Quote :

"I think one of the biggest BS rule at any workplace is drug tests. Who cares what you do with your free time as long as you work hard, are intelligent, and don't steal from the company?"

while I agree... this thread is about to take a horrible turn if you start that debate up

6/17/2008 7:36:17 AM

As I've been unemployed for 7 months due to personal choice () I have only the following WTF rules to contribute from my old place of work.

1. No drinks on the sales floor or near the registers, even if you're stuck at a register and can't leave to take a break because they're understaffed. (Even if the drink has a cap or a lid and won't spill.)

2. No raises for employees that prove more useful than other employees. (This was more or less something that had put into place when I was leaving, as I found they wouldn't give numerous of my coworkers raises who were REALLY working harder than I was at that point and I was getting paid more than them as I was there before that "rule" was put into place.)

3. All returns (for my dept) have to have a "special form" filled out which shows the item UPC, item description, reason for returning the item, etc, and has to be signed by the employee that approved the return. If the item is open, a manager needs to sign off on this form too. In addition, if there is any problem at all with returning the item at the customer service desk up front (often happened because the people working there often didn't give a shit), the customer has to come back and take one of our department employees up to the front register to plead the case for the return for the item we just signed and probably got our manager to sign. Also, the salaried employee for our department wasn't able to sign off on returns or carry out returns at our register, though she was more than qualified to make those decisions.

4. Unless you work in the offices upstairs, you can't keep your coat on the coat rack (or drop your possessions in the closet space where these coats are located) in those offices. You must store your possessions in a locker downstairs, and if you want to hang up your coat it must be done in the unsecure and unmonitored time clock room (and there was theft from that place at least once while I was working there). If you need a place to sit your backpack, you can leave it behind the front desk but must keep in mind that they tend to lock up the administrative offices early about 10-20% of the time (so your backpack will get locked in if you have customers in your department when the store closes).

5. There was a whole slew of silly clothing restrictions, some of which were more of an arbitrary ban than anything else. On a hot day in the store you can't wear athletic shorts (length not considered).

6. There were rules on your posture which effectively amounted to "don't do anything besides stand straight up 100% of the time with your hands out of your pockets", which were widely disregarded because (without frequent breaks) you would wear out within 3 hours of showing up for work.

7. Department student employees were never given powers similar to what a floor assistant manager would have, but were given job duties that were often well into a department-level manager's duties. This includes adjusting pricing on items, putting together ideas for sales promotions, putting together signs for said promotions, training all new employees, and knowing everything about how the department works (). That actually kept the job interesting, but being paid <$10/hr to do work that should be done by a manager (and having no power to enforce some of the decisions you're being asked to make, lol) is rather annoying.

8. Not so much a rule as much as a WTF, there were all these restrictions on what we could and couldn't do with our limbs and things that were attached to us on the sales floor, but there were not proper safety procedures or practices in effect in the stockroom. No weight belts for heavy lifting (with many boxes that were over 40-50 pounds), stuff constantly left out in aisle ways by other employees (and no reprimand for it), repeated fire code violations (i.e. somebody got lazy and set a bin full of flammable materials under the breaker boxes in a marked off area), unsecured shelving systems (not bolted to the floor, sometimes there were racks on which items were hung which were not attached to anything which resulted in MASSIVE accidents that could have killed somebody but thankfully just damaged about a hundred bucks in merchandise), and poorly managed storage areas with pipes and metal assembly pieces for displays and shelves which were kept on top shelving areas where they were at risk of falling and causing head trauma (I saw this one myself and got the ladder and fixed it before somebody got bludgeoned).

So yeah, I'm rather glad I quit that place and I'm happy that I'm poor now. The place had problems too which manifested as coughing and sneezing in most employees after they had been working there for a certain amount of time. It's better than it was, but the store really needs to be moved to a bigger building in the next 3 years to meet its current size, storage, and retail requirements while the old building gets renovated and used for something else (like a freshman computer lab or something with a tutoring area, and the basement could be a nice place to get raped).

6/17/2008 7:53:01 AM

dang Mindstorm, brevity is the soul of wit!

and sawahash, what type of place do you work at??? are they disabled kids or something? holy shit I've never seen such germ paranoia outside a joenumbers post. Come on, it's fine for a kid to get sick once in a while. This is 2008, they're not gonna die.

6/17/2008 8:15:13 AM

^ yeah seriously, I'm on the opposite side of the spectrum on that. When our baby's pacifier falls on the floor, we just pick it up and put it back in. Ok, I'll wipe it on my shirt.. maybe. She'll play with our dog and he'll lick her hands, which she'll promptly put in her mouth, and dozens of other things that would make most Cary housewives cringe. It's a little gross, but i'm not worried about the germs. We don't even own a bottle of purell. fuck all that noise.

