Manager bans employees from sitting on chairs while working, leading employees to constantly take “fatigue breaks” as issued by the handbook: ‘Chairs came back the next Monday’

Bar Mor Hazut • Lead Editor

Jun 2, 2026 7:15 AM EDT

Have you ever walked into a retail store and thought to yourself, "How dare these employees sit down while they work?"

Neither did we. We honestly don't care if the person scanning our items in the supermarket is standing or sitting down; it truly doesn't say anything about their work ethic or the business. Actually, the opposite is true. If we go into a store and there is no chair in sight behind the register, we will probably judge the business owner, who, without a doubt, is the one behind the lack of chairs.

Why are business owners or even managers so against letting their customer-facing employees sit down? What is it about sitting down that they deem unprofessional? Every other desk job comes with a chair, and surely the managers themselves allow themselves to sit during their own shifts, so why can't those who run the register sit down while they endlessly scan items?

When the employee shared their story in Reddit's r/MaliciousCompliance Subreddit, those who read the story asked themselves the same questions. But to the credit of the employees in the story, they were not willing to let their new manager get away with his "no chairs" rule. When this guy first came into the store, talking about "professional appearance" and his new rule of removing the stools from the registers, the employees knew they had to act.

So, they did the one thing employees should always do when a new rule is brought to action: they turned to the company handbook. There, there was a policy stating that employees can take short recovery breaks if they experience any physical fatigue that affects their performance or safety. Suddenly, any employee who stood in front of the register for longer than 15 minutes called for a fatigue break and wandered off to the break room. It wasn't long before this new phenomenon alerted HR, and the chairs returned to their rightful place…

via Drazen_

^{Cashier at the supermarket standing in front of the register, represented by a male model.}
Manager banned chairs during shifts so everyone started taking “fatigue breaks”

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via nomadsoulphotos

^{A woman cashier (model) sitting at a store counter, scanning an item.}
via kirradoodle
via Tychonoir
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