Stupidest rules your job has

[Horsetuna]

No, sadly. We can't have items like that on the tables.

They found my thimble today. my fingers ache so much. I wonder if my benefits will cover the strain

[Canarr]

That sucks, HorseTuna; how about wearing gloves? Will they let you wear a pair of thin white gloves? There's hardly anything less "tacky".

[Horsetuna]

Nope.

OH yeah, new reason for no rubber thimble: They mark the cards.

Guh. I'm very sure they WONT mark the cards any more than the puss from my bleeding, blistering fingers will at this rate.

[Lace Neil Singer]

<snip>One time they introduced a rule that the tills could only be opened 4 times a day on a "no sale". You had to do at do at least 2 "no sales" a day to cash up your till in the morning and de-cash it at the end of the day.<snip>So, instead of doing no sales we were instructed to leave our tills open after serving a customer<snip>

My supermarket did something similar to that; they made it so that the till wouldn't open unless a customer paid with cash and we weren't allowed to use the no-sale to open it. That meant that we were forced to store the eft slips outside the till and the petrol vouchers too. Resulting in pissed off customers saying "Why are you putting my card details on public display?" and large amounts of petrol vouchers being stolen. Eventually, the idiots upstairs removed their heads from their arses and put the tills back how they were before.

[Lulu]

It's always been "law" at work that we MUST turn the till off before we walk away from the counter. Now, I could understand this were it not for the fact that the till is set into the desk and surrounded by plastic protection screens. Even IF the customer knew what combo of buttons to press to get the thing open, they'd have to do it contorting themselves over the counter to manage it and would therefore make themselves not only thoroughly visible to any staff on the shop floor but also slow themselves up enough to make the attempted theft totally pointless.

To prove my point, I stood on the customers side of the counter once and attempted to get the till open to show my manager how ridiculous it was, she still holds firm. Least I tried eh!

[Rapscallion]

4. Male employees are not allowed to have hair an unatural color or longer than two inches. (Ha!)

Hmm - says nothing about beards, does it?

Heh.

Rapscallion

[tonydanza]

We have to give coupons to people that don't have. This leads to SOOOO many people taking advantage of the system byt saying "I forgot my coupon" every time they enter the store, even when there is no coupon. They ask just to make sure.

[MystyGlyttyr]

No more muttering about "the Dark Phoenix prophecy" anytime people bring in church news.

And no proclaiming Hulk Hogan to be the anti-Christ at ANY time. Not even if there is "proof" this time.

...well, I think it's stupid...

[Imogene]

We, the part timers, could NOT have drinks on the floor, ever, when old SM worked at Chesterfield. However, if you were the SM, hell yes, you could have a travel glass of tea on the floor at all times!

Stupid waste of money for the company?
How about overnighting us boxes (big enough to hold 24 movies) with one farging movie in it? When we didn't even release the movie for three weeks?

Or? How about the idiot in management who set up a deal with our candy distributor that, whenever we sold a single candy item, we'd get a whole new box of that candy to stock? Which lead to a huge backstock of candy, most of which we had to throw away a year later when nobody was buying that candy except for that _one_ person who bought it, tried it, and hated it?

[KayEm]

Fred Meyer is so full of stupid (not to mention cruel and unusual) rules I could fill a book.

Just a few:

We're not allowed to have beverage cups behind the counter. EVERYONE knows that staying well hydrated is important..everybody that is except apparently corporate and management. You're only allowed to if you have a doctors note. So only a doctor is qualified to tell you that you need to drink a lot of water ? Great, not only is this a stupid rule, but it insults my intelligence and is a dangerous one to boot.

We're not allowed to eat for free, despite the fact that we throw TONS of food away at the end of the day and there a lot of poor hungry employees at this store. Stupid AND cruel.

We have to wear butt-ugly hairnets in the deli and bakery. Why ? There's no state law about it. There isn't a restaurant or fast food place in the state that makes you wear hear nets so why do we have to ? Their ugly and seriously affect your self-esteem with regards to appearance.

