1. Strange Water Supply
My senior year of high school we got moved into a new school building across from a grocery store. The builders put walls up over the plumbing for water fountains by accident so there was a huge increase in reusable water bottles, and the school put up a vending machine entirely full of water.
Now I suppose it’s time to mention that this was in Washington state, where you can sell liquor in grocery stores along with anything else.
So some freshmen got the bright idea to start stealing vodka from the store, access the street, fill disposable water bottles with it, and sell it to other students.
This caused a huge problem with a large population of drunk underclassmen wandering the halls of the school and getting into trouble.
Finally, the staff got together for a meeting about what to do. Someone suggested banning water bottles. So now students had no access to water during school hours, and everyone was enraged.
There were articles written about it and parents complaining. People all over town were talking about how we had a ban on water. They eventually lifted the ban, and the vodka problem resumed.
Julia_noelle95
2. The Kid Who Played Smart
In the late 90's, humorous graphic tees became a popular thing and the mall had a few stores that sold "questionable taste" shirts. Shirts that said porn star, orgasm, donor, a headless guy holding a sign that says "will work for head". That type of thing.
The school made a rule that if your shirt was inappropriate, you would have to turn it inside out.
A kid in my class shows up to school with a shirt that says "I'd rather be masturbating". The teacher sends him to the bathroom to turn it inside out. He returns with an inside out shirt that says "I put the FU in fun".
The teacher doesn't realize it's the same shirt. So he takes it off in class and shows her both sides. Apparently, he had a few shirts custom made with prints on both sides.
She asks him if he has another shirt in his locker and he says "I have my gym clothes." She told him to go get the other shirt and change. He walks back into the class with a shirt that says "You're driving me nucking futs." The teacher said "just go to the office".
So he goes to the office and tells them that he was sent there because of his shirt. So they say "turn it inside out" and go back to class. So he turns his shirt inside out and walks back into the class with a shirt that says "free mustache rides".
She said "did you go to the office?" and he said "they told me to flip it inside out and come back to class". The teacher sighed and said "just sit down".
She went about teaching and we thought he won. But he ended up getting suspended for 3 days.
When he returned from suspension, he wore shirts for probably a whole week that said: I love teachers, support your local teachers union, cops are the good guys, drugs are bad, wash behind your ears, etc.
It was funny because he made these overtly positive shirts and the teachers (and students) would try to read into it too much to see what they really meant. As if it was just a tongue in cheek thing that they didn't get.
Eventually one of his positive shirts that he found said "support single moms" but he claims he didn't realize that there was a silhouette of a stripper on a pole. He says he thought it was "just a woman". So he got suspended again.
As a side note, the same kid bought a blowup doll and took her to every football game, basketball game, pep rally, etc. And gradually worked her into official school functions and brought her to school several times. For whatever reason, the teachers just gave up on that one. We passed her around over our heads at graduation. He even bought her a cap and gown.
B0h1c4
3. Kicked Out of the Library
I went to high school in a big city that also had a lot of colleges — it was really common for kids to take a class or two at a college and have a study hall during their high school day. This worked great until we got this totally power tripping librarian.
The library was really the only place you could be if you weren't in class, this was a crammed school. She started making rules like you couldn't talk out loud at all in the library, if you got a pass to go to the bathroom and left you couldn't go back in, etc.
Y'all I got kicked out of this library for sitting and reading a book — because it was for fun, not for a class.
This led to people signing themselves out of school, because there was nowhere in the building for them to be, and just not coming back for their later classes. Eventually our principal noticed the missing students/deserted library situation and got her to back down a bit, but boy was this lady a piece of work.
strawberryissweet
4. Fire Alarms and Pranksters
In my dorm, if you did something that triggered the smoke/fire alarm, you had to do a safety presentation for everyone on your floor. This was intended to deter pranksters from pulling the alarm.
A guy on our floor was making grilled cheese in the kitchenette, and burned it, which legitimately triggered the fire alarm. Afterwards, he explained, assuming that since it had been a legitimate alarm, and not a prank, that he wouldn't have to do a presentation.
He was, of course, wrong.
