'Three-day suspension if anyone sang Gwen Stefani's "Sweet Escape"': 30+ Foolish rules that schools and workplaces insisted on

Author image for Remy Millisky
Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Oct 13, 2023 3:00 PM EDT

Rules are in place for a reason. That's what administrators will tell you. But sometimes rules are created that end up antagonizing everybody. 

When I was in high school, there was an inordinate amount of fighting. It was commonplace to witness at least one or two student fights per day. Not a lunch period went by without a scuffle.

The school responded to this by implementing two rules. One was a zero tolerance policy, so if your bully hit you, the two of you would both get suspended, even if you literally didn't fight back. Their second measure was to ban hoodies. Their reasoning was that students could fight, steal, or cheat easier if their heads were concealed by hoods. This rule was the bane of everyone's existence, including teachers. 

We got around this rule by carrying hoodies, but not wearing them. Then, if we got cold at during gym period or in class, we'd put our arms into the hoodie without actually putting the hoodie on. As long as you weren't technically wearing it, this was allowed. I don't even think the rule did very much to stop fighting. It just made us all that much more chilly. 

Check out a bunch of really silly rules that never should have been implemented from the responses below. Then, while we're talking about school, this college student demanded her prof regrade her paper, but it didn't work out how she thought it would. 

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  • 01
    Clothing
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  • 02
    Hair - What is the dumbest rule your workplace or school has actually enforced?
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  • 03
    Font - Loopdedoop No cell phone shaped objects in your pockets at work. At first I thought it was a typo, then they started to write people up for wallets, packs of gum, and other rectangular shapes in our pockets. edit: I work at a laser tag arena, with a majority of the staff being cell phone obsessed teens. Too many of them taking advantage of loopholes caused management to come up with this stupid rule.
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  • 04
    Font - Sigfan When I was in high school, the principal enacted a "No Jerseys" policy because a big (6'6) junior started wearing a Shawn Kemp jersey regularly. The following day he wore the jersey and they had him take it off. Underneath was a black T-shirt with white iron-on letters saying "Don't Be A P". They had him turn that shirt inside out... which read "Now It's A Party, You ". The principal P had him put the jersey back on. After a long conversation with the kid's mom, the no jersey rule
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  • 05
    Font - puffandruffle My place of employment only lets staff drink water from small cups, and you must drink the whole cup immediately, then dispose of the cup. You are not allowed to have water bottles on shift, no matter which part of the store you are working in. If you are on break (unpaid time) you cannot purchase a bottle of water, even if you drink all of it and dispose of the bottle before you come back on shift. It's the stupidest set of rules I've ever come across
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  • 06
    Font - fishy512 If you want to prank the school, you have to tell the school and administration beforehand.
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  • 07
    Font - goodGirlgone Reddit. In my senior year of high school our principal made a rule in which we were not allowed to wear animal print of any kind because it was 'offensive'.
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  • 08
    Font - Syrithel No coats indoors. We are in Wales. It. Is. F Cold.
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  • 09
    Font - bm2boat I once worked for a bar where it was against the rules for you to talk to your friends whilst you were on shift.. It had its practical reasons, but if you spoke to customers too much the management would accuse you of wasting time with you friends.. It was the most anti-social bar to work in.
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  • 10
    Font - angelpuff My elementary school banned tag and red rover, and hanging upside down for more than 10 seconds. I complained to my mom about it and my mom scheduled for me to have a meeting with the principal alone to argue for our recess rights. I was really nervous because it was just me and the principal in a meeting room. The principal was really irritated during the meeting and kept cutting my arguments off because I was a fu ten year old and had a lisp and a shaky voice.
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  • 11
    Font - ladyarwenblack My high school had a really strict uniform - they made you buy specially made knee socks with the school's initials on them. They costs $6 a pair, and the elastic lasted for about a week. Then you got a detention if your socks sagged at your ankles. You also needed white tennis shoes with blue accents. My sister could only find white at the beginning of the year, and one of the teachers made her color in some of the lines on them with blue pen. Nuns, man.
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  • 12
    Font - Ollipup In middle school, I bought some pixie sticks and would eat them throughout the day. Eventually friends would ask me for them and I'd give them away. Soon, some other kids started buying pixie sticks and selling them for 5/25 cents. Suddenly a huge pixie stick black market started and kids were constantly haggling in the hallways for pixie sticks. Eventually the administration banned pixie sticks and if you were caught with a wrapper, you had an automatic detention. So
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  • 13
    Font - kids would have to sneak them into school or find creative ways to still get their fix (take the ink out of pens and put pixie sticks in the middle to pour out of the top). The Great Pixie Stick Prohibition of '02
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  • 14
    Font - adelie42 At my work there are signs on the printers that say the warranty will be void if the printer is turned off.
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  • 15
    Font - WovenCoathanger. At recess you weren't allowed to do nothing, and sit back with your friends and relax, and get away from the school day. You had to be doing something active that was approved by the district. If you didn't want to do any of these things you had to walk along a yellow line at the edge of the playground the whole time. If you weren't playing by the rules set by the school then you couldn't play.