Here's one of the biggest ones that just HAS to be the dumbest. Even management doesn't have an answer for it. We're not allowed to keep purses or personal items in our departments because of so-called cross-contamination. In other words, what we bring in from the outside may kill the towns population off. Uh. Huh. But the question IS, if that's the case aren't we potentially contaminated when we wear our uniforms in to work off the street ???? Hellllooooo !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I asked management about this once and all I got is a blank look.

I seriously don't think management is capable of thinking for themselves.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

We're not allowed to have beverage cups behind the counter. EVERYONE knows that staying well hydrated is important..everybody that is except apparently corporate and management. You're only allowed to if you have a doctors note. So only a doctor is qualified to tell you that you need to drink a lot of water ? Great, not only is this a stupid rule, but it insults my intelligence and is a dangerous one to boot.

That is the rule at my store too. We have a water cooler in the backroom for the backroom teammates and the floor people if they want to stop in. Cashiers can get a quick drink if they have nobody in line. It really isn't a huge issue at my store.

We're not allowed to eat for free, despite the fact that we throw TONS of food away at the end of the day and there a lot of poor hungry employees at this store. Stupid AND cruel.

Again, same rule at my store. Defective food products have to be logged and claimed correctly and then thrown away. Eating from them is considered stealing. Somehow I fail to see how forbidding somebody to have a piece of candy out of a ripped open bag is cruel. In general, you are not allowed to consume products unless you pay for them first.

We have to wear butt-ugly hairnets in the deli and bakery. Why ? There's no state law about it. There isn't a restaurant or fast food place in the state that makes you wear hear nets so why do we have to ? Their ugly and seriously affect your self-esteem with regards to appearance.

Most likely that is for sanitation. Would you want to eat meat or bakery products that have hairs all over them?

Here's one of the biggest ones that just HAS to be the dumbest. Even management doesn't have an answer for it. We're not allowed to keep purses or personal items in our departments because of so-called cross-contamination. In other words, what we bring in from the outside may kill the towns population off. Uh. Huh. But the question IS, if that's the case aren't we potentially contaminated when we wear our uniforms in to work off the street ???? Hellllooooo !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I asked management about this once and all I got is a blank look.

That cannot be the real reason. I bet the real reason has to do with employee theft. At my store, the backroom people used to be allowed to keep their jackets in the backroom so they could put them on when doing carryouts, but that was forbidden after we had a rash of employee theft by backroom people. Again, I don't think this rule is stupid, but I do wonder why your managers won't come out and say this.

[KayEm]

Irving, first as to the cruel issue. Yes, I consider it cruel to throw away tons of food that the employees or the homeless could be eating. In fact, I think to waste food this way should be a crime.

As to the hairnet issue...why are we the only business in town to have to use them if the potential for getting hair in the food is an issue.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Irving, first as to the cruel issue. Yes, I consider it cruel to throw away tons of food that the employees or the homeless could be eating. In fact, I think to waste food this way should be a crime.

As to the hairnet issue...why are we the only business in town to have to use them if the potential for getting hair in the food is an issue.

I don't consider it cruel. How do you know the food is any good if the package is ripped open? Plus you want to avoid situations of people cutting open packages just so they can eat the contents and claim the package as defective. You don't know exactly why all that food gets tossed.

As for the hairnets, maybe it's because your store wants to be cleaner than anyplace else.

[childofsolitude]

This one isn't really stupid but it annoys the hell out of me. When we're on our breaks and we either need to go shopping or just want to hang out with other coworkers on the floor (who are on their breaks as well obviously), we can't have any non-Target items with us. That means that we can't drink or eat anything that didn't come from Food Avenue or has the Target brand on it (Market Pantry). When a bunch of us asked why, the manager said that "it's not Target brand". So even though we're on our lunch breaks (which are unpaid), we have to act as though we're still on the clock by not eating whatever the hell we want to eat.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

...When we're on our breaks and we either need to go shopping or just want to hang out with other coworkers on the floor (who are on their breaks as well obviously), we can't have any non-Target items with us.

Ahh yes, "Target brand", which is whatever the managers say it is.

They could say it's "Target brand" to wear your underwear outside your pants, and people would do it.

So this means you can't bring in a lunch from home to eat on your break?