20+ Bosses whose petty rules backfired: 'Sorry, boss, as per your rules, we are off until 1 PM, no exceptions'

When your bosses start putting rules in place that make your work experience far worse, it might be time to freshen up that resume. Let's face it, no matter how easy your job might be, you still have to motivate yourself to get up in the morning and work for 8 or 10 hours. You'll be far more motivated when you hear announcements like, "We'll be having free lunches once per week," or "We'll be doing summer Fridays." 

While some companies like to reward their staffers for putting in a solid day's work, others treat their workers like children. They might start insisting on a time clock system that doesn't allow for anyone to be even a minute late. Or maybe some big head boss decides to start tracking everyone's lunch break down to the minute. This kind of micromanagement really rubs people the wrong way, and as you can read about below, it often costs the company big time. All those unintended consequences just start to pile up! 

Up next, read about some job quitters who couldn't wait to flee their toxic jobs, like one person who left and watched their former workplace crumble as "70% of their staff quit." 

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Author image for Remy Millisky Remy Millisky
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  • 01
    Rum_N_Napalm My old workplace had a control freak bean counter. At one point she decided that any purchase of équipement must comme with documentation showing that we had search around the internet and prove you got the best deal. Honestly it was unenforceable, so our supervisor just told us to ignore it and that he'll deal with the backlash.
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  • 02
    So one day, I had to buy some tools for the workshop, and I happen to come across a bunch of coolers on sale. It just happened that we needed coolers to transport stuff, so I bought one. I brought it back, we measured it and found it was the perfect size for what we had planned.
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  • 03
    Turns out that time the bean counter was watching us. She came strolling in my supervisor's office with a printout from Amazon and the boss in tow, saying that she had found a similar cooler for cheaper. My supervisor took a look at the printout. "So you found a cooler that's 2 dollars cheaper."
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  • 04
    "Yes!" "How much time did you spend looking this up?" "Just one hour of work" "And you think Rum should have spent one hour of his workday to shop for coolers?" "Yes!" "You do realize we pay Rum 17$ an hour? We need 3
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  • 05
    coolers. Right now he grabbed those cooler while out on a supply run. And you'd rather have him spent 1 hour of his day, at 17$ am hour... to save 6$? And while we're at it!" Supervisor pulls out a broken vice grip from under his desk. "... this is the Cheapo brand vice grip you approved.
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  • 06
    Now, this is fine for your regular at home needs, but we're a workshop and need some quality stuff. We been using a Goodstuff brand vice for 3 years. Cheapo lasted 6 month. Do the math"
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  • 07
    muthaclucker My boss started putting "all staff required to start 15 mins earlier than indicated" on the roster. I started keeping track of my unpaid overtime and stung her for 3 paid days off. That's not required anymore.
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  • 08
    IndyMazzy I was working as a medical assistant at a private practice medical clinic. Our clinic manager wouldn't allow the new receptionist to drive to the bank to deposit cash. Made her walk carrying the money bag so that she couldn't "drive away with the money."
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  • 09
    Bizarre. I know. That went on for a few weeks. Then the receptionist was mugged and over $1000 in cash was stolen. She was allowed to drive after that.
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  • 10
    7
    via Getty Images For Unsplash+
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  • 11
    Salsa_Stark Not mine, but an old roommate of mine was a senior developer for a small company. It was an open secret that one of the other senior devs, a guy who had been there since the beginning, would sometimes spend time looking at plastic surgery photos-- before/after shots, photos of active procedures, etc. He did it enough that people
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  • 12
    would poke fun at him about it, but he didn't seem embarrassed about it, and it wasn't harming anyone. Well, one day a project manager said something to the CEO about this guy's ongoing plastic surgery obsession, and the CEO flipped. He said that, going forward, no one was allowed to use their work computers to access external websites AT ALL.
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  • 13
    Anyone who's ever been a developer knows that half the job is googling stuff, so this policy pretty much halted productivity in its tracks. It only lasted a day before the CEO retracted the rule, but let everyone know that their browser history would be monitored going forward. After that, no
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  • 14
    one really changed their behavior, they just started remotely accessing their home computers to browse instead.
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  • 15
    Cheezburger Image 10508581888
    via Brooke Cagle For Unsplash+