So, the next Wednesday night, the entire floor assembled, and we were treated to a thirty minute safety presentation on the dangers of grilled cheese sandwiches. It contained literally nothing about fire safety. It was all choking hazards and cholesterol.
Our RA was furious, but the student pointed out that the write-up that he'd been given just said "safety presentation". We didn't get any more presentations after that.
EarhornJones
5. The New Manager
We got a new manager for our office — she was an outside hire and was trying to prove herself quickly, and she was obsessed with efficiency.
So, her first week here she sent out this very rudely worded email about employees eating at our desks (we have a very small break area — 4 tables and we have about 300 employees here) and that we all had to stop eating at our desks, because "it was not efficient to eat and try to work at the same time".
Through a coordinated effort by some of the more sassy people at the office they all had their lunches at the same time and filled the break room with about 90 people. Elbow to elbow and they all ate standing up.
Literally, the next day after that happened, she sent out a follow-up email saying that we could eat at our desks but she advised us to take a break from our work from time to time.
It was pretty funny.
therealmrthomas
6. The Homework Policy
My 4 years of high school were full of my school trying out new policies and procedures to use in the future.
My sophomore year, my school decided to make tests count for 100% of the grade, and homework count for 0% (but it was still assigned). And as you'd expect, kids did absolutely no homework.
The ones that didn't retain information well (or were bad test takers) struggled pretty hard to make the grade without homework padding it. Our failure rate was pretty high that year.
Then my junior year, they brought homework grades back and made a new rule that there were no due dates, nor penalties for turning in late work for your 6 weeks (we didn't do quarters). As long as it was before the next 6 weeks started, you were good.
This led to students doing no homework until the last few days of the 6 weeks, and teachers had to accept and grade them all before grades were due. This put teachers under immense stress by causing them to work insane hours and spend every hour at home grading.
Which made them very irritable and more likely to just shove pointless activities and busywork at us until they could finish grading.
SharpieScentedSoap
7. Foosball at Work
At a former job (software development), there was a foosball table. People would play reasonably often, but just 1 game to take a break.
One day, management came down to the software engineering floor and saw people playing foosball in the middle of the afternoon. They declared "no foosball until 4:30 PM".
That ended up making it so that everybody knew when there would be other people wanting to play foosball, so it was much easier to find somebody willing to play and significantly increased the amount of foosball played at work.
nojonojo
8. Headband Suspension
My senior year of high school some guy in my class got an in-school suspension for wearing a headband (he had long, curly hair) so the next couple weeks almost every guy on the football team started wearing headbands in protest.
Keep in mind that girls could wear headbands, just not guys. No one really understood this rule. This took place right in the middle of football season.
They tried suspending a couple of the guys on the football team but, as with most places, football was so important that they couldn't suspend everyone because this took place right in the heart of football season, so they eventually gave up.
Nova297
9. Gang Mentality
My junior high school adopted a policy to not allow kids to loiter in groups of 5 or more, in attempts to crack down on "gang mentality". This was freaking Junior High.
Anyway me and my group of misfits (6 of us) were always hanging out during free times.
The principal eventually stopped us and asked us to separate. I had to casually explain to him that we were not a group of 6, but 2 groups of 3 that were inter-mingling.
People caught wind and that rule was basically dead. That was one of the few times I had to explain to my father why he was called into the principal's office with me.
Phemeto
10. Save Money, Lose Time
I used to work for a production company that employed a lot of really skilled, award winning editors. There were producers and executives and directors but the real money makers, the people who really made the company were the editors, so the company was basically centered around them.
The executives would always order food for the editors, and the editors would usually eat in their offices while doing their thing.
One day the executives decided to cut paid lunches to save money. The editors all thought this was a silly move, so they'd go out for lunch and sometimes stay out for like 3 hours.
There was nothing the company could do, really, because these editors were top of their game and if Warner Bros. heard that the editor they always used had left, they might leave, too.
So the company couldn't do anything. They saved maybe $15 dollars per person per day, but lost like 4 hours per person per day.
RecalcitrantJerk
11. Snakebites
My Dad was a corpsman with the Marines doing high desert training in the Mojave. They had a big problem with unidentified snake bites, that is, people would get bit but not identify the snake, so it was hard to find the right antidote.
