‘What’s a rule at your workplace that clearly exists because someone did something ridiculous?’ – 23 regulations created by idiots

Having to go to your job every day can be bad enough. But having to put up with some monumentally idiotic colleagues is often what tips it over into unbearable.

They’ve been discussing the woes of working with other people on the AskReddit page after user Prize-Sale-4004 posed this question:

What’s a rule at your workplace that clearly exists because someone did something ridiculous?

And the answers will almost have you wishing AI will steal all our jobs, simply so we don’t have to put up with this kind of human nonsense anymore…

1.

‘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…’
–ldunord

2.

‘No jello wrestling (I worked at a scientific research station in Antarctica for a while).’
–Princess_Fluffypants

3.

‘Our home delivery trucks all have large ‘do not drive through flood waters’ stickers on their dashboards.’
–Killboypowerhed

4.

‘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.’
–IHkumicho

5.

‘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.’
–redogue

6.

‘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 sweaty balls.’
–Active_Evidence_4311

7.

‘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.’
–ihadtopickaname

8.

‘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.’
–sunnyday72

9.

‘No adult toys for secret Santa.’
–Ninetendoh

10.

‘No underwear as outerwear. I really wish I knew the history behind it. It’s been listed in our ‘Guidelines for Employee Attire’ for as long as anyone can remember, but no one can tell me why.’
–thisisscruffy

11.

‘No street fighting/brawling while wearing any clothing with our logo on it.’
–VioletU

12.

‘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 six Red Bulls before coming to work, thought they were having a heart attack, and got an ambulance called.’
–benk4