We *want* her immune system to develop so she's not some snot nosed teenager who's addicted to nasal spray and allergic to *everything*

Quote :

"Even though work can be done remotely from home you must come and work in the office."

that's my biggest pet peeve about my job.

6/17/2008 8:20:22 AM

ditto on the work from home thing

controlling old school managers who want to be able to see you at all times, even though they may walk down the hall for a "bed check" twice a week

6/17/2008 8:22:53 AM

^^ and all these "BEWARE GERMS" commercials don't help. Like the one with the germs in the toilet bowl, where your brush can't reach. WTF it's a goddamned toilet bowl - of course it's gonna have germs. You shit in it. As long as you don't also make soup in there then it's fine.

6/17/2008 8:23:06 AM

my job has a dont ask dont tell drug policy.

we also drink at work sometimes.

6/17/2008 8:51:23 AM

Quote :

"that's my biggest pet peeve about my job. "

yup. and i can understanding coming in say 2-3 days a week..maybe even 4. but shit, when i get up, have emails of something i need to get done like right then and start working before i've even had a shower at like 530-6am then come in "late" because I was doing work and they give me a hard time... now that's some bullshit

[Edited on June 17, 2008 at 8:54 AM. Reason : esp when i'm still here before 8]

6/17/2008 8:54:27 AM

I don't even know the rules here. I work in such a strange environment. It's mind boggling at times

6/17/2008 8:57:54 AM

Quote :

"my job has a dont ask dont tell drug policy. we also drink at work sometimes."

same here.

hell, i keep a bottle of bouron on my desk.

6/17/2008 9:05:49 AM

Bobby that just made my heart smile

6/17/2008 9:07:22 AM

Quote :

"We *want* her immune system to develop so she's not some snot nosed teenager who's addicted to nasal spray and allergic to *everything* "

overprotected kids FTL

Never develop independence or a tolerance for germs apparently

6/17/2008 9:12:43 AM

My job is pretty straight. The only thing I agree with is the working from home thing. Unless I have meetings or a specific reason to be in the office, I think I should be allowed to work from home. I get SO much more done, it's unbelievable. I'm a designer and work with other graphic/web designers, and while it's a fun environment with everyone joking around, listening to music, it's not the easiest place to concentrate and really focus on the task at hand (which can then be very annoying when you actually have a deadline).

6/17/2008 9:49:36 AM

My wife is a nanny for a couple of dingbats. They're such pussies that they're frightened by the thunderstorm in The Little Mermaid. The parents avoid any discussion of death, yet are Catholic... the very foundation of Christianity is Christ's death and resurrection, and a promise of life after death, you dumb shits!! How do you explain your religion to your kids if you won't talk about death? The 5-yr-old boy doesn't even know what guns are... when I was 5 I played with toy guns and GI Joes, and I didn't grow up to be a serial killer.

Jeez, back in the '80s I played outside, rode my bike up and down the street, put dirt in my mouth, and ate my own boogers. Nowadays I get sick maybe twice a year, and that's usually a mild cold. These little bastards today are going to grow up to be allergic to oxygen.

I rode in the front seat of a '76 Buick with no airbags or antilock brakes. I don't even remember having a car seat. I rode a bike with no helmet or pads and got scraped up a lot. And I wasn't driven around to 4 different activities every fucking day, I actually had independent play time. Today's children will grow up without any ability to gauge risk or entertain themselves.

As for workplace rules, I can't really complain. I do hate our weekly staff meetings, which always seem to start 2 minutes early, in a stuffy room with seating for 1/2 the staff so I wind up having to stand and sweat, and I couldn't care less about 90% of what is discussed. BTW, I'm writing this post at work right now, which gives you an idea of how much downtime I have. I could be telecommuting right now and spending this time watching TV or running errands.

^hey, I'm a designer too! Except our cubicle farm is very quiet and we're kind of isolated from each other, so I get my work done fast and wind up with 4-5 hours of downtime most days. I don't wear headphones because my back is to the cubicle "door" and I want to be able to hear people creeping up so I can hide my websurfing and appear busy.