So my dad got all the Marines in a room and said "If you get bit by a snake, bring it back here so we can identify it. Not even a full week later they had to alter the wording a bit, because they forgot to mention one VITAL thing.
This marine was bit by a rattlesnake and decided to bring it back… without killing it.
This man had carried this snake all the way back to base alive, and the snake decided to let him know exactly how he felt about that by repeatedly biting his arm the entire time.
Needless to say, that marine went home, and they made sure to hold another meeting where they told everyone to kill the snake, then bring it back.
SwordAvoidance
12. Backpack Riot
In high school they banned backpacks in classrooms. Everyone was angry. Some girls started bringing bigger purses to put their books in. A bunch of dudes brought their mom's purses in and were using those for school books.
Administration and teachers got upset because we found a loophole so they banned purses too. At which point a bunch of moms got upset.
This is because their daughters had to carry around tampons and stuff in their coat pockets, in addition to all of their books, notebooks, calculators, pens/pencils, and whatever else they have in those purses.
Finally the school let everyone have their backpacks back.
Bad-Brains
13. Restroom Permission
They made a new rule where we had to ask permission to use the restroom during lunch.
We all coordinated and the whole cafeteria would raise their hands at once to request to go.
They responded by sending us two at a time. We did this for a few days then changed our procedure to everyone just getting up at once and going to the restroom without permission.
They didn't ever officially do away with the rule, but the teachers on duty in the lunch room eventually just stopped enforcing it.
pm_me_ur_demotape
14. Short or Long Ties
My high school tried to crack down on people wearing their ties too short, as was the fashion. It got to the stage where anything except completely pristine uniforms would get you detention — which, coming up to exam season, was one more thing we didn't want to deal with.
In protest at what was widely seen as a ridiculous rule, ties started getting longer and longer -- one foot, two feet, two and a half feet, as long as people could get them.
It culminated in one girl sewing two ties together into a five-foot beast that trailed on the floor as she walked.
This resulted in the Deputy Head having a screaming fit one day about how disrespectful we all were to the uniform codes. After that, the teachers quietly gave up on the new hardline approach to uniforms, and everything went back to normal.
Portarossa
15. Ban on Books
My school instituted a rule banning textbooks from being brought into the cafeteria. It was then extended to also ban library books. The reason was to prevent damage to school property (spill your milk on a book, etc.), which I understood.
But it went a little too far too quickly.
If you brought a book in, you were forced to return it to your locker and then had lunch time detention. If you didn't take homework with you to lunch time detention, the teacher supervising would assign it.
As an avid reader whose friends all had lunch with different personalities, I'd often take a personal book to read while I ate. Teachers complained, but I pointed out that I wasn't breaking the rules—but they told me I wasn't allowed to bring any novel that was also taught in one of the English classes, such as To Kill A Mockingbird, as it would be confusing.
My parents were sticklers that we weren't supposed to get in trouble at school, but my dad told me that if I ever got in trouble for breaking that rule, he'd show up with enough pizza to feed the entire lunch time detention group.
ecsluver_
16. Library Pranks
At our high school, the library was one of the main places to hang out during a free period. It was common for kids to 'book' each other. 'Booking' was a prank where you would sneak a random library book into someone's bag and watch as the RFID tag in the book triggered the alarm when the person tried to leave. It always caused a big commotion.
In order to combat the booking situation, the librarians implemented stricter and stricter policies. When the alarm went off, they started blocking the exit to all students until the offending book was located.
This made tons of innocent bystanders late for class, but only encouraged more and more bookings.
Then they made it so that if you were the victim of a booking, you got an automatic detention. But of course, this only encouraged people to book each other even more!
At the height of it, kids were self-booking, kamikaze style, then making big displays of annoyance at getting detention for not even doing anything.
greenterror
17. Drug Test at School
Because of rumors of a drug problem in the school (there was) the administration decided to drug test students. The media jumped all over that, violation of our civil rights or something.
The initial statement was that anyone who failed the test would be kicked out of school. After the 40th or so kid failed they changed the policy to mandatory meetings with the counselor.
After the 100th kid failed they hired another counselor.
thedankbank1021
18. New Teacher, New Rules
So I did distance education for most of my high schooling. So a lot of the course work was done at home but three times a week all the kids in the area who did distance education would meet up at a 'hub' where we had teachers who could help if needed.
