No fish in the microwave. No flip-flops on casual Friday. Standard workplace rules that follow a basic pattern of logic and exist as gentle reminders that you are sharing a space with other humans who have preferences and nostrils. None of these things really need to be said out loud.

But every now and then an office renegade comes along that flips things upside down. Before you know it, a "no jello wrestling" laminated sign appears. Reddit asked people about the times that incident reports quickly became policy, and the results make us realise this whole "work from home" arrangement is incredibly boring.

#1

The "Janet" rule. We get a 10% discount off of our groceries as employees. We had a woman who only worked 5 hours on Saturday mornings. Then she gave up every Saturday morning shift (we go into the app and give up our shift and if somebody claims it, they work the shift. If nobody claims it, you have to work the shift.). She did this for 3 months straight and never worked a single day but still got the discount. So the Janet rule is you must work 4 hours a week to get the discount.

#2

I worked at a site that banned energy drinks. When I inquired about it I was told they have had multiple incidents where someone stayed up partying all night, drank about 6 red bulls before coming to work, thought they were having a heart attack, and got an ambulance called.

#3

Specifically must not put unopened cans of food into saucepans of boiling water. Officious, laminated notice complete with photo of burnt ceiling.

The most commonly broken workplace rules, according to HR Acuity, are not the fish microwave variety. Favoritism and nepotism appear in 37% of workplace misconduct cases. Bullying and intimidation show up in 36%. The rules that actually matter, in other words, are being broken constantly, while the rules about desk clutter and approved footwear on casual Friday are being enforced with the energy of a small dictatorship. The priorities, across a significant number of workplaces, are visibly misaligned.

#4

Work vehicles are not to be used to pick-up hitchhikers or livestock.

An employee picked up a hitchhiker who had a sheep with him. Then sent selfies of the situation to her manager.

We are in a rural area, but, we're a mental health service.

#5

One of our remote mining sites that is fly-in-fly-out, for 2 weeks at a time, semi recently added a rule that to have a couples' room you need to prove you cohabitate at home too.

Apparently a few people were only “mining couples” and then would return home to their “home spouse”. Caused issues at the Christmas parties once it was found out…

Edit: Women can work at the mine too, it’s not all brokeback mountain up there.

#6

Not my employer, but an agency in the same building. "All four legs of the desk chair must remain on the ground at all times an employee is seated in the desk chair." Yes, a woman rocked back on two wheels, and predictably fell over backwards, sustaining a severe head injury when her head hit the floor. She never returned to work.

And most people who witness real misconduct say nothing about it. 56% of silent workers don't report because they believe leadership won't do anything, according to Consulting Mag. Between 36% and 46% stay quiet out of fear of professional retaliation. And 62% of employees believe that misconduct gets routinely overlooked if the person doing it is a manager or a high performer.

So the rules exist, the rules get broken, nobody reports it, and HR responds by writing a new policy about the refrigerator. This is the cycle, and it has been running for decades.

#7

We have the Beto rule which classified family bereavement leave only for mother, father, sister/brother and kids.

You see Beto had a big family. Big. He had been with us for a long time, and had at least two funerals a month for people that were “Just like my mom when I was growing up” and “just like an Aunt or brother to me”. He wasn’t punished, but we had to define who was covered. No more free time off for funerals for everyone.

#8

I would joke about doing "security training" at our bank by coming on with a ski mask on and pretending to rob the place. Apparently a manager *actually did that* once and freaked all of the employees out. At least one had nightmares for weeks about it. So yeah, there's now a rule against simulating a bank robbery for the monthly security training.

#9

Sign at one of my customers: Wrapping the new hires in shrink wrap is prohibited.

Psychologists call the blanket policy response the Lowest Common Denominator fallacy. Bob microwaves salmon every single day. Management doesn't want to have a one-minute awkward conversation with Bob. So instead, HR drafts an official amendment to the employee code of conduct: Section 4B, Strict Prohibition of Warm Marine Artifacts in the Breakroom.

This penalises every single person in the office to avoid addressing the one person actually causing the problem. The 99% pay for Bob's salmon. Bob, sensing no direct consequences, possibly microwaves something worse next time.

