People shared the most ridiculous workplace rules they ever had to follow and these 17 are absolute deal breakers

‘I worked at a company where the HR director was a dictatorial psychopath.

Each month, we had to meet in the breakroom. All the people with birthdays that month had to stand at the front of the room, and everyone else had to sing happy birthday to them.

We are adults.

And when I say “had to”, I mean had to. She wrote it into policy. You were not allowed to miss it. She took a roll call to ensure everyone was there. A few clever people would schedule vendor meetings etc to avoid having to do it…then she forbid that too, putting a block in the outlook calendars so nobody could schedule over it.

It was the cringest corporate death march I had ever known. Just…insane.’
-ImprovementFar5054

‘I worked in an office where we were not allowed to drink the free coffee / k-cups after 2pm because the caffeine would still be in our system after we clocked out at 5pm and therefore it wasn’t solely benefitting the business. So crazy!!!’
-RestingBitchFacee

‘When I started working in an open office, each desk had a little trash can. On the first day I moved the trashcan out from under the desk to have more room for my legs.

The next day the trash can was gone. I filed a ticket to find out why, and they said that it was the third infraction of that trash can being found in the walking space and now it was taken away. I said that the previous times hadn’t been me because I just started, and I was told that the infractions stay with the trash can, not with the person.’
-wangologist

‘In college I had a job where our boss told us that “employees are not allowed to fraternize outside of the workplace.” There were about 30 employees, all of whom were college students, so of course we hung out and partied together all the damn time. A few times he even had the assistant manager show up to parties to spy on us and see who was there…so we just offered him beers and he “didn’t see anything.”

It was absurd. Someone once talked to him and his logic was that he was worried that us partying together outside of work would lead to hookups or arguments/drama that would then bleed into the workplace, but like, you’ve got 30 people aged 18-24 working for you…that’s gonna happen anyway.

Anyway, the rule was very important to him but we just ignored it.’
-mejok

‘I worked in a office where we were not allowed to say “but” and had to instead say “and also”

“I’d love to help you with that project, and also I am very busy with my own work.”

Literally had meetings about it. Meetings. Plural.’
-skizem

‘My previous job mandated two days a week in the office even though I was the only person in my team at my site.

I’d come in and sit by myself and have 100% of my meetings on zoom. Just pointless.’
-RaggamuffinTW8

‘Well, there was a period of time where I, a physician, had to write an email to my boss every week listing out five things I did that week, justifying my employment, because of a tweet Elon Musk wrote.’
-casapantalones

‘My boss made a rule that we cannot use the word “absurd” because someone (okay it was me) used that word about something he said in the work setting and it hurt his feelings. So he had his sycophantic deputy put out a memo saying that word is banned from our workplace.’
-Agondonter

‘There was a rule that we were not allowed to fight with swords in the large conference room. It mainly applied to me though. And it would have not been a rule but someone snitched.’
-inkseep1