Article created by: Greta Jaruševičiūtė
“Rules are good. Rules help control the fun,” said Monica Geller in Season 5 of Friends. And she might be right; rules are indeed good and important as they help avoid chaos in so many situations. However, similarly to Monica, some rules can be too much.
Examples of rules taken one step too far have been discussed by members of the Quora community. In a recent thread, they’ve shared office rules that made them say “You gotta be kidding me”, which we have gathered on this list for you to browse. Scroll down to find them and see for yourself how bizarre some rules can get.
#1
In 1967, heyday of the tiny miniskirt, writing on the chalk board above eye level meant holding the back hem of the skirt down wth one hand.
Most of the younger female teachers solved this by wearing pants.
We got a new, young, male principal, who announced at a staff meeting that all female teachers were to wear skirts.
The next day, every single female teacher showed up in pants, even those who had to go out to buy a pair. This wasn’t even a planned group action.
Not another word was ever said.
Image credits: Stephanie Burke
#2
“‘Outside a formally scheduled meeting, employees are not allowed to talk to anyone for more than two minutes.’ This ended quickly after the staff started maliciously complying by just turning and walking away abruptly from managers and executives at the end of two minutes anytime they stopped to talk to them.”
Image credits: William Eisenhauer
#3
When I was promoted to a senior manager at a major public accounting firm, it meant a new office, a piece of wall art, and a plant. Our ‘plant service’ gave me a plant that I discovered liked a bit more light and a bit more water so I moved it closer to my window and gave it additional water beyond what the plant service gave it in their weekly visit. The plant thrived.
One day the plant service showed up with a measuring tape, and then started to take my plant away. I asked why and was told only Partners could have a plant over 30 inches tall.
Image credits: Ellen Sharon
#4
I worked in college athletics and we had an athletics director that was literally a control freak nutjob. One day she sent the staff an email saying: “Effective immediately, if you leave the building for ANY reason during the day, you are required to email me prior to leaving, telling me where you are going, why you’re leaving, and when you are returning.” Wait, what? Do we work in a prison? Fed up with the totalitarian state, one of my coworkers decided to answer fire with fire: “I’m leaving to go up to the library to go to the bathroom. They have the cleanest toilets on campus. This might take a while. I’ll be back when I’m done.” The next day, the new rule was revoked.
Image credits: Ira Thor
#5
Not quite an office rule, but…
In my early days working in a lab we were told we had to put expiry dates on all of our chemicals. As the most junior this task was given to me.
One month later we had an inspection. The report came through that I’d not put an expiry date on the bottle of sand. This is used for heating baths (you fill a container with sand and heat that container – it spreads the heat evenly) so it was irrelevant how old it was. However, anything to keep the peace so I put an expiry date on it.
The following month’s report had another complaint. About the sand. “But it’s got an expiry date on it! Was my plea.
“Yes, but October 15th 65,000,1978 isn’t realistic.” Came the reply.
“But that sand is already 200 million years old. It’s not going to go off before then.”
The powers that be issued an edict – nothing was to have an expiry date more than 3 years hence. So I was told I had to order new sand every three years in case the old stuff had gone off. You gotta be kidding me.
One day I’ll tell you about the edict they issued saying that pi was exactly 3.14
Image credits: Frank Hollis
#6
The office manager decreed that only detectives could have lined paper pads as she believed they needed them. As a prosecutor I used such pads in court. When told I couldn’t have them anymore I simply made a template of lined paper on the pc, with nice wide gaps between lines, photocopied off 500 sheets to staple them as pads. She saw me stapling the pads and had a hissy fit at the cost – we got lined pads!
Image credits: Alan English
#7
A friend at work used to like to make herself a cup of instant oatmeal when she came in, using the boiling water tap. Then she would sit with the cup on her desk and have a spoonful here and there while she worked.
Then a supervisor told her she was not allowed to eat at her desk.