Now I was an older student, due to reasons (mainly being a carer for my disabled mum) I didn't want to stress myself out too much and decided to do my HSC over two years rather than one.
This meant in my last year I was not only the oldest there but a lot of the teachers would ask me to help other students as kinda a teacher’s aid type thing. I didn't mind and actually enjoyed helping. That was until they gave us a new teacher, at first she loved my help and treated me more of a colleague than a student.
Which was fine, this is how I had always been treated by other teachers; it worked.
But here's the thing, I loved my energy drinks. Like a lot. And every morning this new teacher would comment about how unhealthy they are. And I would respond with the simple fact 'well it's the same caffeine and sugar content as two cups of coffee with three sugars in each cup' which is pretty much what she had each morning.
Then one day, she said 'We have made a new rule. No energy drinks in the hub' and at first I just didn't listen. I was going on 20 and just wanted to get my course work done to get that stupid piece of paper. Then she pulled me aside and said 'look I said no energy drinks' and I went 'yeah but why?'
The teacher responded with 'it's hard to explain to the younger students why you can have them and they can't'. I almost rolled my eyes at her, but I didn't because my mum raised me right.
So I thought if the issue was that she didn't want to explain that a legal adult (me) can make food choices for themselves/it was a bad influence to see me drinking them I came up with a solution.
I had one of those BIG reusable cups from the movies, and I would hide the can in there and drink through a straw so you couldn't tell what I was drinking.
First day she was like 'hey! Is that an energy drink!?' And I just responded with 'yes but the younger kids can't tell! And that was the issue right? The kids seeing me drink it?'
I could see the anger and hatred in her eyes. But she couldn't really do anything.
She had given me a solid reason why, as an almost 20 year old, I couldn't have an energy drink for the few hours a few days a week I was there. And I found a solution to that.
flacedpenis
19. Points Deducted
Work instituted a points system for being late or calling off sick. Accrue too many points and you get written up, fired if it continues.
They doled out the same number of points whether someone was a minute late or called off altogether. And if an absence lasted up to five days, it was still only one absence.
So anyone who overslept or encountered heavy traffic and was running late would just stay home. For the rest of the week. After several months, they decided that being late was only worth half a point.
Nightmare_Gerbil
20. Disciplinary Review
Any support call lasting longer than 25 minutes must be reported to higher ups for review. That is, if you have too many, no matter if it's your fault or not, you get a disciplinary review.
I implemented the rule of politely hanging up on a customer as close to 25 minutes as you can and calling them right back.
"I am sorry I am experiencing a small issue with my phone, is it ok if I call you right back? Gotcha."
Outgoing calls are not reported or recorded. It's amazing.
TheLightningCount1
21. Business at School
When I was in high school, the school district took out all the sweets from the vending machines, sweets out of the bookstore, and cookies from the lunch line. They replaced these items with "healthier options" that basically consisted of $2.75 Kashi bars and things of that nature.
Many students, myself and my friends included, immediately went out and bought packs of candy such as chocolate bars, skittles (all the stuff you'd usually find in a vending machine).
At a cost of roughly $0.45 per item, we were selling them for $2 a piece and making an absolute killing.
The administration took months to get through the bureaucracy of creating new rules for things like "possession of disallowed items" or "sale of contraband", but the PTA shot down just about anything they tried.
On top of that, there was no efficient way to enforce any of those rules.
I bought my first iPod that school year on those earnings.
IMissGawker
22. April Fools’ Punishment
At High School, we were not allowed to wear our usual underwear for sports, we had to either wear swimming trunks, or nothing! Luckily this rule wasn't often enforced. When it was, the PE teachers would stand in the door of the changing room at the start and finish of the lessons and make you pull your shorts down a little to confirm that you were wearing the trunks - hardly anybody forgot to bring them, just in case of this.
The girls knew about this, and would sometimes gather near the boy's door to watch and giggle, before they got moved on.
Then, for an April fool, someone tried to encourage us all to 'forget' our trunks and go commando for that one lesson.
About 15 agreed to it, just for fun.