#10

We have a rule that we aren’t allowed to cook meat in the office kitchens because there was a guy microwaving raw chicken breasts for 15 minutes at a time.

#11

Our gym had to put up a sign specifically banning people from drying their underwear in the sauna some dude literally hung his boxers over the heating rocks and filled the whole place with the smell of burnt [underwear].

#12

I worked for a company that owned a number of schools and we had two: no alcohol on work premises. Not even in staff only areas and not even if it’s locked up and only opened when the students have all left. Then the rule was extended to include no alcohol to be consumed at any work functions, not even at end of year parties or during the student holidays.

In both cases it was because one particular guy got so drunk he caused a scene, including starting a fight. Twice.

The infantilisation piece makes everything worse. When workplaces strip adults of basic professional autonomy by doing things like timing bathroom breaks, banning desk items, or requiring approval for things that should not require approval, a well-documented psychological response called reactance kicks in.

People who are treated like children begin behaving like children. They sneak snacks. They hide forbidden desk items. They find creative ways to reclaim the autonomy they've been denied, usually on company time. So all these rules will backfire at some point.

#13

No street fighting/brawling while wearing any clothing with our logo on it.

#14

I worked at a company that didn’t have a refrigerator or microwave in its break room. When I asked why, I was told about an incident that happened before I arrived. Apparently they had a lunch thief. So one guy who kept getting their lunch pilfered, decided to inject a bunch of laxative into their food. Sure enough the thief took it. Turns out the culprit was an older person with some kind of gut problem. The laxative caused him to have a serious medical issue that required the company to call 911. Apparently the guy almost [passed away]. So the company said ok, no lunch room for anyone anymore.

#15

"No dogs allowed on the treadmill." Employees have 24/7 access to our on-site gym and someone decided bringing their dog along for a run would be a good idea.

Laszlo Bock spent years running people operations at Google and his conclusion after all of it was disarmingly simple. "If you give people freedom, they will surprise, delight, and amaze you." The rules, the policies, the laminated signs, none of them are what makes a workplace function well. What makes a workplace function well is trusting the people in it to behave like adults, and then actually letting them.

The rules in this thread exist because someone didn't do that. It is, in the end, a story about avoiding discomfort at the cost of sense. The uncomfortable conversation takes a minute, and the reward in letting the rest of your workforce feel like respected adults will far outweigh that discomfort.

Have any bizarre workplace rules ever made you think about their origin story? Tell us in the comments!

#16

You cannot wear a necktie while operating the shredder.

#17

My employer has a remote workforce with 3 offices in 3 different time zones. A team held an onsite on one coast and, instead of flying, one of the people on the opposite coast decided to make their attendance into a road trip. Travel time is work time, so they submitted their 3 or 4 days worth of food & hotels for the drive and 3,000 miles at the $.70 reimbursement rate ($2,100) for personal car use.

Much like the employee, this did not fly with company leadership.

Among several updates and clarifications, this got the travel policy revised to include a cap for alternate travel "up to the cost of a plane ticket."

#18

“No jello wrestling”

(I worked at a scientific research station in Antarctica for a while).

#19

One office I temped at had a "your desk must be clean on Fridays or we clean it for you" rule because there was a woman in the office who was stuffing food trash in her bottom drawer and leaving soda cans all over her desk, and her cubicle smelled so bad.

#20

I was the cause of a change to vacation policy. I had a ton of PTO to use up going into the last quarter of the year, so I scheduled every Monday and Friday off for October, November and December. I had 3 months of 3-day work weeks, and it was glorious. After that, the company said no more back-to-back long weekends.

#21

Years ago, I worked at a large, privately owned company that was super serious about No Company Information Is Revealed to Outsiders. Like, we were not even allowed to tell people how many employees worked there, we had to say, "we are a privately owned company and do not disclose that information."

That said, they had a VERY strict "no post-its" policy. No sticky notes of any kind, only paperclips or staples if necessary. Apparently, one time, decades ago, one person sent out one piece of mail that inadvertently had a sticky note with "sensitive information" still stuck on it. The information was not that important, actually, but the owner wigged out at the "security breach" and immediately banned sticky notes from the company for life.