But others in the office often had their own mugs that they sipped, so she asked, why could she not have a cup at her desk while everyone else did? Well, coffee, tea, hot chocolate, that is different, because it’s not food. It’s drink. But some people made cup-o-soup or ramen noodles in their cups; wasn’t that food? Well, yes, that was food, but it didn’t need a spoon.
What? That’s right, you can drink ramen noodles or instant soup without a spoon, but oatmeal requires you to lift it to your mouth with a spoon. Mugs without spoons? Ok. Mugs with spoons? Verboten.
I would have just made my oatmeal with more water so that I didn’t need a spoon, but she went to HR and complained. HR told her she could only have food at her desk (food defined as being needed to be eaten with a utensil) if she had a medical condition that required her to eat throughout the day. So she got her doctor to provide a note that she had low blood sugar and required food at her desk.
Can we all just take a moment here and realize how ridiculous this is?
Image credits: Lisa Newall
#8
Banned all coffeemaking devices. And all outside coffee from home, restaurants or coffee shop. Charged $1 per generic Keurig pod and $.50 in a coin operated machine.
The machine provided only enough water for about 2/3rds of a cup.
In my experience, nothing is a clearer indication of a company’s character and culture than their coffee arrangements.
This was one of the most aggressively toxic workplaces I’ve ever seen. Truly horrible.
Image credits: Ben Skirvin
#9
I worked at a place that instituted a new policy where if you were 10 minutes late, you were docked an hour. I have no idea if this was legal as it was in the early 80s and I didn’t know what the rules were then.
Anyway, I mentioned to a manager that if I was going to be more than 10 minutes late to work, I wouldn’t bother showing up until I was an hour late as I wasn’t going to work for free. He didn’t grok what I was saying. Naturally, no one was even less than an hour late after that. It didn’t take management long to realize their error and change the policy.
Image credits: Bart Crunk
#10
There was one rule that I could never get behind at the place I worked around 2007.
“The playing of games on company equipment is strictly prohibited.”
I never really understood why they had it in my contract. I didn’t like it. I didn’t agree with it. In fact nobody on my entire team agreed with it. So much so that we frequently broke it on multiple occasions, and we didn’t care. Some times, at times of high stress (like when a major deadline was looming) we felt we “just needed a bit of play time”. D’you know what I mean? In fact, we probably broke this rule even MORE when deadlines were looming! Clearly my employer either didn’t notice, or chose to let it slip under the rader, because they never raised it in the 3 years I was there. I’ve never been much of a rebel, but I really felt like one then.
The company was called Bandai Namco. My job was as a Video Game Programmer.
Image credits: Christopher Beckford
#11
When I was working as a television anchor and reporter in local news in the 1980s, our general manager set a dress code rule. Anyone reporter on camera in the studio or in the field had to be in business attire — suit and tie for men, business suit for women.
Fair enough.
But one day I’m doing a stand up from the scene of a breaking news story. It’s recorded — not live. I’m halfway through my spiel when my videographer slowly leans away from the viewfinder, shaking his head.
“It ain’t working, is it,” I asked.
“Nope,” Chad said. “Nobody wears a suit and tie to a forest fire.”
The rule was rescinded that afternoon.
Image credits: Terry Turner
#12
I worked at a place that made everyone sing happy birthday once a month to all the people who had a birthday that month.
If you didn’t show, you got disciplined. And you had to sing. The HR Director scanned the room to make sure everyone was singing. If you didn’t, you got spoken to.
It was the most assinine, morale-back-firing policy I have ever experienced. That place was a nightmare.
Bonus “you gotta be kidding me”:
The boss there tried to make an employee get rid of their car because it was nicer than his, and that didn’t “give the right impression”.
Image credits: Sarah Winston
#13
“To be on time you must be in the building 15 min before your official shift start. You must be downstairs ready 10 min before.” Which meant prepping your area, getting things ready, all off the clock. If you were a supervisor or was be on the floor 15 min early. If you didn’t adhere you were marked late, 2 or more in a 30 day period you were written up.
it seemed kind of fishy and all the management had “it’s just how things are” attitude.
me and a few others formally complained to home office about it. After a few weeks we got an email saying “You may clock in and begin your shift at its planned start time, but we’d sure appreciate if you showed some care and prep work ahead of time to ensure blah blah blah.” Yeah I’m sure they’d appreciate it, that’s free labor.
