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What is the most ridiculous rule that you’ve come across?

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I have a friend whose dad had one paper towel specifically used for eating bagels. You cannot re-heat or eat your bagel on anything other than the bagel towel. No plates or bowls were allowed to be used for bagels. You got your turn with the bagel paper towel or you waited till it was free

u/JulianVanderbilt avatar

My head has literally folded in on myself thinking about this. 

I don’t understand.

So if you whipped a bagel out, you had to use the bagel towel to hold it or to act as a plate to eat the bagel?

Yuck?

u/golden_fli avatar

It was a paper towel, how long would it last? I mean sounds kind of disgusting, but it really makes me wonder how many uses they actually got out of it.

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Getting poop knife vibes here.

u/almostcyclops avatar

You eat your bagel with a poop knife?

How else do you spread lies from your thighs?

u/killing-me-softly avatar

Of course not, I just cut it with one

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u/killing-me-softly avatar

How many uses are they getting out of a single paper towel???

u/Ry113 avatar

When that dad said he likes bagels with everything on it, he meant everything

u/CantaloupeDue2445 avatar

So what happens if the bagel towel rips? Or gets wet? Or gets accidentally thrown away? Is a new bagel towel torn from the roll?

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u/SternLecture avatar

not being able to sit down when working. like checkout peeps. it seems like people just want to make people suffer. i would suggest letting people sit is more efficient making bosses more money.

u/Helen_A_Handbasket avatar

I was working as an assistant manager in a retail store at one point, and one of my employees was an older gentleman in his early 70s. He was frail, but had a great attitude and was good at the register with customers. He had back issues and a hernia that caused him pain, and so when I was in charge rather than the manager (my boss), I would bring out a barstool and let him sit for his shift. This was of course directly in conflict with corporate policy.

One day, the manager pops in when it's my shift, and sees "Joe" sitting at the register, and blows up at him. I heard the ruckus and immediately stepped in telling her that I personally gave him permission to sit because of his disabilities. She huffed and puffed and said that she was going to push it up to HR and I flat out told her to go ahead, make my day, they can fire me if they don't like it. I wasn't going to force that dear old man to stand in pain for an 8 hour shift. The manager backed down at that, because she didn't want to work weekends, EVER, and if I got fired she'd be forced to cover everything. She was a terrible manager.

u/IrresponsiblyHappy avatar

The firestorm that manager would have brought down on her own head had she escalated to HR would have been epic to watch. If HR had any brains they’d see an ADA lawsuit coming a mile away and “removed her from the situation”.

u/Helen_A_Handbasket avatar

That old guy never complained once, he was a fucking trooper at his job. Even with his inability to move around very well, or lift anything more than ten or fifteen pounds, I'd hire him any day.

As far as the HR at that company, though, they were pathetic. They didn't care if employees harrassed/bullied other employees. There was one employee they kept on even after years of complaints about her calling other workers and even customers "fucking bitches" and generally being super unpleasant every minute of every day. If I'd had the power to fire her she would have been gone in the first week I was working there as assistant manager.

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u/i_suckatjavascript avatar

Thanks for being an awesome manager and standing your ground. I would’ve done the same thing and wouldn’t give any fucks if I lose my shitty retail job over helping my coworker with a disability.

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Some school districts try to do this with teachers. I teach small groups at a table, I'm not gonna stand and do that. Luckily my district is fine with sitting, but damn I can't imagine the power trips in other districts.

yeah and i doubt customers care if cashiers sit. it’s an outdated rule.

u/HeroToTheSquatch avatar

Boomers tend to care because "standing is a sign of respect". They're the only demographic I've ever known to have a problem with cashiers being seated.

u/i_suckatjavascript avatar

At Aldi’s, they have chairs for the cashiers.

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u/Rackmaster_General avatar

Well, they'll mostly die off over the next couple decades anyway.

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I don’t want my desire for ice cream and soda to cause someone else pain. Let the cashiers sit, ffs.

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u/Itavan avatar

I love my state.

“ California Supreme Court has ruled that “all employees are entitled to a seat at work.”

California law requires that an employer allow an employee to sit while on the job, and provide the seating, if the “nature of the work reasonably permits the use of seats.”

employers in California must provide a chair to any worker that wants one

Chase Bank and CVS tried to argue to the Supreme Court that their cashiers had to stand because the “nature of their work” included the impression that the employee gives off. Chase and CVS argued that customer perception wasn’t as good for cashiers and tellers who sit.

The Supreme Court rejected this argument, holding that “employers in California must provide a chair to any worker that wants one,” reports KPCC.

u/ashdrewness avatar

George Costanza?