The girls were informed of this, and at the beginning of that lesson about 25 of the girls saw around 15 unmentionable parts, and produced a score card later. The teachers were not happy about all this, and the rule was strangely never enforced again.
MrUnderpantsUK
23. Workplace Schedule
My first job was as a medical receptionist. Ironically, I still work here — but I've had 4 other jobs in 3 years since then. Because of bus schedules, my options to arrive by 7am were either 6:45 or 7:15. So, because I detest being late, I chose 6:45.
Cue me showing up for months and months 15 minutes "early", and helping to set the guide ropes, review the daily provider schedule, set up informational displays and paperwork clipboards, etc etc etc. before we opened. Never had a problem.
Until this witch on my team decided she didn't like that I "left early" at 3:15. I never taken a lunch, so I should have left at about 2:45.
As witches do, she complained to our boss, who then had a meeting with me telling me I couldn't do that anymore.
So, I didn't. I still came in at 6:45, and sat in the break room drinking my tea and reading books until 7 on the dot. Said witch then complained that nothing was set up before we opened and it took her another half hour to try and manage setup while also tending to the appointment line.
I also started taking midday lunch, which disrupted schedules even more — partly to punish my coworker, and partly to punish my boss for not standing up for me.
fleshofyaldabaoth
24. Playing Cards
When I was in 2nd grade our school got the great idea of giving us small cards with our name on. If we wanted to play with anything or go into any room we had to find a teacher so they could place our card on a big board next to a picture of the toy or room we wanted to play with/in.
This was supposed to make us bring the toys back and make sure the classrooms were not dirty when we left. If you lost your card you had to wait until the next monday for a new one (they were just laminated pieces of paper).
Seems like a good idea but after just a few weeks small gang-like groups started forming and some of the gangs took control of the board, they would throw out other people's cards and put their own names on the good toys and this one room with a bunch of pillows.
This meant that most of us were not able to play with anything before getting picked up by our parents. The teachers eventually found out after a month but the damage was already done, most of the kids were divided into small groups who hated each other and there was a rivalry between some of the groups until graduation.
Heid3
25. Traditional Nursing Caps
A nursing home in our area thought it would be a great idea to bring back the traditional white nursing caps. They made it mandatory for all female nurses to wear during their shifts or be written up (and eventually pointing yourself out). Male nurses were not included.
About half of the staff quit within the first two weeks, several started working at my facility. The others that stayed said that the residents and families of residents laughed and made fun of the nurses constantly. Pretty degrading comments.
Basically about three months after this all went down someone from corporate came in and fired all the directors who implemented the uniform change and everything went back to normal. Several nurses stayed with my company but a few went back when the rules changed.
Taylojeann
26. Doughnut Punishment
Rule at my workplace ws that if you were late you had to bring donuts for everyone. People quickly figured out that the cost of being 4 hours late was to bring donuts.
As a result, if you were running late you just had a slow easy morning and stop by to pick up donuts on your way in.
Our boss, who had put the rule into place, thought it was funny and just let it continue.
He was an easy going guy and really good at motivating people. Letting them get away with this sort of thing meant they stayed late or showed up after hours for emergencies.
puterTDI
27. Horrible Food
In college after my freshman year, they decided on a new rule set to enforce a meal plan because students just weren't signing up for them and students were renting small houses nearby. Therefore the rules became:
"You're not allowed to move off campus unless your home is within 30 minutes of campus."
"You HAVE to have a meal plan while living on campus."
But there was a catch. Our food was God awful bad. I researched why it was so bad and it turns out it was by Sodexo. Half the time, all the food was so horrid that we couldn't stomach it and the other half it was just bad, but stomachable. Know what happened?
Students had meal plans, but they didn't eat. They went out and bought their own groceries to bring them back to their rooms. School realized it was wasting tons of food because it was preparing it and nobody was eating it, so it tried to shame the students by showing us how much was wasted every week.
Some students decided to respond by putting a sign on the administration's door saying, "Food won't be wasted if you give us some actual food we can eat!!"
HydroSword
28. Leadership Training
One of the top managers for my work decided that everyone who's worked there for 7+ years had to do a special online training course that consisted of two 400+ page volumes of "leadership" training followed by a 20 question test for each volume. You were expected to complete this within one year of being automatically signed up for the course.