Image credits: Tyler Victor
#14
At a company many years ago (early 1980s), I used post-it notes to mark comments on computer print-outs. A supervisor saw me doing this and admonished me by stating that post-it notes were reserved for management.
I responded with the fact that I had not known about that rule. He told me to stop and return the rest of the booklet to the supply cabinet.
I stated that I had actually purchased the pack at the UofMinnesota bookstore and they were actually mine.
…..crickets.
Image credits: David Ecale
#15
“Ink pens were locked in the boss’s office. Everyone received one ink pen. To get another pen, you had to turn in a non-working ink pen. You couldn’t just turn in any ink pen, it had to be the type you were given. You were allowed one ink pen every three months whether or not your old pen was still working. The boss ordered other supplies as needed but kept one pen from each order so he could match them up to keep people from turning in random pens.”
Image credits: Abe Goodman
#16
All repairs on office equipment required three estimates. Our printer broke and the receptionist called three companies to come and give us estimates. All three charged a $200 service call plus repairs making the minimum possible $600 plus repairs. If a repair company was called back to make the repairs it would and additional $200 for service call plus repairs for a total of $800 plus repairs.
The first guy came out and said he could do the repairs for a total of $400. The receptionist did quick math and determined that $400 was $200 cheaper than just getting three estimates so she had the first guy fix it figuring she would be praised for saving $400 for two more estimates plus repairs.
Nope, the office manager lady chewed her a new A hole stating the rule was to get three estimates before allowing any work to be done. She could not comprehend that they saved about $600 or more.
Image credits: Jim
#17
Blue pens are bad no blue pens. Blue pens are forbidden. —but— Only forbidden in the software team and QA department. Everybody else can use blue or black or whatever color they want. Why? We were a medical device company and submitted validation paperwork to the FDA. This was back in the 90’s when everything was done on paper records. Apparently, one FDA auditor suggested that blue is bad because some brand of copy machine (I think it was xerox) couldn’t pick up the blue pen color. We didn’t use those kinds of machines but it didn’t matter. The FDA auditor says something and it becomes gospel, no questions asked. It made no sense, didn’t matter. We spent more time redoing data sheets and other paperwork because of wrong pen color. The company kept buying them and stocking them in the supply cabinet. I suggested that we should stop buying them in a staff meeting and everybody looked at me like I had the heads. So we just kept buying them and redoing paperwork.
Image credits: Harrison McFarland
#18
A company I worked for had an office secretary that brought in a ridiculous rule regarding sugar. Because our sugar consumption was so high we had to make our coffee then take it to her for the sugar. She would unlock her cupboard and dispense some sugar for you. Ridiculous! I simply brought my own sugar to work.
Image credits: Brennan Stark
#19
We had a rule that every electronics box installed in the place where I worked had to have a special label tied on. This label gave lots of useful information about what the box was, what the part number was, serial number of the box etc etc. Right at the end there was a section for any safety information. Unless there was any specific safety information for the box, it was normally left blank. New boss comes in, and decides that the safety instructions need to be filled in on all the labels. First we had to work out what the safety instruction would be, most of these boxes were electrionics and while they may be a bit hefty there didn’t contain any nasty chemicals or need to be handled with care so picking something that was appropriate but obviously not just there because we had to meant we started getting creative. One wag decided that in the case of a large black box of electronics, roughly the size of four shoe boxes and weighing some 40 pounds, the most appropraiate safety advice should be “Do not swallow. If swallowed do not induce vomiting”. It was found, there was a fuss, the fuss came to an end when the boss of the new boss found out and had a quiet word with the new boss.
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Image credits: Andy Dickson
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