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  • 16
    Font - Foursquare? You can bet you couldn't do anything we all agreed was fair. Tag? Not on the f blacktop you won't (this limited us to a third of the actual playground). Soccer? If there aren't four people of equal skill (decided on by the PE teacher) on each team you were not allowed to play. TL;DR: F your rules, kids just wanna have fun
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  • 17
    Font - littleithephi For awhile in my old middle school, we couldn't use mechanical pencils because they were a distraction....that lasted for about 3 weeks after everyone got in trouble everyday for having them
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  • 18
    Font - Praesil I work for the federal government. I don't think I can pick just one. Ok, I'll pick one. Normally, no alcohol is allowed, unless you get a security exemption for an event. We brought wine for a Christmas party, memo and all. We had left over wine, so we put it in the classified documents room, which was under lock and key with very limited access.
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  • 19
    Font - Security was doing random sweeps and found it in April. They were furious. We figured we'd just save it for the next party. No. It had to be consumed the same day or removed. They wanted to FINE someone for each day that it was in the building. The guy who brought it didn't even have access to the document room, but he took the blame. Then he retired the next week and security dropped it.
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  • 20
    Font - I've got way more... Want to slide a desk across the room? Can't. That is violating union rules, and taking work away from the facilities team. You have to call and schedule the movers. Then they charge you for it.
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  • 21
    Font - Batticon At my high school, they banned hugs between males and females for a while.
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  • 22
    Font - Relevated In middle school, they gave you little organizers called Agendas. You pretty much needed it for everything: School ID, Hall Passes, schedules, and homework. In 8th grade they decided that the word Agenda had some kind of vocabulary clash with middle schoolers... or some s like that. The main point is that they started calling them "Agenda Books". They were pretty serious about this new switch. If you ask a teacher to sign a pass in your AGENDA they'd completely ignore you until
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  • 23
    Font - BSMitchell Not at my job but my dad has a great story. At my dad's old construction job, they had one of those "x days since an accident" calendars. However, an accident was defined as in injury that caused an employee to miss work. One of my dad's co- wokers fell off the roof of the building and died. They didn't reset the calendar because he technically didn't miss any work.
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  • 24
    Font - spcwarmachine In the Army you are not allowed to walk on the grass. You can do PT on the grass, unpack your gear on the grass, but dear god whatever you do DONT walk on the grass...( I know it makes no d sense to me either)
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  • 25
    Font - Shadow FoxKC This is gonna be good. 1. All money made by students goes to the school administration for use in what they deem necessary. Now this sounds like it makes sense, yes? Here's where it goes wrong. The high school only ever spent money on one thing: a yearly paint job on the interior. Fundraiser money to fix the ten year old air conditioning unit, goes straight to the next paint job. Money for senior trip, pays for the new paint job.
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  • 26
    Font - Charity drive to repair a beloved teacher's home that's burnt down, new paint job for the school. Yes, the administration only cared about the school's paint. 2. All projects must be approved by the principal, vice principal, co-vice principal, dean of students, and the school's representative in the county school board (Is you not, my high school was like a mini embassy). Art teacher plans to take students to art museum, vice principal and dean approve,
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  • 27
    Font - Representative and principal decline, no trip. Gym teacher asks to repair the gym, decline. Same gym teacher offers to repair the gym, and use his own money, declined. 3. No wearing coats inside... even when we had a broken ac unit that never made it warm or cold. Caught with a coat on, or putting one on before going outside, detention. 4. You are only allowed two bathroom breaks all day, if you have to go more than twice, your grade gets lowered.
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  • 28
    Font - 5. If you are taking a test, you are not to leave your desk at all until your fellow students are done. Even if your breakfast is about to make a reappearance and be made public (throwing up). 6. No displays of affection, at all. That included looking another student in the eyes. Do this, that's one mark on your record.
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  • 29
    Font - 7. Female students and teachers are not allowed to talk back to a male teacher or administrator. Yes, if a female teacher tried to talk back to a male colleague, she'd get strike on her work performance too. 8. If you are offered a position higher than your current one, but you don't want that position, you have to take it. Let me clarify, the Dean of Students never wanted the position he's in, he just wanted to be a normal old English teacher, so when
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  • 30
    Font - the previous Dean quit, he was forced into the role. The alternative: if he didn't take the role, he'd be fired. He could, however, be dean for a year, and then toss it to someone else and go back to being an English teacher. 9. No talking aloud at lunch, only whispers. You talk louder than a whisper, off to the principal's office.
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  • 31
    Font - admiralkit Our company recently instituted a cost cutting measure that requires spouses who are eligible for insurance through their company to do so. Saves the company, what, $3k annually for some married employees? One of our IT guys complained vociferously about it because his wife's company had s ty insurance with a ridiculous deductible, and threatened to quit if they didn't allow his wife back on the policy. HR says they won't grant an exception for him, and his boss ended up giving
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  • 32