[Edited on June 17, 2008 at 10:49 AM. Reason : ^]

6/17/2008 10:46:03 AM

My office is like a fucking toy store. we have a basketball hoop, golf, wiffle ball, and various other games that we kind of invent. The only real rule is that as long as you are hitting sales numbers, you can do whatever the fuck you want

6/17/2008 10:51:14 AM

Quote :

"And I wasn't driven around to 4 different activities every fucking day, I actually had independent play time. Today's children will grow up without any ability to gauge risk or entertain themselves. "

hahahahah I wholeheartedly agree. I was in the woods getting ticks and leeches, catching frogs and lizards and snakes.

but to contribute: some of the biosecurity measures we had to do were just nonsensical. One of which was putting boots on one side of the bench while sitting on it, then spinning on your ass to the other side without letting your feet touch the "dirty" side. Why they couldn't just be stored on the clean side is beyond me (if they are being used daily. These are rubber boots, not the plastic disposable booties).

6/17/2008 11:09:44 AM

Quote :

"dang Mindstorm, brevity is the soul of wit! "

And college engineering lab reports and senior design projects are the death of brevity.

I used to say stuff with less words, I swear.

I also worked at that place for 2.5 years and saw a lot of bad stuff happen there that required a bit of ranting on my part to get the idea across.

Maybe I'll post El Cliffo's Notes later on in here, haha.

6/17/2008 11:12:46 AM

I work in an off-campus building at another university, and it's in a sketchy area of town. One of our safety rules is: "Don't let the unknown go unnoticed." What does that even mean?

6/17/2008 11:23:25 AM

^^ the more i think about that place, the happier i am that i only worked there one semester

the only thing that made that job worthwhile were the people minions in that department

management had its collective head up its ass

[Edited on June 17, 2008 at 11:24 AM. Reason : 

6/17/2008 11:24:37 AM

i've gotten in "trouble" a couple of times for taking a lunch that's less than 1 hour

6/17/2008 11:25:30 AM

The only thing I can think of is that if we take and extra 15 minutes at lunch or whatever we're supposed to take 15 minutes of personal time.

6/17/2008 11:29:40 AM

not wearing your seatbelt is a terminable offense

6/17/2008 11:32:06 AM

Quote :

"My wife is a nanny for a couple of dingbats. They're such pussies that they're frightened by the thunderstorm in The Little Mermaid."

ha ha, I wonder how they'd react to Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. those pictures still creep me out

6/17/2008 11:39:09 AM

I did a nanny gig for a short period of time. Their mother was a psychotic bitch, which in turn rubbed off on the children.

My favorite quote from that woman, and I'll never forget it until the day I die:

"Children shouldn't be disciplined, they should be negotiated with."

I wonder if her kids are drug addicts by now.

6/17/2008 11:41:14 AM

shirt & shoes required

6/17/2008 11:44:44 AM

apparently I can't swear in the subject line of emails anymore

that was like my M.O.

6/17/2008 11:46:51 AM

I think regular (1 - 3 a year) non random drug tests are fine. It shows the company that either you don't use drugs, or you have enough self control go a couple of weeks without them.

6/17/2008 11:52:29 AM

The last place I worked that did drug tests, they would only do them in you had an accident in the lab. Kept them from wasting a lot of money on drug tests.

6/17/2008 11:53:36 AM

Quote :

"the more i think about that place, the happier i am that i only worked there one semester the only thing that made that job worthwhile were the people minions in that department management had its collective head up its ass"

Quite true! I'm glad I left when I did because I was running out of experienced coworkers when I left there. The worst part about that job was how they wouldn't fucking fire incompetent people. Better yet, when they wouldn't fire people that caused innumerable customer service issues.

I'm still waiting for that place to get burnt to the ground, lol.

6/17/2008 11:55:35 AM

I work at the YMCA.

We are also not allowed to have any disney/nick/goosebumps anything because they are all violent and can make kids cry.

6/17/2008 2:19:52 PM

^ Haha, I bet Harry Potter is banned too.

Why all the damn coddling of children nowadays? Lawsuits must have gotten out of control or something.

And frankly, I'd be pissed if somebody treated my kids as carefully as they treated the kids there. My kids can get their own lunch and sneeze all over each other all they need to. I don't need a bunch of dirt-phobic bubble children and wouldn't tolerate it anyway.

6/17/2008 2:27:05 PM

exactly. At the staff meeting I asked if the parents were going to supply the bubbles or us.

6/17/2008 2:29:19 PM

^ heh, I could see that comment going over well or like a lead balloon.

6/18/2008 1:00:16 AM

My program has a required seminar course where, afterwards, wine and buckets of beer are served for students and professors.

only rule: don't get drunk.

[Edited on June 18, 2008 at 1:30 AM. Reason : ]

6/18/2008 1:27:24 AM

1. Do not fuck up the airplanes.
2. Do not fuck up the airplanes.
3. Try not to crash computer when bored.

6/18/2008 4:32:16 PM