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Edited

I once got fired for sitting on the floor while deep cleaning the bottom shelf of a grocery isle shelf. It was the only way I could reach the back of it…

u/SternLecture avatar

just imagine firing someone for sitting doing a dirty job you werent willing to do yourself simply for being seated while doing it. 

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We don't get to use the same bathroom as our boss. We have to go to a different part of the building. She has a sign on our bathroom door stating that it is broken and no one can use it. But really she just wants it for herself.

You should call maintenance every time you see the out of order sign.

"Broke again? We already checked it out."

"The boss keeps putting a sign there. It must be broke again."

Nah, they should actually break it. If you flush a few toothpicks or a wad of paper towels it will clog really bad.

Edited

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Time to drop a giga turd on the broken bathroom, sabotage the toilet flush, its broken anyways she can't complain.

Maybe add an upper decker for good measure.

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Hey boss, employees keep trying to use the broken restroom, so you'll be happy to know I padlocked the door until maintenance can get down here to fix it.

Lockout tag out, bitch!

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u/binglybleep avatar

In my last job, one of the managers got it into their head that people waiting by the clocking out machine were skiving, so she’d physically barricade the door by the machine at the end of shift until exactly 8pm. People were still wrapped up at the same time (we had 20 mins to clean up and it didn’t really take more than 10) so people just stood at their workstations for ten minutes instead of getting their stuff from their lockers and queuing to leave.

That place had a lot of pointless rules and really awful managers, but for some reason that one was the one that made a couple of people actually leave. Being physically blocked from going to their lockers at 7.59pm. It felt demeaning and petty

u/imapassenger1 avatar

Skiving. Haven't heard that word in a long time, back when I worked on a London building site as an Aussie labourer. And I knew all about skiving off back then...

u/GozerDGozerian avatar

What is it? I looked it up and it’s about slicing metal???

u/imapassenger1 avatar

Slacking off.

Basically being lazy and not doing work/school, by going elsewhere

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I never understood this. Do managers truly Believe that their workers are 100% peak efficient from 9 to 5 without a single wasted second.

How many times is that manager standing around. Chatting with someone, looking out a window, etc.

Letting workers get ready to leave a few minutes early isn’t a big deal. As a company, suck it up. Who cares. I’d argue it’s better for the company to have happy workers. Then to squeeze 2 minutes out of them and have them disgruntled and disloyal.

My company uses a web based punch clock. You just log onto a website and click “log in”. The previous owners of the company had it set up that if you clocked in 5 minutes or less before your start time, it would “snap” to the hour.

Ie you start at 9am. You log in at 8:56am. You get paid from 9am until your end date.

Also. If you work over your time period. If that is under 15 min, you snap back to the hour.

So you log off at 5:10pm. You get paid up to 5pm.

We thought this was ridiculous, and I’m pretty sure illegal. But the company was just super cheap.

Thankfully we got bought out by a bigger company. And while we use a web based clock in still. It’s a new system and it pays by the minute.

u/binglybleep avatar

The ridiculous thing was that the machinery we used was all switched off before we started cleaning, so we physically couldn’t do any more work at that point. They literally lost nothing by letting people get ready to leave.

That definitely sounds illegal! And counterproductive because why clock in at 8.55 if you don’t get paid til 9? People will do more work if they can clock in when they get there. Your new system sounds much better (and legal)

Exactly this. When people got to work, if they were a few minutes early, they would just wait until the exact minute to log in.

The company that did that had a lot of nonsense rules back then.

One was that they set up a team to do random checks on our work for mistakes. We had to have a 95% level of accuracy. They were supposed to check our work regularly and send reports back monthly (via email).

However they didn’t check all our work. Just a sample size. These samples sizes began to get smaller and smaller (I assume this department was overworked with all the various employees at different locations).

So one time I got my report back. I had made 1 mistake, but because they only checked a little bit of my work, I was at like a 93%.

My manager forwarded the report and advised me that I had to do better and get above the 95%.

I was like “WTF? I guess I’ll be sure to make half a mistake next time”

It angered me so much that I set up a filter, any time those reports came in, they were instantly deleted.

After that, I never saw another report, and I actually felt my stress drop. The reports also became more sporadic. They were supposed to be monthly. But sometimes 3 or 4 months would go by and nothing. So my guess was that the cracks were forming and the whole idea was failing.

Glad that’s over with. A colossal waste of time and resources.

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I used to work a sales job where the people in charge would just make up arbitrary rules to limit how much commission we could make. It got really frustrating.

u/HeroToTheSquatch avatar

At my old sales job it was painfully simple, if we sold product, we got a 50% cut of the profit (so about 4-7% of every sale depending on how much of a price cut we gave), if we sold labor it was about 8% of the bill for labor. Extremely consistent and no matter how much or how little you were selling, you could always predict your paycheck size down to the last dollar. Owner of the place was a complete dick, but he knew better than to fuck with commission.