#22

Many years ago, someone left hardware in a plastic tote, and put the whole thing in an oven at 150C. The tote melted and ruined about $250,000 in space flight assemblies. Management was... displeased.

There are now 17 steps involving 3 people and a set of keys to put anything in an oven and 11 steps to remove it.

#23

One lady would always sleep in and not get on her call queue (insurance agency customer service), so the manager on my six-person team implemented a rule that each employee must send a "good morning" IM to the manager upon logging on. That was the beginning of the end for me in that job. I still don't know why the Teams active status display or even entering the time into workday upon logging in wasn't enough.

#24

Food related challenges are banned at the railroad where I work because one night, a crew did the one chip challenge while out running a freight train over a commuter line after hours. The story I heard is they had to stop the train to collect themselves/vomit. Needless to say the higher-ups weren't happy, so no more food related challenges on duty.

#25

As part of onboarding, I was asked to submit a photo of myself for them to use on the company intranet. They very explicitly told me that I had to be wearing a shirt in the photo.

#26

No adult toys for secret Santa.

#27

My employer, an industrial electrical and instrumentation contracting company, used to unconditionally give every employee health benefits and RRSP matching, because the work is typically a minimum of full time.

A couple years ago they implemented a rule that you had to work some minimum average number of hours per month in order to maintain the health benefits and RRSP matching. It wasn't an onerous amount by any stretch, think it averaged to only about 25 hours a week with a month or two of grace per year for those who took really long vacations. This came about because one employee was *extremely* part time, picking and choosing only small short term gigs that lined up with his wife's scheduled time off because he was acting as the primary caregiver for his infant and toddler. There were several months where he didn't work a single hour, and others with only three to five days worked. After close to a year of this, one of the bean counters caught on and the new policy was implemented.

I was that employee.

#28

Before banning the use of chewing tobacco indoors altogether, a few years ago, there was a rule that it had to be disposed of in a sealed container (spitter) and then placed in a trash can.

Reason being? A custodian was emptying a trash can and managed to get someone’s chewing tobacco spit in their mouth, ingesting it, and had to go to the emergency room.

#29

Part of my business is photography, and before a shoot I give my usual spiel of general working practices, which ends with: “I will not touch you without your explicit consent, except in the case of a medical emergency. *Please do not be a reason for me to add more items to this list*.”

The only reason the medical emergency thing is in there at all is because I was once working on a lingerie catalogue shoot with a model who, it turned out, had not had anything to eat or drink in the 8h before a 6h shoot, and who fainted about 4h in (luckily I was just about able to catch her before she cracked her head on concrete floor).

So my pre-shoot checklist includes making sure that the client or model has eaten and had something to drink, and the fridge is always stocked with water and a couple of emergency glucose-rich drinks.

#30

For the past few years, I have to tell every new customer that they are not allowed to store bodily fluids on the property.

#31

At the beginning of every school year it is mandatory to instruct our students to not come to school if they have the plague and that if you find old ammunition from WW 2 you are not allowed to touch it.

#32

If you wear open-toed shoes (sandals,etc.) your toe nails must be manicured and painted.

This was to stop the hippy engineer from tromping through the office in his Birkenstocks with his gnarly feet on display.

#33

No more mini-fridges under your desk.

Because I put a mini-fridge under my desk.

#34

Every office microwave that has a sign saying "No Fish" or "No popcorn".

#35

BigLaw firm with crushing hours (IYKYK) had a cafeteria that was open into the evening because of aforementioned crushing hours. For a long time they had a policy that if you worked until 6 pm, you could get dinner for free. The idea was that if you had to work late, you didn’t have to pay for the privilege of eating at work and you didn’t have to leave the building to find something open (this was back in the days where delivery services were not routine).

They stopped this benefit after a bunch of people worked until 6, loaded up their dinner in a to go box, and went home. These people were, by the way, very highly paid associates.

#36

Christmas party cannot be the day before a non workday.