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

  • 16
    LG... I worked on this company that had mandatory 1 hour lunch breaks. Since we ate on the premises, our lunch break was often 15 minutes or so. We tried negotiating having shorter lunch breaks so we could leave earlier and beat traffic. Next day an e-mail was sent from the own stating the fixed work and break hours for the whole team, and they were
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  • 17
    to be followed no exceptions. Cool! Next week, a big client called about half way through our lunch, and nobody moved. It rang and rang until said owner took the call, talked to them, and immediately came to scold us. "Sorry, boss, as per your rules, we are off until 1PM, no exceptions".
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  • 18
    A couple of weeks later, we did some work on site for the same client. They were, to be honest, one of the coolest clients I ever had in my life. They took us out to lunch, and while talking we ended up relaying the owner's rule. They had a big chuckle over it, and while the project lasted, they made a point to always call while we were at lunch break just to annoy owner.
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  • 19
    alphager I worked for a consulting company, traveling monday- thursday somewhere in my country. We had a pretty good hotel allowance (enough for 5 star hotels) and a great rule: if you stayed with a friend, you got an allowance (about a third of the hotel allowance) to buy gifts for the host.
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  • 20
    I got the rare treat of a 6- month project in the town of my best friend from childhood was going to university. We made a great arrangement: I would crash at his place and spend the evenings drinking beer, watching movies and play videogames. In return, I used the gift allowance to order dinner for the two of us.
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  • 21
    After submitting my first expense report, I was told by some HR drone that the gift allowance was supposed to be used seldomly and not for food for myself. So I booked a room in a five star hotel, was upgraded to a junior suite because of my rewards status and invited my friend to evenings of beer, video games and room service.
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  • 22
    After my second expense report, the project manager asked me about the tripling of the expenses compared to the first report. After explaining the situation and pointing out what sum of money it would mean over the 6 months, he got in contact with HR...
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  • 23
    Two days later, the rule was recinded. The project even got my friend (the then newly released) PS3 as a thank you for letting me stay with him.
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  • 24
    yunglilbigslimhomie I worked at Starbucks for like 5+ years before and during undergrad and at one point our district manager thought it was a good idea to implement a "just say yes" policy, where we literally weren't allowed to tell the customer no. Lasted for about 3 months and in that three months our unaccounted product and waste went up over 300%
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  • 25
    because when the POS didn't have a way to punch in a customer request we had to just do it anyways. We also got complaints from stores in surrounding districts because they had angry customers who were requesting things that were against local food service code, and told them that we did it for them at our store. I
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  • 26
    knew exactly how that policy was going to play out and I just laughed every time management was freaking out about the problems it was causing.
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  • 27
    geoffbowman A boss was worried we were "stealing time" by using the bathroom for too long. So being the nutjob he is he locked all the bathrooms in the building except the ones he could see from his office door, shut of water to them, put out of order signs on them, and he would sit there with a stopwatch timing us between walking into the restroom and walking out
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  • 28
    (these are all one-at-a-time restrooms) and then would call out the time. This was STUPID over the top and almost positive is illegal but he never made a policy officially restricting bathroom time... he just wanted to make everyone feel uncomfortable if they took too long. I discovered that with my height it was really easy to go through the drop ceiling.
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  • 29
    and over the half wall and I was the only other person using the men's besides my boss, who is short... so I went in... locked it from the inside and did my business. and climbed out the ceiling leaving the door locked so my boss could not get into. the bathroom when he needed to go and was forced to use the ladies...
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  • 30
    which led to our female employees complaining that he was taking too long in their bathroom. To this day I don't know if he ever figured out how I was doing that.
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  • 31
    FrosnPls The bottom floor of my secondary school was a square that had corridor all the way around. After some incident where a kid got knocked over, they implemented a one-way system. Unfortunately, they were Very Strict on enforcing it. If you accidentally walked past
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  • 32
    your class, you couldn't just turn around. They seemed very proud of their new rule... until everyone started showing up late for class because they had to do extra laps of the bottom floor.
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  • 33
    13ane In Las Vegas the fire departments had a policy that if someone called out and you covered their shift, you get paid overtime. Eventually ever firefighter at every department was trading shifts so that they were always making overtime. Went on unnoticed
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  • 34
    for over a year. It was a HUGE scandal and the ones in charge who let it go on and effectively cost the city. millions had the book thrown at them hard.
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  • 35
    Inari Noroi Every shift, there's a quota we need to fulfil. And then, even if you do fulfil it, you have to keep working until your 8 hours are up. Cue everyone speeding for 4 hours, having a 3-hour lunch/coffee break, then slowly moving their a for
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  • 36
    an hour. No rule about us taking necessary breaks if we're still capable of reaching the quota. Now we're allowed to stop once we're done.