Failure to pass the tests or to complete the course by the end of that year rendered you ineligible for promotions and almost guaranteed to be laid off within a year.
So many people tried to take the guaranteed-severance-package option by not doing the course that they had to change the rule that you wouldn't get laid off or not promoted, but you still "had" to do the course. People still didn't do it.
That guy finally left shortly after and a new guy replaced him and promptly chucked that course and the whole idea of it into the garbage.
ArikBloodworth
29. Spend More, Save Less
I’m a field technician. The company I work for decided that instead of having territories we would have a navigator. They would give us one call at a time.
They also decided that they would micromanage our drive routes, by adding a map app to our call management app. We were instructed to follow the directions from the app even if we knew a shorter route or wanted to avoid traffic delays.
Millions of dollars were spent on this process, to save money. Under the new way each tech covered the whole city. What ended up happening was each tech would zigzag across the city, often passing a tech to take a call on the other side of the city that they were just in.
Our mileage increased 60%, which is the opposite to what they were trying for. Our Customer Satisfaction Scores dropped, because since we drove more we had less time to help customers.
This went on for years, recently they decided to go back to how things used to be. Sadly most of the navigators lost their jobs and were not absorbed back into the company. The techs now have a territory, we get our calls as they come in and can plan our day.
Customer Satisfaction has increased and our mileage has decreased.
Mustangnut001
30. Sacrifices Had to be Made
The North Carolina legislature enacted a rule establishing maximum class sizes for elementary grades K-3. They recently attempted to reduce the maximum class size. This allows legislators to claim to be pro-education, as they're "working to reduce class sizes".
However, they did not give schools any money to hire new teachers. And public schools can't turn away students, for obvious reasons.
So in order to comply with the law, schools would have to fire "specials" teachers (music, art, PE / health, etc) and eliminate planning periods for teachers in order to hire the extra teachers necessary to reduce the class sizes.
Most teachers and admin staff are of the opinion that these "pro-education" measures will actively make the quality of the education much worse. Thankfully, there were enough complaints that the rule was given a temporary reprieve.
kiwi_rozzers
31. Young Innovators
When I was in eighth grade, my school implemented a new iPad program. We were recognized as an “Apple Certified School” or some crap like that. The problem was that students were just using them to play games, administration didn’t have any way to crack down on it, and teachers had no clue how to implement it into the classroom.
We constantly played 2048 in class, since it was impossible for them to block all the different iterations for it, and when they made it an instant demerit to be found playing it, even in lunch and homeroom, we just switched over to browser Tetris.
It was so bad that one kid who sat right next to me didn’t even try to focus on school. He would spend the entire period playing on his iPad, then constantly complained that he kept scoring 50s and 60s on his tests.
KoolDewd123
32. Overtime Policy
My old company had a nice overtime policy for engineers called into work. When you stepped on the floor you got an automatic 4 hours overtime. Well they wanted to get rid of overtime pay but still give this.
They had the bright idea to say if you worked your 40 hours before the end of the week don't come in.
This is a factory working almost 24/7. Of course, you can imagine what happened next.
Most of the engineers didn't come in on Friday. Next week a mass email went out saying you could get overtime to keep people working on Fridays.
Neuneu
33. Color Blind
To combat students from repping gang colors at my high school senior year, the principal banned the color red. Not blue — just red, because I guess the high school was in a Norteno area (For those outside CA, Norteno = red gang colors, Cripps = blue colors).
If the rule had only targeted over-the-top dressing in red colors, it would have been more understandable.
However, they banned red as in even if your shoelaces were red, or if you were just wearing red earrings — it was that petty.
The news covered it, and it was repealed within a month or two into the school year because it was just such a stupid rule.
ginjasnap
34. Food Spoilage
I worked the closing shift at a gas station in my college years. At the end of the day we would have to take food set to expire out of the shelves & coolers, write it off and dispose of it. This worked for 30-40 years.
The owner of the company got too old so he decided to sell. So, new owners, new rules. In their eyes we were all just low life temps who are definitely criminals, we were no longer allowed to write off the food and dispose of it ourselves because we would just hide stuff until it expires and then take it home (their words, not mine).
