sourced IT company. Examples:

Control-Alt-Delete is disabled, so if something crashes, you have to pull the plug on the computer to make it stop.

You are not allowed to save anything to your desktop, such as shortcuts. There is a shortcuts folder and you are supposed to use that to save them in.

You can only use the main printers (multi-functional devices, in IT-speak), despite the fact that many people already owned private printers from the days before my section got moved to this office. These private printers cannot be connected to your computer and so sit sadly under desks while everyone queues for the MFD.

Also, clear-desk policies! This, for some reason, applies only to the flagship office and not to the rest of us, thank God. In that building, if your desk is messy at the end of the day, a memo is issued to your line manager. My Head of Service was particularly bad, which meant that the Director was getting hundreds of these memos. Correct me if I'm wrong, but shouldn't a Director be focusing on more strategic issues than one messy desk?

I'm a teacher. If a child feels unwell or has hurt themselves, and I can see that this is the case and am free to take them to first aid myself, I'm not allowed. Instead I have to call for senior staff cover (I have no access to a phone so have to send another child with a message to the same place as the first aid office) then wait for them to come and get said child.

Even if I happen to be with an unwell child close to the first aid room, I have to go to my own room and send for senior staff cover

My old middle manager had an immaculate collection of small plastic cartoon characters arranged on a shared shelf, which we were forbidden from touching or talking about as it made him "uncomfortable." The reference books behind them were therefore unusable and people would walk down 2 corridors to consult a thesaurus.

I pointed at Daffy Duck during my first week and said "Wabbit Theathon." The air went as thick as butter.

I used to work in a bar that was owned by the most appallingly racist scumbag (e.g. he would play oompah music in the bar on Hitler's birthday ). During opening hours we were forced to play shite chart music but in the hour before opening, while setting up, we were permitted to play our own tapes. One morning the bar manager was playing some really nice reggae and everyone was going about their business feeling cheerful. Suddenly, Racist Twat storms in, yanks the tape out of the machine, spits that he won't have that "fucking wog music" in his bar, and throws the tape into the river outside. He then put on a tape of his choice...The Supremes

When i worked in a photo processing shop..
the camera films were attached by a piece of 'special' blue tape to a plastic card, to go through the developing machine. One day someone stuck a note to the wall with a piece of this tape instead of..shock horror..normal sellotape. Area manager noticed this, blew a gasket and promptly sent an urgent letter to every single branch saying how this blue film fixing tape must never be wasted.
Didn't care about paper or time wasting obviously

Teaonesugar a similar thing happened to me, I was promoted to team leader and we had a reshuffle of seating in the department. I ws moved from the open plan part to an adjoining office. The engineering man duly appeared and removed the door as apparently you had to be a grade higher thwn me before you were allowed an office, my desk was officially still in the open plan area. They nearly took the carpet up as well.

Was selling mind body and spirit books on all metaphysical subjects and religions..except bosses made the new rule..'nothing on hare krishnas'. Apparently they didn't like them. Everything else was completely acceptable..satanism and the like. Never did find out why [sceptical]

ooops that was meant to be but i typed in the word 'sceptical'. Think brain is fried from laughing so much at some of these posts....

Where I work, these very stroppy, slightly spotty things in burgundy jumpers keep filing in and out of the room every hour or so. I tried having them removed so that I could get on with something more interesting/productive/fun but it seems that's not allowed. They mutter strange incantations ("S'crap this") and still it is not permitted to have them removed. Stupid rule!

I love how nickel linked to cup holders so we got a full picture of the craziness

Love this thread!

I feel I should confess to instigating one of these edicts after getting thoroughly fed up with the air conditioning being set to 28 degrees and gale force 7 by staff sitting in shirtsleeves with jackets on the backs of their chairs.

I set the air conditioning to 21 degrees and put a sticker on the control pad that said "touch this and I'll chop your hands off".

Lol @ Drsuess!

DH works for a company now where you cannot wear brown shoes.

And when you go to a certain floor in the building you have to keep your jacket on

It's like the 1920's

My work insists on you actually turning up if you want to get paid. It's crazy!

Seriously though... After reading this thread I love my job and place of work.

current employer

if you are a manager - male you must wear suit, tie and ironed shirt (this is specified)

if you are a female manager you must wear a shirt and suit. you must not wear knitwear of any sort- this is specified. (although interestingly this does not have to be ironed)

you must wash your hands with HOT water and soap after going to the toilet. You must understand that the anti bac hand gel is not a substitute.

you must not carry more than 2 files at a time

you must not, under any circumstances plug xmas lights in- the handy man has to do this for you.

you must not take food to your desk- unless it is cake- fruit is not allowed.

when walking through the carpark you must look out for moving vehicles

there are zillions more, that have us in fits daily.

Hilarious - nothing much to say except in a nutty school in which I worked we were called into an emergency meeting where the HT said 'Something has happened which I am not going to tell you about, but if anyone asks you, you are to say you don't know anything about it.'

lol @ "unless it is cake"

I'm flabbergasted at the notion of tights being necessary to contain "vulval debris"...what is that code for? Stray pubes? And wouldn't knickers be amply sufficient?

oh yes and we are never allowed to do dress down days under any circumstances, never allowed to do jeans for genes/wear pink for cancer awareness.

we can only raise money for the company chosen charity there is a written policy about this.

you can never take more than 10 days holiday unless you are getting married or are attending a funeral abroad.

i cannot tell you how depressing it is to think that i will never have more than 10 days off for the next 20 years unless i have major surgery.

we also have core values eg striving for excellence, passion and each appraisal are required to discuss how we have applied these to our work roles and are scored against them which forms a huge part of our pay rise.

the more i right, the more i realise i absolutely have to find another job.

ABF, did you get the list of fridge rules in Nov 09?

For example, you had to have all your food sealed. Once the seal on the box had been opened, you could not put that box back in the fridge, even if you portioned it out onto plate. It had to go into your locker.
Same with drinks- a 500ml bottle of whatever could only be kept in the fridge before it was opened, even if you poured your serving into a glass and wanted the remainder to stay cold. If you bought a sandwich/ salad from a local business, it had to be kept in your locker, becasue it wasn't in a sealed box, ditto you couldn't put apples/ clementine in the fridge unless they were sealed in a plastic box.

My manager went further. I brought in a brand new bottle of apple highjuice, so concentrated stuff. It wouldn't fit into my locker, so I put it in the kitchen cupboard and had the weekend off. When I got in on the monday, she had poured it down the sink and yet immediately ordered a bottle of Robinsons crappy sweetener filled rubbish. I hit the roof.

She also has her own quirks elsewhere.

1. Socks must be worn by all staff and must be black (I deliberatley wear the brightest I can find)
2. Only black ink can be used for any paperwork- she throws any other colour pens away.
3. She doesn't like you kneeling on the floor to pick stock up because your trousers get dusty. Stock is a bit more important than my trousers? People have to buy it.

risingstar - what about fruitcake eh?