#37

"No guests at Friday Happy Hour" when I worked at a natural history museum.

So, every Friday we'd meet in the Zoology classroom. It was an employee-led effort, where we worked "shifts" filling coolers with beer and picking up snacks from Trader Joe's. Everyone threw a dollar into a pitcher per beer.

One night, someone invited a couple of the employees from the aquarium next door and didn't escort them out. They'd had a few too many dollar beers and tried to go out through the main/public exit, even though the museum had closed hours ago and everything but the employee exit was locked. Instead of walking around to find a security guard, they panicked and banged on the doors screaming to be let out until finally someone heard them.

We still sneaked guests in after the rule went into place, but we *always* made sure to walk them out at the end of the night.

#38

Our home delivery trucks all have large "do not drive through flood waters" stickers on their dashboards.

#39

Not sure if this counts, but I used to work for a facilities management company. Most hospitals where I worked banned toasters. Too many people putting bread in and walking away. Bread got stuck and fire alarm goes off from the smoke.

One hospital in particular had so many false alarms that they had to pay a fine to the fire department every time.

#40

"DO NOT PUT DRINKS ON YOUR WELDING MACHINES", I would bet good money someone fried or damaged a $25,000 machine by knocking over a drink.

#41

My last job had a “no firearms or alcohol on company property” policy that didn’t go into effect until I had already worked there for several years. Somebody at one of our sister stores definitely got up to some hyjinks.

#42

10 years ago, I was halfway joking but kind of seriously asking the owner to let me bring my dog to work because I loved her and missed her. When they issued the new version of the employee handbook the next year they added pets not allowed at work and I’ve always felt that was personally directed at me.

#43

Not too ridiculous. I use to work at a major theme park on one of the rides. There's a popular joke where we would say "see you in an hour" just as we push the button and send guests on the ride. One day the ride broke down and guests actually did get stuck for an hour. We weren't allowed to use that joke anymore.

#44

There's a big typed-out list of specifications and measurements of precisely how short your sleeves can be and how much leg your shorts can show because there's one old prude who has beef with one woman who wears tanktops and shorts (because she does manual labor in a warehouse in the summer). Everybody ignores it.

#45

Cannot wear pajamas in the office.

#46

Not my current employer but two from a past one.

First is Jay's rule. We could no longer clock in using our cell. Had to use the office phone on speaker and the person you are relieving had to witness and note it on their shift report.

This was after one of our guys kept clocking in before he got to the job site so his clock times would show him as on time.

The second one is the Jeff rule #1. Jeff had a lot of rules named after him. This one was unless emergency services are called no calls to the supervisor.

I put this rule in place after he called me at home because the stapler ran out of staples and he didn't know what to do.

#47

We just had to implement a new rule the other day when a coworker tried to move the heavy lid to a barrel that stores radioactive and biological waste and pulled his back. Every lid says it requires two people to move it now. I've moved one by myself before, but it was pretty difficult, so i agree.

#48

No chairs inside. We had two (for people on break or for quick small breaks after rushes). A few people literally got into shove/hit fights over it (while not on break too), so.. bye bye it went.

No outside group chats (most have an anti social media clause anyway) but oddly the same group who caused the chairs removal had an Instagram group chat where they'd plan call-outs en masse. They (stupidly) invited nearly everyone (including those who never called out or actually had bills to pay).

No speakers. No playing music on your phone loud enough for others to hear. Tends to be cooks, and they tend to play music so loud that no one can hear anyone speaking.

#49

I worked for a large tech company nearly 20 years ago. We were told we can go anywhere we wanted for lunch, but not Hooters because there was an “incident”.

#50

Sleeping on the clock in the break room.

It used to be against the rules but now IT IS PERMITTED!

How did this happen? Well a former CEO went on national TV and was being interviewed by a famous interviewer. CEO mentioned how all our break rooms are being updated for the employees. Interviewer asked if it was a better place for the employees to rest and *sleep*. CEO said yes.

The union saw this, quickly jumped on it and pointed out how the CEO just stated that we are allowed to sleep in the break rooms, while on the clock. Of course if you don't do your job or miss an assignment, that is still a big issue that you can get in trouble for, but not sleeping.

