Stupidest rules your job has

[AFpheonix]

I think the wierdest policy we have in place at the moment is that we get dinged on our personal scorecards if we print ahead if we're slow for a moment. SInce I usually work swing, I print out the entire next day's worth of labels to fill for the overnight pharmacist, so my print ahead score is craptacular. (not that I ever get called on this, either, so I don't get the point)

What, we don't get to give ourselves a legup if we get slammed later? Wierdos.

[Ryu]

I just had to post todays Retail strip in this thread because it is dead on for so many cases.
http://cserver.king-online.com/content/Retail?date=--&referer=http://www.dailyink.com&uid=xvkv6o&token=9xwaze&size=larg e
Strip wont seem to let me post it directly so there is the link or if thats not working try http://www.dailyink.com/en-us/conten...feature=Retail while it's Sunday EST

[Rine]

I was just going to make this a post on it's own, but I think it fits better here.

Okay, so at my store, we usually have five closing cashiers that close about 20 registers.

Management as tried time and time again to enact the stupid policy that cashiers can only start closing their registers at 9 (when the store closes) and we have to do it in pairs. No one can be by themselves.

I am irked by this policy. There are five cashiers. We have to close 19 registers by ourselves and we can get it done very quick if we do each of our cashwraps by ourselves.

BUT, the reason I'm very very irked by this is it makes it seem that cashiers cannot be trusted. We are not the only people running registers in the store. On a usual weekday, there are at least thirty commissioned sales people working their own registers. They are allowed to close by themselves, BEFORE 9, and so they get to leave right on closing (unless they have a customer.)

Now, I don't mind closing our registers at 9, since that's when we are supposed to be closing, but why do cashiers have to do it pairs? Why don't the sales people have to do it in pairs? There are enough salespeople in each department to do it. I think I'm jealous, but I hate how management feels that we cashiers cannot be trusted and yet all their commissioned sales people can. Doesn't make sense.

[Becks]

At my last job, you had to give 24 hours notice if you needed a day off or you would get a write up. If you had to leave early for any reason, you got a write up. If you had three write ups in one year you where fired.

I asked them about emergencies and they told me it would still be a write up.

I'd like to know if they wrote themselves up if they had to leave early due to an emergency (or even an "emergency" like their youngest child caught a huge cricket and they just HAD to see it).

[Kyree]

At my work, we get one 20 minute break, which we have to punch out. No biggy. There's about 4 or 5 food places right around us, so it gives you enough time to grab a quick bite to eat, right? Wrong...they just passed a rule two days ago that says on our break we're not allowed to leave the building, even for a cigarette.

Also, in the deli (I work at a grocery store) It's Mandatory to wear a visor, but optional to wear a hairnet. That just seems a bit backwards to me.

[Ree]

At my work, we get one 20 minute break, which we have to punch out.
...they just passed a rule two days ago that says on our break we're not allowed to leave the building, even for a cigarette.

We have a rule that we aren't allowed to leave the premises if we are on a paid break. We get either a half hour break that we punch out for, or we get a 15 minute paid break, or both, depending on our hours.
They feel, if we are being paid for that break, we should be on the premises, but for the half hour break, we are free to leave.

[jnd4rusty]

At my job we also have 15 minute paid breaks and we are not allowed to leave the premises either. The reasoning behind it is this...if it gets busy while we are on break then the shift manager can call you off your break to help out. We still have to "clock out" but just on a guest check on the old time clock so we can keep track of the amount of time we have on the break. Works well if you are called back up then you know how much time you have left on your break. I rarely call anyone up from their breaks because I tend to overlap the breaks. I usually have six or seven to give per shift..so I will send one..if we aren't busy then I will send another but only if it has been at least five to seven minutes into the first persons break..then I will send the third in the same manner. I will send two or more at the same time if we are extremely slow and I need to start sending home the 11-8 crew in order to save my labor. We can leave the building if we smoke..since we have to smoke outside, but we can't sit in our cars even if it raining or snowing. That is kind of sucky but I understand the reasoning behind it..so I broke down and bought an umbrella to keep at work!! Now I won't get wet when I go for my smoke!

[ArenaBoy]

Some rules I forgot to add: You can't wear a hat with a different team's logo on it. For the NBA, I understand but when I'm wearing a hat of a soccer club from England then I'm going to question it. No food or drink in direct view of customers. Food, its perfectly fine but my mom's been sneaking food out to me, my coworkers and my supervisors. Its reasonable for food because customers get jealous and it is rude, but drinks is a total WTF. Its 96 degrees out, I'm roasting and I would like to have my drink within an arm's reach for me. If one of us passes out due to dehydration then you got a whole mess on your hands.

[Kelly Lynne]

At my work, we get one 20 minute break, which we have to punch out. No biggy. There's about 4 or 5 food places right around us, so it gives you enough time to grab a quick bite to eat, right? Wrong...they just passed a rule two days ago that says on our break we're not allowed to leave the building, even for a cigarette.

Don't know about your state/country, but if I recall PA labor laws correctly, any break for which you clock out, you have to be free to leave the building. I'm not finding it online, so I may be mistaken, but it is a law in Wisconsin. "If an employee is not free to leave the workplace, meal period is considered paid time."