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  • 37
    How DolGetToFace... Not sure if this applies, but I worked at a restaurant that started doing Thursday Night Trivia in hopes of more traffic. The prize for the winner was their ticket would get comped. One guy asked to have everyone (in the restaurant)'s food put on his ticket... And then won. They stopped doing trivia night.
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  • 38
    Gmizavec Back in 2011, a company I worked for had the bright idea to block all social networks because, you know, employees should work instead of slacking off on Facebook. I could write volumes of books on the toxic culture in that place, but the Owner/President who lived in a different country and
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  • 39
    visited about once every few months was universally feared by everyone and a few days before his arrival the whole building went into panic mode. So a few weeks after the social network ban, his royal highness shows up, and 5. minutes later half of IT department is scrambling to his office. Apparently there was an issue with the Wifi, or at least that's what he
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  • 40
    figured since he couldn't log onto Facebook. It was fixed in seconds. A few years and three promotions later, I make a joke about it with him. Instead of a laugh, I get a confused look. Turns out he still thinks it was "some internet problem" since
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  • 41
    whoever decided to ban social networks didn't have the b to tell him about it after the incident.
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  • 42
    scurvy_knave I am the one who lives closest to work, so if the building alarm goes off overnight, I'm first on the list to get the call from the alarm company. It used to be that if we had good reason to believe the alarm was not an actual break in we could tell them not to summon the police and ignore the alarm. (I can access the building cameras
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  • 43
    from home. The most common alarm was the cleaning crew who were always messing up the disarming.) Then a sister site ignored an alarm that turned out to be an actual break-in, and the facilities director decided that no matter what, if there was an alarm we should have the alarm company summon the police, then go to the building, get the
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  • 44
    police all clear, and re-set the alarm. This was a pain in the a but rare enough and I lived literally 2 minutes away. Then we contracted for the alarm company to come in and replace all of our panels and sensors. It was a nightmare process that ultimately ended up taking months, and the whole time there were phantom alarms, sometimes multiple times a
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  • 45
    night. Each time I had to go out in the middle of the night, I'd prepare the required report, send it to the facilities director, and request to go back to the old process. Each time he said no, we couldn't afford to miss a potential real break-in.
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  • 46
    After about three weeks of this nonsense, I was due for some time off. I was going out of town, and the protocol for that was for me to ignore calls from the alarm company so they moved to the next person on the list... which happened to be the facilities director.
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  • 47
    In the five days I was off, I must have ignored at least four overnight calls that all would have gone to him next. Then suddenly, nothing. When I got back I was informed that for the duration of the alarm update, we just weren't going to arm the building at all. So much for "can't afford to risk a break in!"
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  • 48
    qpgmr Required every employee to use electronic timeclocks to punch in/out for work including lunch. Punching in late or leaving early would cause your pay to be docked and getting a discipline letter. Multiple people wanted to sabotage the clocks (cut the cords, etc) but wiser heads prevailed...
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  • 49
    Everyone arrive several minutes early and left late, every single day, to avoid getting into trouble. Unfortunately, this created unimpeachable evidence of hours worked. The employer had to pay out thousands of dollars in overtime the first month.
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  • 50
    The clocks disappeared exactly five weeks after they were installed with no notification.
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  • 51
    [deleted] Back in 2014 our HR made a rule people couldn't go to other buildings. We had 3 buildings within a block of each other. All 3 had shipping areas and the warehouse employees had to go to each building to work. We were told to stay at one building. I mentioned we ship out of all 3 who is going
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  • 52
    to do the work? The genius said oh it'll be taken care of. Next day $500k shipment didn't go out. The following day we have a meeting. Why didn't you ship this? Uh, 2 days ago we were told to stay in our building and someone would take care of it. The rule was quickly changed.
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  • 53
    FarmerExternal The grocery store I work at is now required to charge 5 cents for plastic bags. Because of this we have a lot of customers requesting paper bags. Since our paper bags ska we typically double bag so they don't rip. Well one day the store manager sees a cashier doubling paper bags and yells at them because paper bags are more expensive
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  • 54
    and we can't afford to double bag them, so now we have a new rule you can't double paper bags unless they're really heavy. Fast forward a couple weeks, and my bagger is using single paper bags. Right as the store manager walks by the bagger picks up one of the bags that wasn't even that heavy and it rips right open, right in front of the manager.
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  • 55
    We're allowed to double bag them now
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  • 56
    [de... Not really a "rule," but a change in policy. I used to work for a major beer distributor as a delivery driver. They decided to start using less glue in the packaging to save money.
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  • 57
    We're talking a few cents per package. As a result, breakage during distribution increased drastically causing them to eat a lot more damaged product. It caused such a large loss in profit that they quickly changed course.
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  • 58
    FRAGILE FRAGILE 13
    via Getty Images For Unsplash+