    Font - RamsesThe Pigeon Let me tell you about "The Board." Over the summer between my sophomore and junior years of college, I took a job in the mail-and-supply room of a large corporate law firm. It wasn't the most glamorous of positions, but it gave me enough money to pay the rent and even consider eating dinner once in awhile. Unfortunately, there was a system in place there which made even the simplest task seem like a blue-cheese- induced nightmare.
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  • 33
    Font - Near the front of the cramped office (which was already a labyrinth of half-height cubicles and clerical supplies), there was a large bulletin board, referred to as, rather appropriately, "The Board." It had been divided into a dozen or so sections, each emblazoned with the name of an employee. Whenever an assignment came in - whether it was a request for a ream of paper or a secretarial demand for more sticky notes - our manager would print it out, pin it to The Board, and return to his
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  • 34
    Font - minutes, which allegedly ensured that the entire building was constantly kept well-stocked and content. It seemed like a reasonable system, but there was a sinister web of intense competition and bureaucratic nonsense hiding beneath it. Each employee, as I discovered, had a secret quota to meet each day, measured by the number of completed assignments that they kept pinned to their section of The Board. If ever an individual felt that they were falling behind, they would often take to ste
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  • 35
    Font - whether those assignments had actually been completed or not. The manager was fully aware of the practice, and his means of curtailing it was to require that each notice be signed first by him, then by whoever had issued the assignment, and then by him again after the assignment was completed. So, to recap: The manager would put a notice on The Board. The employee to whom it was assigned would take that notice and bring it to the manager, who would sign it. The employee would then complet
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  • 36
    Font - were delivering to - and then return the notice to the manager, who would sign it again. With those three signatures now present on the piece of paper, the employee would reattach it to The Board, wait fifteen minutes, then return to The Board, both to check for new notices and to count their collection. In spite of all this, there was still no way of determining who had actually completed an assignment, since employees were forbidden from signing their own names on their notices. As such
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  • 37
    Font - When I asked the manager why he didn't just hand assignments directly to employees, he responded by telling me that they had tried it that way, but that it had been too complicated. TL;DR: Do not question The Board.
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  • 38
    Font - afizzol At my former job we weren't allowed to 'grow' facial hair. So we were allowed to either have no facial hair at all, or have a FULLY grown moustache. Our manager told us if we wanted to have a moustache, we would have to go on vacation, grow a stash, and come back from our vacation with a fully grown moustache. So on the next day we all showed up wearing fake moustashes.
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  • 39
    Font - Lineov Before my HS closed we were no longer allowed to say "Pecan Pie."
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  • 40
    Font - 311skeet311. One way staircases in high school. Detentions if you went up the down staircase and other way around.
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  • 41
    Font - STOVE_DAD In middle school we were threatened a 3 day suspension if anyone sang Gwen Stefanis Sweet Escape edit: It was only the chorus (WOOOOHOOO, YEEEHOOO)
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  • 42
    Font - vyleside Inactive bananas are the only legal type of banana. Let me explain. I used to work in a government department, and people used to keep snacks on their desk while working, because we're human. The employer implemented "lean working" so every desk had to be totally empty, except for select items that had to be arranged in a certain way (pens had to be to the upper left of the keyboard, I think).
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  • 43
    Font - This rule forbid food items, but allowed one "personal item." One staff member had a banana in a banana case as her personal item. She was told to put it away. She refused and took it further until it was ruled that because she wasn't eating it and the skin hadn't been broken, it was an "inactive banana" and thus a personal item. It only became active during the act of eating, at which point it became food. No other food had an inactive state. Only bananas.
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  • 44
    Font - aaronec In my current high school engineering class, we must write in pen, and we must write on graph paper, one letter to a box. It's doesn't seem so bad until you realize that a word like "engineering" would stretch halfway across the paper, and you have to budget your letters so you don't have to write in the margins.
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  • 45
    Font - Ladranix. At my highschool we weren't allowed to wear coats in class. This shouldn't have been an issue, except when the school was built it was open concept, and when they walled it off, some rooms had no heating/cooling and others had enough heating/cooling for the whole floor. In the winter the chemistry room was so cold you could see your breath and the biology room next door was so hot that anything more than a t-shirt left you feeling overheated. Vice versa in the summer, though to
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  • 46
    Font - mkgator23 Over 100 seniors at my high school jumped into the school pool today in the middle of the school day. They all got suspended. So basically, the entire senior class has a 3 day weekend now. Stupid on the part of the principal.
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  • 47
    Font - enzyte_bob From first to 8th grade, my school system, instead of using the common grading system of 0-100 (50 below is an f, 60-69 is a D... etc), had a system of grading based on the numbers 1- 4. The system was put into place so kids wouldn't feel bad about themselves if they did bad because 1 is better then 0. Overall, this absolutely scr ved up how kids see grading, getting a 2 was still failing and getting a 3 was comparable to a 60- 80. If you didn't get a 4 on anything, you were es
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