So blissfully simple then? 👌

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u/EobardT avatar

My dad had something like that, he got 5% commission on work he brought in. He got a $1,000,000 a year account set up and got a $5,000 (0.5%) check. The owner flat-out told my dad that he's never going to write a check that large ($50,000) for "someone who works for me"

I'm pretty sure if it's in the paperwork signed - that he was supposed to get 5% - he could have sued...

u/EobardT avatar

He didn't sign paperwork; he's a very trusting man. It's infuriating to no end

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u/DaygameCode avatar

The 3-day rule regarding how much you should wait to text a woman after she gave you her number.

u/HeroToTheSquatch avatar

I used to tell people who'd give me all their bullshit "rules" that I don't play games and it's why I had an active and enjoyable dating life while they're twiddling their thumbs hoping to have a second conversation with a woman. Happily married for over 5 years now, together for 8.

Edited

Lol, I called this one insanely hot nurse who was 8 years older than me and was just waaaaaay out of my league a few hours after I got her number. I was 21...

Yada, yada, yada, we've been inseparable for like 18 years 🤣

u/golden_fli avatar

She stitched you to her? Well it probably could be worse.

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Oh man. People may not remember. But in the 90s. These two airheads came out with this book called “the rules”.

It was a series of rules that they came up with for dating. Such as, If you go on a date, you should not go on a second date with the man until so many days had passed because you will look desperate.

It was panned pretty hard as absolute bullshit. But it was also a best seller.

Omg I saw that nonsense and I'm part of Gen Z💀 That was wild lmao

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I texted my current girlfriend ten mins after our date ended and she gave me her actual number, and voila we started dating exclusively soon after.

That rule is stupid and its based on making the other person crave your attention, or trying to not look too desperate.

Meanwhile, the gays: "You have snap? IG?" Right away.

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u/SquilliamFancySon95 avatar

We're not allowed to use any kind of fan at work even though the AC is broken and it gets dangerously hot. Management says it looks, "unprofessional" in front of customers. Employees have fainted and customers complain constantly, but they never do anything about it. It will probably take a lawsuit at this point for them to ever replace the AC.

u/kipling_sapling avatar

Fainting in front of customers is also unprofessional.

Relevant comic.

Make sure they put it in writing

I've never understood the "it looks unprofessional" crowd. Most people don't give a shit as long as they get what they're there for.

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My ex FIL had a rule that once he sat down for a meal, only his wife and grown children could get him anything he needed from the kitchen. He would not stand up

u/rhino369 avatar

I’m going to try this and see how long it takes for me to get hit with a frying pan

Is that related to why he's an ex-FIL?

I'm guessing his grown son thought you'd do the same and that's why they're both the ex?

How long did that marriage last?

u/massenburger avatar

Until his wife got up to get the divorce papers from the kitchen for him to sign.

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One of my bosses got upset because I bought the same food for the yard staff (general labourers) as I did for the office staff. He told me I should be buying cheap food for them.

Next time you have to get nice food for the yard staff and cheap food for the office staff

Get some r/pettyrevenge

u/A_Lefty_Gamer avatar

Wow. How dare 2 groups eat the same food. The horror! /s

How else will we know who the slaves are?

u/GozerDGozerian avatar

Basically, “I can’t feel happy unless I know someone else is less happy than that!”

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u/errant_night avatar

Guy wants to bring back medieval sumptuary laws apparently

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u/Everlastingitch avatar

the kitchen at our work place sells breadrolls that are with lots of toppings and really good... and then they sell the same breadrolls but without the top half of the breadroll and instead a tiny piece of parsley as garnish for twice the price for the management

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One of the companies I worked for had "employee appreciation week" where all the full time employees got to play games, eat free food, do puzzles, etc. Unfortunately, almost half the damn office was contractors and the company decided they couldn't participate. It was extremely uncomfortable.

u/Pencilowner avatar

Employee appreciation is just a big fuck you to the employees most the time in my experience. 

Mandatory fun time means the boss will show up and get pissed by the end of the day since most of his staff aren’t sycophantic suck ups. I’ve seen it so many times I can tell within the first hour if the next day is going to be awful just based on how much ass kissing was expected vs received. 

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Me currently trying to figure out the most expensive food that still tastes like ass.

I'm an office guy and it wouldn't have even crossed my mind to bring different food.

u/felurian182 avatar

Those are special kinds of assholes.

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No motorcycles on the casino floor

u/GozerDGozerian avatar

That is some buuullshit, man.

u/BananaBR13 avatar