30 Times Idiots Did Something That Wasn’t Against The Rules So A Rule Was Created
If there’s one thing the world will never run short of, it’s
. Spend just a few minutes online and you’ll find plenty of evidence, but this recent Reddit thread might be the best example yet.
Here, people gathered to share the most ridiculous rules they’ve encountered, all of which exist because someone once made a shockingly dumb decision. Scroll down to enjoy these hilarious precedents, and don’t forget to upvote your favorites—they deserve some credit for making us all feel a little smarter!
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The responses in this Reddit thread might have you doubting the existence of common sense, but they’re nothing short of entertaining. Bored Panda connected with the post’s creator, u/seequelbeepwell, to find out what inspired them to ask the question.
“I was watching YouTube videos about life in Japan and noticed how much trust they place in people to do the right thing,” they told us. “It got me thinking that maybe Western culture is different because we seem to have a few bad apples that end up creating most of the rules.”
To their surprise, the responses didn’t quite match their expectations. “I would’ve thought Florida would come up more, but Alabama seemed to take the crown,” they said. “A lot of people were venting about work-related rules. Reddit is on the side of the lady who spilled McDonald’s coffee on herself.”
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I worked in an office where one numb nut decided to take his lunch break at 4pm everyday so he could leave early. Manager said to stop doing that. So he quit taking a lunch break Monday-Thursday. On Friday, he took all 5 lunch breaks at once and went home at noon. After that the manager assigned everyone a lunch break time. If you didn’t take it during your assigned hour you did not get a lunch break. It felt like the most Mickey Mouse middle school rule ever. Magically, that rule went away after numb nut was fired a couple of months later.
ETA: We were a customer-facing department. We had to ensure coverage for walk ins, appointments, phone calls, etc. if this wasn’t the case I doubt manager would have cared when we took lunch.
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The thread didn’t disappoint when it came to office stories, either. Bored Panda also spoke with one Redditor, u/ribbediguana, who shared a particularly funny one about how her office banned post-its after a critical message was lost. She gave us more details about how it all went down.
“It was a very small recruitment company,” she explained. “Honestly, the person who wrote the note could’ve just taken care of the task herself. A client called in on a Friday, right before lunch, needing a temp for Monday. The person who was supposed to handle it—the one who received the post-it—was out at a client lunch. Back then, if you weren’t out with clients on a Friday, you weren’t working hard enough!”
“The person who took the message left the post-it on her co-worker’s desk,” she continued. “But it wasn’t seen, the role didn’t get filled, and it made the company look bad. The business owner was furious on Monday, and a lot of passive aggression filled our tiny office of just five people.”
The fallout was intense. “The person who lost the message was demoted for a month, losing out on commission. The co-worker who missed the note quit shortly after. I didn’t last long either—it was a giant red flag about the emotional state of the business owner.”
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Decades ago, I was shopping at a toy store, looking for a Lego table. I found a flat Lego table box, picture of two kids sitting at the table (fully constructed). The label read, I s**t you not, “children not included” .
After the post-it ban, the company’s solution was to use a carbon copy phone message pad and still leave the note on the desk, but follow it up with an email, u/ribbediguana said. “Yet, there were no changes to the rule about getting tipsy with clients on a Friday!”
“And that was just the start,” she added. “The business owner also told us we needed to ‘look more expensive’—this coming from someone who constantly had food on her shirt and stockings around her ankles.”
One incident that prompted this change involved a recruiter wearing flat shoes to a client visit. “We were told we had to wear stilettos, suits, cufflinks, and jackets—even in 104-degree weather,” u/ribbediguana explained.
In the end, it seemed the boss was the common problem. “She was a mess,” u/ribbediguana summarized. “I’ve worked at three recruitment firms, and they all had the same type of women running the show. Let’s just say, I’m not a fan of recruitment anymore!
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The “no drinking allowed at work” rule at my job is because of me back when I was an alcoholic.
Before that it wasn’t an official rule because they just assumed everyone would realize it wasn’t allowed.
Got it written in the handbook and everything! I’m a bringer of change.
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As for u/seequelbeepwell, they don’t think it’s the rules themselves that are ridiculous, but rather when people knowingly ignore them. “For example, I ate expired salad dressing the other day,” they confessed. “I saw the expiration date and still ignored it. Let’s just say it was one of those bathroom moments that required a shower afterward.”
“On that note, I think my next post will be the opposite,” said u/seequelbeepwell. “What are some everyday goods and services that seem like they were created specifically for idiots?” We can’t wait to see what people come up with for that one!
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Where I used to work they sent round a company wide email (50 odd stores) banning carrier bags from the warehouse because someone slipped on one and broke their leg. She actually broke it because we were roller skating in the warehouse and put slipped on a bag in the accident book because we didn’t know what else to say.
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I used to work for a school district in the cafeteria. We got 10 days of PTO per year.
One year, a coworker decided that she was going to take an 8 day cruise the second to last week of the school year.
The following year? No taking time off except in medical emergencies the last month of school.
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You know those warnings on hand sanitizer that say “do not drink”?
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I am a photographer. One of my new event photography clients gave me a list of instructions that included “Do not photograph close-ups of our employees’s low cut shirts” and I wondered which photographer had done this previously. Yikes.
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We just had a mandate come down about our dress policy, we wear badge reels and because some idiot at one of the other hospitals had one that was inappropriate- instead of telling them to change it, they changed the policy that we can ONLY wear badges with the system name on it. Never mind that 99.9% of us wear cute, fun, and appropriate ones, we’re all punished because one dips**t displayed their dark humor where patients can see it. They should know the dark humor is for lockers outside of the public view LOL
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How overtime was bid for.
A coworker figured out a way to game the system so he could maximize the available overtime, leading to complaints that there was very little left over for others to sign up for. The rules were changed 4 or 5 times and each time he found a way around the rules. Eventually they just started skipping over every other of his OT requests and put in a maximum number of OT hours someone could work in a calendar month and boy did he cry about that for months that he wasn’t getting 20 hours a week of OT.
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Note: this post originally had 45 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
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