So instead, we were supposed to just put it in the office and wait for the general manager to come take care of it. But there was one problem. The general manager came by once a week.
Remember, we are talking about fresh foods such as meat sandwiches, egg sandwiches, milk, fruits, etc.
The office had a fire door, one that prevents smoke and such to permeate should a fire occur, which luckily also prevented much of the smell from entering the rest of the building.
Basically imagine a rancid open air trash can (or rather, the manager's desk) filled with meats, dairy products, fruits, etc. For some strange reason we were allowed to dispose of food again not long after.
gazeebo88
35. Shutting Up
My 6th grade teacher had a rule that if you said the words "shut up", you had to spend your recess writing "shut up" on a piece of paper 100 times and turn it in before lunch.
I think he thought it'd just be an easy deterrent, and after the first couple students slipped up and had to do it, it'd prevent any others from doing it.
He was a genuinely nice teacher, too.
Instead it turned into a game between everyone in the class to try to get others to say it. We were basically Supertroopers ahead of our time.
DangerSwan33
36. The New Receptionist
I was working as a medical assistant at a private practice medical clinic. Our clinic manager wouldn’t allow the new receptionist to drive to the bank to deposit cash.
However, instead of providing a sensible alternative, she made her walk carrying the money bag so that she couldn’t “drive away with the money.” Bizarre. I know.
That went on for a few weeks. And she was always lucky. Until one day, her luck ran out.
The receptionist was mugged and over $1000 in cash was stolen. She was allowed to drive after that.
IndyMazzy
37. 1 Hour Lunch Breaks
I worked for this company that had mandatory 1 hour lunch breaks. Since we ate on the premises, our lunch break was often 15 minutes or so. We tried negotiating having shorter lunch breaks so we could leave earlier and beat traffic.
Next day an email was sent from the owners stating the fixed work and break hours for the whole team, and they were to be followed with no exceptions.
Cool! Next week, a big client called about half way through our lunch, and nobody moved. It rang and rang until said owner took the call, talked to them, and immediately came to scold us.
"Sorry, boss, as per your rules, we are off until 1PM, no exceptions".
A couple of weeks later, we did some work on site for the same client. They were, to be honest, one of the coolest clients I ever had in my life. They took us out to lunch, and while talking we ended up relaying the owner's rule.
They had a big chuckle over it, and while the project lasted, they made a point to always call while we were at lunch break just to annoy the owner.
LGMHorus
38. Just Say Yes
I worked at Starbucks for like 5+ years before and during undergrad and at one point our district manager thought it was a good idea to implement a "just say yes" policy, where we literally weren't allowed to tell the customer no.
It lasted for about 3 months and in those three months our unaccounted product and waste went up over 300% because when the POS didn't have a way to punch in a customer request we had to just do it anyway.
We also got complaints from stores in surrounding districts because they had angry customers who were requesting things that were against local food service code, and told them that we did it for them at our store.
I knew exactly how that policy was going to play out and I just laughed every time management was freaking out about the problems it was causing.
yunglilbigslimhomie
39. Fired Over Emails
My spouse's workplace realized they didn't have a policy about sending explicit images or jokes as part of their email acceptable use policy, so they added it.
Except they made it a firing offense to send or receive explicit content (I think the intent was to stop people from subscribing to such content). They also said that your access would be immediately revoked until a determination was made.
Until someone got fired for something else and decided to punish the higher ups. They sent their whole management chain a graphically explicit image, then reported it using the anonymous tip line.
IT got the report, concluded they did indeed receive explicit content, and did as required—suspended all the involved email accounts, including the SVP's.
The policy has since been reworded.
loljetfuel
40. No More Bathroom Breaks
A boss was worried we were "stealing time" by using the bathroom for too long. So being the nutjob he is, he locked all the bathrooms in the building except the ones he could see from his office door. He also shut off water to them and put out of order signs on them.
But he wasn’t yet satisfied with his work. So, he would sit there with a stopwatch timing us between walking into the restroom and walking out (these are all one-at-a-time restrooms) and then would call out the time.
This was stupid over the top and almost positive is illegal but he never made a policy officially restricting bathroom time. He just wanted to make everyone feel uncomfortable if they took too long.
