30 Employees Share The Weird Office Rules That Made Them Say “You Gotta Be Kidding Me”

The world is run by rules. But it’s also run by power-hungry maniacs who love to enforce overbearing — and in some cases, downright inhuman — rules that make everybody’s lives miserable.

Employees have taken to Quora to share the work rules they endured that were so weird they said “You gotta be kidding me.” From restrictions on the height of a desk plant to forbidding employees from leaving the building, these workplace rules are so insane you’ll wonder how they’re even legal.

Keep going for some of the most authoritarian, insane, and weird office rules ever.

1.

This is a million years ago when I was young and working as a secretary (pre admin assistant days) in a firm where the management was all male. The non management staff was about 50/50 male and female. In the coffee room there was a rota on the wall showing which woman employee’s turn it was to clean the coffee room up at the end of the day, make the coffee etc. I wass only 22 but I immediately said to my (male) boss, why are only the women on this list? The men use the coffee room too, why don’t they have to take turns cleaning it up? There was a lot of kercluffle because no one had ever objected before. The men were indignant, THEY had to do ‘women’s work’??? Finally the rota came down and the new policy was in place: everyone cleaned up after themselves. The women refused to clean up the men’s coffee cups, so if they left them dirty in the sink, that’s where they were next morning.
Small victories, decades ago.

2.

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.

3.

“‘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.”

4.

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.

5.

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 take a [poop]. 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.

6.

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

7.

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!

8.

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?

9.

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.

10.

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.

11.

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.

12.

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.

13.

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”.

14.

My husband went out to the food truck to get a soft pretzel. Others took smoke breaks so he thought he was entitled to a pretzel break. Human Resources told him if he wanted a break, he needed to take up smoking

15.

“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.

16.

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.

17.

Finally, “One company I worked for required the window blinds remain at a prescribed distance from the floor, and be at a specific angle. They literally had ‘office décor police’ go office to office and measure the blinds to ensure that you were following the rules. I had the audacity to try to do work by closing the blinds one day to prevent glare on my computer screen. The CEO saw it and threatened to demote me.”

18.

We had an “office manager” in my early days in a government office role. One day, I snagged a pen from the supply room and was using it to write notes at my desk. It happened to have green ink, which was atypical but I didn’t care.
The OM wandered by one day and started chastising me for using green ink in my notes. I said, “a” who cares if it’s green, and “b” I got the pen from the supply room that she managed. She started raising her voice, causing a scene, repeating “Green ink is only for Auditors!”.

I calmly asked “Why do you stock green pens in the supply room when we have no auditors in this office, in fact, no auditors on staff in the entire department?” She went silent. At that time, there was a Department-wide anti-waste/efficiency initiative underway, so I said “I think I’m going to file a submission to the “Paydirt Program””!

She turned on her heel and left. “Mysteriously” all the green pens disappeared from the supply room. I never learned why we had stocked green pens that nobody was allowed to use. Gotta love government bureaucrats.

19.

One place I worked temp at told me I could only go to the bathroom at break time. WTF?!
I told the manager my bladder is not on their clock and I will not risk a urinary tract infection or an embarrassing accident holding it in for hours at a time. He insisted. I got my purse and jacked and went to the bathroom and right out the door. Turned out I was in the early stages of pregnancy which is why I was going so much, but I didn’t know that yet. All I knew is I had to go and bad, and holding it was not an option! lol

20.

At the time this happened I had worked for the same company for over 20 years. Following a remodeling of the area, I was assigned an office in the renovated sector. About two weeks later some construction workers show up with 2×4’s and sheet rock. The issue? They had measured my new office and it had 20 square feet too much space for a manager at my level. So they were going to build a 2 foot wide by 10 foot long “dummy wall” to deprive me of the 20 sq feet.

i appealed the decision, but the wall went up! The only concession they made was to put a door in the wall so I had a “closet” of sorts.

21.

“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.”

22.

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.

23.

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.

Dumbest rule ever.

24.

My former boss went to one of those time management seminars and came back full of the most impractical ideas ever: all aimed at increasing my productivity. The wackiest idea was that I should always have everything in a specific spot on my desk. He then proceeded to use masking tape to show me where the stapler, pens, paper clips etc were to be put. Problem was I’m left handed and he set everything up right handed. Instead of pre printing forms I used dozens of times a day I had to print out a single form each time one was needed.
He went out of his way to make my job less efficient until things came to a head and he fired me. He then installed his girlfriend in my job. I was so happy to leave that micromanaging micro brained boss.

25.

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.

26.

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

27.

You had to email an IT administrator if you wanted to print double sided. Large retail pharmacy chain. I was in charge of life altering meds but needed approval for two sided printing.

28.

One place I worked still expected everyone to wear formal business attire even if they never met any clients. Amazingly, they issued an email that announced a trial run of “dress down Friday”. No guidance was given it was just dress down. This experiment was to run for a month.
After the second Friday we received another email cancelling all future dress down Fridays as some people had taken things too far. After a bit of discussion about what could have caused such a reaction, it is eventually revealed that some people wore jeans! Not scruffy jeans, jeans with holes in, slung too low, cut offs, just jeans.

29.

I worked in a psychiatric hospital. The staff often talked about our personal lives (our families, our medical and mental health and whatever medications we were on… Often there were a lot od sexual and inappropriate jokes. It was that way for years.
One day some new policies were created because of complaints. The first was no more inappropriate and sexual jokes it was considered sexual harrassment. We understood just wished somebody bad said something to the jokes.

The other new policy was that we could no longer discuss our mental health which was all depression and anxiety. We also could no longer discuss whaf we took for medications to treat it…Now we were doing this in areas where patients could not hear. I questioned this becuase it seemed ridiculous. I asked if we could talk about medical issues such as my frozen shoulder or gastro issues or Susie’s diabities or Debbie’s grandchild who was batteling cancer…Another person pointed out we on occasion talked about her MS especially when she was in a lot of pain. . My boss said that someone in our office felt it was inappropriate to discuss our mental health so that was the focus.. I told her we work in mental health and yet it was taboo to talk about. Most of us rolled our eyes…

30.

No Black Jeans.

“Unless you’re Me”

I worked as a Meat Troll for a very large grocery store. I was moved from store to store filling in for holidays and time off. It’s a dirty, wet, smelly job, and light fabric dress pants just didn’t last. On the second day of my second month I went to my boss, “This is ridiculous, I have torn three pairs of dress pants so far. At $25 each I am done. Tomorrow I will wearing black jeans. They will be a huge improvement working in here.

“I will fire you!”

“Not a problem. I always have other work lined up”

The next day I wore black jeans and was called into the Store Managers office. The store manager looked them over. “They look more professional then the dress pants. Done. Here is a letter authorizing YOU too wear black denim jeans. A letter has been emailed to all store and meat managers about it. Oh and You work too hard. Go for your coffee breaks, or I will take you to the union to get spanked. Have a great day!”

Department Boss was absolutely pissed but I was covered. The “No black jeans” rule eventually faded into the dust, and it’s now it’s “Any Black Pants, except for Stampede, when Blue Jeans are allowed!”

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