Personally, I think it's extremely unreasonable to tell someone they can't leave the building on an unpaid break. If they need you so badly that you can't catch a breath of fresh air or go buy lunch for fear that you might need to be called back to work, the break should be paid. Unpaid time should be yours to do what you please with.

Edit: Looks like the same or similar laws in North Dakota, Washington, and Oregon as well. And in Kansas, breaks shorter than half an hour have to be paid breaks. http://www.workplacefairness.org/breaks_statelaws#PA

[ginlyn32]

I used to work at a couple of grocery stores.

What made me mad was they only inforced the rules to a select population of employees.

* No eating on the clock. One worker was caught red-handed stealing food out of the hot foods case, taking it into the walk-in cooler and eating it. She was sent home only to be hired back the next day. Why have a rule if it is not going to be inforced?

* No drink's in the food prep areas. But people always did and they never got yelled at except me.

* No food kept in the cooler that is not "supermarket's" food. I mean, you could not bring your own lunch and keep it in the walk-in. You either had to go home and eat or buy something or bring something non-perishable.

* Uniforms. I got yelled at for wearing a white jacket when the grill, bakery and meat dept. wears them. I had to buy a sweatshirt just so I wouldn't freeze in the winter. You could wear shorts/skorts but they had to be Knee length, navy blue, and female employees had to wear pantyhose. AND you could only wear them in the summer months. They had that policy for one summer and then stopped because a few girls decided to wear short-shorts. Why mgmt. didn't send them home to change is a mystery. (probably to check them out)

* a few "select" employees were allowed longer breaks. By select i mean brown-nosers. THey would say they were going on break and then proceed to walk around getting their food or talking to friends before even clocking out.

* if you finished your shift early, you had to clock out then. I mean, if you were scheduled to clock out at 10 pm but finished by 9:45, you HAD to clock out AT 9:45. You could not go get your stuff first or wait at the time-clock. If you were caught waiting, you would get wrote up. But only the "picks" got away with it.

You will notice a trend. If you were not "in" you did not count. You got all the cr@p jobs and cr@ppy hours. They would pick on you for any thing and every thing.

The stupidest thing that happend at the grocery store was I had a friend who worked in the grill. She and another friend went to a competitor to grocery shop ON THEIR OWN TIME!!! She got wrote up. She ran into a manager doing price checks. I told her I would have said "what I do on my own time is my own business and you cannot tell me where to shop" I told the manager that if the store would give us discounts then we would be more than happy to shop there.

[Buglady]

I worked in one store that forbade the female employees to wear shorts - unless we wore pantyhose with them. Ewwww!!

Skirts with bare legs were tolerated.

I still haven't figured that one out...

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

It seems like we have a lot of dumb or silly rules regarding uniforms by me as well:

1. -from time to time the managers go on "tuck-in crusades" where they become obsessive about employees tucking their shirts in.. Of course, the only people who can consistently keep their shirts tucked in are the managers. This will go on for about a week or so until the managers just forget about it.
2. -according to the uniform guidelines, the only acceptable shirts are the store-issued polo shirt or a white button-down shirt, but some people have started wearing white polo shirts and gotten away with it. Before this, the only approved shits were red t-shirts, polo shirts, or button-down shirts, which had to be a specific shade of red and have no lettering. We'd have people whose shirts ranged in color from dark pink to maroon, or have red shirts with lettering visible, and yet again nobody said anything.
3. -also, a rule came down that panst with cargo pockets are no longer allowed. So I got rid of all my cargo pants and bought new pants without the cargo pockets. But I still see lots of people wearing cargo pants and nobody says anything about it.
4. -one of the girls in apparel messed up her arm really bad and started coming in to work wearing those birkenstock-like clogs with no socks on, because it was hard for her to put on socks and normal shoes with her arm being messed up and in a sling. But for this she got a talking-to from management, because she supposedly broke two obscure rules: no wearing open-back shoes to work because they'll fly off your feet and get you hurt or something, and socks must be worn at all times. Funny how they enforce those rules while paying no attention to shirts or pants, which are far more visible.

It reminds me of the Dilbert cartoon where the casual-Friday rules come with an appendix of approved underwear. So many rules to follow, but it's anybody's guess which ones will be enforced.

[I_Hate_SCs]

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

More examples of "Target Brand":