#51

I have an appropriate story:
I used to work in a company that didn't mind people drinking a couple of beers at the office on Friday (after work hours of course). And, well, everyone kept it civil until some guy decided to celebrate birth of his child by treating everyone in his department and basically everyone who decided to join. Of course a couple of idiots took to much and decided that they totally need to resolve something with a fist fight right then and there. Since then a policy of "No alcohol at the office" took place and chill Friday evenings were gone.

#52

Can’t screenshot interoffice memo/messages.

#53

Don't put cheese sandwiches through the laminator.

#54

Disclose all relationships. All managers and company leaders most especially.

#55

"do not remove safety guarding from tools"

Guy in the tool shop took off a few fingers on a track saw.

#56

Company cars must be new and have 4 wheels.

There was a budget for the cars and you got more budget the more senior you were, so the car was an indicator of status.

One person got a fairly old used Jag, hence new. Another got a Harley Fatboy, hence 4 wheels.

#57

An old colleague of mine used to use his motorbike for company travel, and as we were paid at the standard 40p a mile (back then), he was making some good pocket money travelling 500 miles every month on a bike that did over 60mpg.

He was the victim of his own undoing when the company temporarily closed the motorbike parking spaces at the satellite office, and he asked where he should park his bike instead. They were confused, as he wasn’t based at that office - before realising he was travelling on company business using his bike.

He was swiftly told to take a car or public transport, and the employee handbook was subsequently updated to say “motorcycles should not be used for business purposes”.

#58

No tissues in the cafeteria. Need to walk like 3 mins to wash our hands after a meal. I don't know why or what happened. It's just corporate policy.

#59

No working outdoors during an active severe weather warning.

After a staff member was on the roof with a long piece of rebar during a thunderstorm.

#60

Potlucks must be held in the break room only. This is my fault. I was hosting secret potlucks in a storage room when I had to work on Sundays. We didn't get a lunch that day because the store had shorter hours.

#61

When our workload became heavy, we would work extra on Saturday. Because no one would volunteer, they offered cash incentives of $100-250 extra for the day. After a short while they included the stipulation that you had to work a full 10 hours on Saturday to qualify for the incentive pay. All because guys would come in work 2 or 3 hours and still get the extra money.

#62

Our manager had to make it very clear that we’re not allowed to take a nap during our work ours.

#63

The annual reminder for women that they need to wear underwear and that skirts have to come to the knee...

Former workplace, very young demographic. CEO was very into fitness and frowned upon anyone using the elevators unless you had a cart of stuff or were escorting someone to a meeting, etc. In the desire to impress the CEO everyone used the stairs. Every spring HR would have to put out a notice about dress code because it was an inevitability that a new 20-something would wear a too-short skirt and decide to go commando. I was there for 7 years and it happened every year...

#64

No spouses at company events other then children's Christmas Party, and the Partner Retreat. Some staff were having affairs and their spouses found out at the event. It was chaos.

#65

Previous ultrasound department instituted a “no earbuds” rule because someone was doing entire exams with their earbuds in and not interacting with patients. She was let go if I remember correctly.

#66

Uber and Lyft didn't have time limits back in 2013.

Lyft had a nationwide competition for each cityon New Year's Eve: get 1 raffle entry for each ride given. Winner gets $10,000.

I drove 24 hours straight to maximize my entries. I didn't win. Made $944.20 though.

Three days later they started limiting how long you could be in driver mode.

#67

We had an email round once saying “Please don’t climb on desks in order to reach to open office windows.”

#68

You will be terminated immediately if the inmate becomes pregnant.

#69

No personal kettles or coffee machines.

The coffee from the automate was below standard, so people started to bring their own kettles (tea) or cheap coffee machines. Because they were not maintained, after some time they caused a short circuit, bringing down the electricity for the entire 150 people department. It would take several hours before we could find the faulty machine. The loss of time and work was a lot.

We did get a new coffee automate.

69 Workplace Rules That Exist Because Someone Did Something Truly Unhinged

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