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

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  • 59
    BodhiBill this one is great. we had a no dating at work rule then the director started seeing someone and other people had their hidden relationships as well. that rule was nullified when the
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  • 60
    director announced his engagement and so about 6 other couples came out. we no longer have that rule, however people are to let the admin know of relationships now.
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  • 61
    kor_hookmaster When CO ID started our boss demanded that our entire team sit in on group zoom calls, even if the topics on the agenda didn't have anything to do with their roles. She felt it would build team unity. Productivity dropped, negative Google reviews. came in, staff became more stressed.
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  • 62
    When she demanded answers on the next zoom call one of my co-workers bluntly said "well, I would reply to this woman's voice mail, but I'm stuck on this zoom call".
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  • 63
    Sna... Boss bitched and complained that we all (welders and millwrights) took lunch and breaks whenever we felt like it (actually just when we got the chance) and implemented a rule that if you didnt take your break/lunch at the right time you didnt get them. Myself and another welder got sent to do a repair that was about
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  • 64
    a 2 hour drive from the shop first thing in the morning, boss said it was going to be a quick fix so we didnt bring our lunches. We needed the machine running ASAP because it was costing a quarter of a million an hour for down time. Turns out his quick fix was a pretty major welding job, and required us to completely rebuild a motor mount. The operator knew this and had told the
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  • 65
    boss that was when needed to be done. Well guess what boss man, if you just let us take our lunches and breaks when we wanted or had at least told us what the actual job was we wouldnt have driven 2 hours to the job, done 1 hour of work, driven another 2 hours back to the shop, ate lunch at noon like we were supposed to, and then driven 2 hours back to the job to finish it.
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  • 66
    TLDR: Bosses power trip cost over $1,000,000 in a single day so that we could eat our lunches on time.
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