1. Male employees have to tuck their shirts in at all times, but women don't have to since it would be a 'human resources' problem and gender discrimination if they were asked to tuck them in even by a female manager.
2. We cannot change watch batteries to watches not currently in our display case (even if we sold it to you and we don't carry it anymore), but we can change watch bands for ANY watch, purchased here or not. Talk about being set up for wars with persistant SCs!
3. The salesfloor MUST drop everything they are doing and help the cashiers out if the lines are long, but if the salesfloor is slammed and the cashiers aren't doing anything, they *cannot* go to the salesfloor and help us. They must stay at their register and stare into space, or have lengthy conversations about which clubs to go to/who they are dating with their co-workers.
4. We are forbidden from selling display items (i.e. furniture, baby items, etc.) for safety purposes, but once it becomes clearance it is fair game and can be sold, and safety isn't an issue.
5. As an employee, you can get in trouble on the job if your Target VISA card isn't paid on time, deliquent in any way, etc. while for the customers its just like any other card with late fees ... no on-job punishment.
6. You can be reprimanded by a manager if you write a bad check in Target and work there.
7. No television is allowed in the breakroom since it might 'offend' fellow co-workers with racy content that is broadcasted over the local network stations. Nevermind the 20 TVs we have in our electronics department showing music videos with sexual content & somewhat explicit (radio-safe) words in them.
8. Salesfloor employees are forbidden from wearing flipflops or (for women) shoes that show your feet in any way and isn't some sort of sneaker. Cashiers can wear any footwear they want since it isn't seen by the customers. It might be uncomfortable to wear these things, but the rules should be the same for everybody!
9. You must keep your receipt for anything on your person that we *might* sell at our store. Buy a pack of gum during your lunch break? Heaven help you if Loss Prevention catches you without your receipt!
10. Depending on management's mood for the day, we can hold items for customers overnight, and other days we can only hold until 10pm when we close. Of course the 10pm days are after you tell a customer we can hold it overnight and the manager steps in to say we don't do overnight holds anymore right in front of the customer, making a fool out of yourself.
11. Drinks cannot be on the sales floor while we're open, but the second we close, you can get all of the sodas you want from the vending machines and have them on the floor. Meanwhile the customers (and fitting room ladies) are seen all the time with sodas, etc. on the floor while we're open.
12. The heaviest boxes must be put on the top two shelves in the backroom, creating the most strain and pain for those who have to pull the items down (and put the back when the customer decides they don't want it). Of course the light items are on the bottom shelves which are easier to get to. Nevermind the fact that some shelves might be a little bit too top-heavy and could topple if someone fell off a ladder, etc.
13. We only allow 6 items at a time at the fitting room, but we cannot put a sign up to back us up since it would be deemed inoffensive to our customers.
14. You can only use your employee discount with Target VISA, giftcard, check or cash. No debit cards or regular credit cards, which everyone uses. Of course we cannot buy a giftcard with our credit card, etc. and then immediately use it to pay with our discount. Its a cruel way of limiting the instances where the employee discounts are used.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

1. Male employees have to tuck their shirts in at all times, but women don't have to since it would be a 'human resources' problem and gender discrimination if they were asked to tuck them in even by a female manager.

But it isn't gender discrimination to require all the men to tuck in their shirts while the females don't have to?

3. The salesfloor MUST drop everything they are doing and help the cashiers out if the lines are long, but if the salesfloor is slammed and the cashiers aren't doing anything, they *cannot* go to the salesfloor and help us. They must stay at their register and stare into space, or have lengthy conversations about which clubs to go to/who they are dating with their co-workers.

Same thing at my store. And then the managers have the chutzpah to whine that the floor looks messy when all the salesfloor people have been backup cashiering for much of their shift.

4. We are forbidden from selling display items (i.e. furniture, baby items, etc.) for safety purposes, but once it becomes clearance it is fair game and can be sold, and safety isn't an issue.

In Wisconsin state law says that displays of infant furniture cannot be sold for safety reasons. As for everything else, we can sell displays if they go on clearance and are the last one available.

5. As an employee, you can get in trouble on the job if your Target VISA card isn't paid on time, deliquent in any way, etc. while for the customers its just like any other card with late fees ... no on-job punishment.

Aren't there laws that prohibit creditors from telling your place of employment that you have delinquent debts? If so, the fact that the bank and the store happen to be under the same corporate umbrella shouldn't make it OK.

9. You must keep your receipt for anything on your person that we *might* sell at our store. Buy a pack of gum during your lunch break? Heaven help you if Loss Prevention catches you without your receipt!

That's also the policy at my store but it's never enofrced. Guess LP at my store doesn't operate on the assumption that the employees are robbing the store blind.

11. Drinks cannot be on the sales floor while we're open, but the second we close, you can get all of the sodas you want from the vending machines and have them on the floor. Meanwhile the customers (and fitting room ladies) are seen all the time with sodas, etc. on the floor while we're open.

Technically, that is the rule at my store, but overnight there's nobody to tell you you can't have drinks on the salesfloor. On truck nights I'm too busy to be carrying around a soda or bottled water, but if I'm setting ad on Saturday nights I sometimes take a bottle of soda along with me while I'm setting ad. One of the perks of working overnight I guess.

12. The heaviest boxes must be put on the top two shelves in the backroom, creating the most strain and pain for those who have to pull the items down (and put the back when the customer decides they don't want it). Of course the light items are on the bottom shelves which are easier to get to. Nevermind the fact that some shelves might be a little bit too top-heavy and could topple if someone fell off a ladder, etc.

I'd attribute that to sucky co-workers, and not necessarily any kind of corporate policy.

[Ryu]

But it isn't gender discrimination to require all the men to tuck in their shirts while the females don't have to?

Ah but you're forgetting the key fact. Gender discrimination can only occur against females, males cant be discriminated against because their males, just like they cant be victims.