I discovered that with my height it was really easy to go through the drop ceiling and over the half wall and I was the only other person using the men's besides my boss, who is short.
So I went in, locked it from the inside and did my business and climbed out the ceiling leaving the door locked so my boss could not get into the bathroom when he needed to go and was forced to use the ladies, which led to our female employees complaining that he was taking too long in their bathroom.
To this day I don't know if he ever figured out how I was doing that.
geoffbowman
41. No Wearing of Solid Colors
My middle school was in a bad neighborhood surrounded by other bad neighborhoods. They imposed a "no wearing solid colors" rule into the dress-code because of gangs and frequent drive-by shootings in the area.
It didn't even matter if you were wearing a color that wasn't associated with a gang - Wearing a pink dress? Suspension for solid colors.
Green jeans (it was the early 90's) and a green t-shirt? Suspension for solid colors. Goth kid? Suspension for solid (lack of) colors.
It took some genius coming into school wearing head-to-toe red bandana pattern clothing, which was not a 'solid color' and yet the most gang affiliated looking outfit any of us had ever seen, to finally get the stupid rule changed.
BlasFeminist
42. Chaos on Leave
A place I used to work had a rule that executive-level staff needed to be contactable when on leave, so they had a section on the leave form for the address of where you'd be staying and a contact number.
Some knuckle-shuffler in HR decided it applied to all staff and the shenanigans began.
People would put down the address and phone number of mature shops, sports grounds, medical clinics, etc.
I gave the latitude and longitude of the place I was going camping and the UHF frequency channel my radio would be tuned to.
Flight_19_Navigator
43. The Law Was on His Side
The new principal made a ruleset that every student had to sign. One rule among that was that music devices would no longer be confiscated for 2 days but for a week if they are carried openly during lessons.
I had an mp3 player that had a necklace (the small USB stick like that was a thing before the first iPod was even released). So my teacher wanted to confiscate it as I had it around my neck in the first lesson because I totally forgot it after listening to music on my way to school.
I was a very good student at that time, but I was very confident and never gave a crap about authorities. So I told him that I won't give it to him and if he does not agree, we could visit the principal together at any time while walking to the front, opening the door and making a gesture to encourage him to do that.
Long story short, when we went there I told him that neither is he legally allowed to confiscate my belongings for longer than the lessons, neither is my signature worth a dime as I was 15 and below the required age and last but not least the school kind of forced every student to sign this paper which is totally illegal and unacceptable.
He didn't believe me, but I didn't give him my mp3 player. So he called the legal department of the "Kultusministerium" (kind of the ministry for education where his bosses are).
They told him I was right and he had to change the rules immediately. So he apologized, made a new ruleset, handed it out to every student and they didn't have to sign it again.
Moral of the story: don't try to teach your students to think for themselves and basic laws about legal capacity, property and the constitution if you don't want them to use it against you.
juleztb
44. Class Pranks
In chemistry class we had plastic bottles of distilled water which could be squeezed to produce a small jet of water.
We used to spray one another’s crotches to make it look like you’d peed yourself. To counter this, our teacher introduced a punishment to anyone caught spraying or having been sprayed.
Hence, if you could spray someone and get away with it, they would have wet trousers and have to write excerpts from a Martin Luther king speech.
Needless to say, the punishment for being sprayed was quickly abolished.
MRobbebayor
45. No Facebook
Back in 2011, a company I worked for had the bright idea to block all social networks because, you know, employees should work instead of slacking off on Facebook.
I could write volumes of books on the toxic culture in that place, but the Owner/President who lived in a different country and visited about once every few months was universally feared by everyone and a few days before his arrival the whole building went into panic mode.
So a few weeks after the social network ban, his royal highness shows up, and 5 minutes later half of the IT department is scrambling to his office. Apparently there was an issue with the Wifi, or at least that’s what he figured since he couldn’t log onto Facebook.
It was fixed in seconds.
A few years and three promotions later, I made a joke about it with him. Instead of a laugh, I get a confused look. Turns out he still thinks it was “some internet problem” since whoever decided to ban social networks didn’t have the nerve to tell him about it after the incident.
Gmizavec