Hey Pandas, What's The Worst Rule You've Seen Someone Actually Try To Enforce? (Closed)

I'm 29M with a desk job. I have long hair but no one seems to think it's a big deal and I take care of them daily, so no hygienic concerns either. Until one day a manager wanted a power fix.
Manager : "you'll have to cut your hair"
Me : "why ? Are there safety concerns ? because women in the team don't have to cut them"
Manager : "You know, it's for the client"
Me : "okay, just send me an email asking me to do it and i'll do it"

Didn't get an other complain, I guess he was smart enought to understand wrinting it down would be a solid proof for an harassment lawsuit.

Some schools in Japan( mostly private JH and high schools) would make students with different hair color to dye their hair black, as this is the only real Japanese hair color, and they shouldn’t differ from the majority. Things are changing now, but it still takes time.

Our school tried to enfore not carrying more than one pencil, then made us buy new ones from them. Saying it was a "safety hazard." Still bugs me to this day.

Huge theme restaurant I waited tables at (would wait on over 100 customers during a shift) didn't allow trays to be used except for those small trays for serving drinks. Well one server who was there waaaaaaaay too long and did the schedules felt that beverage trays should be eliminated too so they removed them. This was a HUGE pain in the a*s because you could only carry maybe 4 beverages without a tray versus being able to carry a bunch at once, so you always had to ask someone to follow you with the drinks you couldn't carry.

Well one server (who hated this head server like the rest of us) decided to comply by always asking this particular server to follow him whenever he needed help with the rest of the drinks that he couldn't carry himself, even going so far as to walk to the other end of the restaurant if this other server was stationed there. This started to catch on with the rest of us and we would go out of our way to ask her to help us carry our drinks out.

About a month later we noticed the drink trays miraculously re-appear back in the side-stations and nothing was ever mentioned again about the rule after that.

My school implemented a "one way" rule in the hallways. The problem is, each grade level is on their own sort of loop, with bathrooms and closets in the middle. So, if you have two classes next to each other, you will get yelled at by a woman who's job is to harrass you about why you have no life plans if you don't walk all the way around.

They also closed the 2nd-3rd floor segment of one of the staircases, so now everybody coming and going from the 3rd floor has to use one staircase, in addition to the people using that staircase because it's closer.

We live in fear of the fire marshal.

during an emergency, dont take your backpack or your phone and dont contact anyone.

B*TCH DO YOU WANT US TO DIE WITHOUT NYONE KNOWING.

worked in the district attorney's office where the dress code for women when going to court was a dress or suit with stockings, of course. also expected to wear make up. the one rule that really got to me was the mandatory need to wear stockings. the place where i worked was basically the lower 40 of hell because the temps averaged high 90s with weeks sometimes into the triple digits. i went to work bare legged a couple of times and the office manager told me that it was unacceptable. i got along very well with the d.a. and after getting reprimanded a second time i went to his office. he asked me what he could do for me and i told him that he needed to either give me and all the other ladies a raise or amend our current health insurance to include some over the counter treatments. he asked me what specifically we needed and i, with a straight face, told him monistat vaginal cream for yeast infections. he asked me if i was serious and what brought this to my mind. i then told him that wearing pantyhose in temperatures over 90 degrees was like having a jungle in your shorts and it really did cause infections - something that he didn't know about. i also told him that if he had any cross dressing men in the office they would be complaining, too. i could get away with this because, as i stated, we got along and i was known for having sarcastic humor as well as being outspoken. the next day he came into my office and told me that he had talked to his wife and she confirmed what i had told him. shortly after, the code was amended to allow the ladies to go bare legged during the warmer weather. mission accomplished. for being in what is perceived as a very conservative environment i was fortunate to have superiors that allowed me to be myself.

Customer is always right rule. It needs to go.

Girls can't wear short shorts, tank tops with spaghetti straps, shorter dresses, and all pants have to be longer than the length of your middle finger with your arms at your side. All because the dumb boys can't focus on the teacher if girls wear other stuff.

no pets in the room during zoom classes

i'm quite literally in my own house, my dog can be wherever he wants to be.

My mum made a rule, "no reaching across people or across the table", at meal times. Then she made a rule "no asking for things to be passed". You want the salt, ketchup, butter, water? You have to wait silently for someone else to notice and pass it towards you. I'm not sure it would have worked even with adults, but this was 5 children, between 3 and 11 years old. No one passed anyone anything. I got told off for not eating my dinner, then I got yelled at and told to leave the table for blaming her "stupid rule". I was 10, aggrieved, and hangry. I refused to leave the table without dinner, and shared my belief that I shouldn't be punished because she made up rules that were stupid and wouldn't work.
It ended about as well as you might expect.

My elementary school had a rule along the lines of "if you see something bad happening and don't say something you also get in trouble". One time there was a massive brawl on the playground at recess and I saw some other kids run to get the teachers so I just kept chatting and trading Pokemon cards with my friend. Friend and I got called to the principal's office after recess and were given detention because we didn't also go get the teachers. My parents didn't care (they thought the rule was bull and I wasn't in trouble with them) but my friend's parents got so mad that their daughter's previously perfect record was tainted, they went absolutely nuclear and I think they threatened to get their lawyers. Pretty sure they lightened up on that rule afterwards and they removed the detention from our records.

My old carer tried to make it so I only had an hour of a social life per day. It was like she didn’t want me to have friends. I ended up confiding in them instead of her. I’m out of that placement now and I’ve been moved somewhere else.

In grade five, a teacher tried to force all students to write using wooden pencil and she completely prohibited mechanical pencils. She used to even submit those pencils and scold some students. I still don't get the point of it.

Also, in music class, the teacher once implemented a rule that you can't touch an instrument if you don't know how to use it. Then what is the purpose of the class?

I had a teacher get upset with me for wearing a hat outside on campus....as he was also wearing one...

Most traditional rules parents maintain. Particularly ones that silence children, which just creates emotional distance and prevents them from speaking up if something is wrong.
Then there's sharing. Teaching children that they must share everything is counterproductive in the long run. Same with forcing bugs or physical affection. They just have to unlearn that behavior or wind up being overly accommodating and getting taken advantage of as adults. It's more important to teach them to set and respect boundaries. With my son, I found parenting way easier and more rewarding when I released the millions of arbitrary rules I grew up walking on eggshells around and just focused on teaching how to be a happy, healthy, and safe person in this intense and crazy world I summoned him into. As a result I have a well liked well adjusted kid who has a million times the confidence I could even dream of having, particularly back in middle school!

They started charging us for a lot more thing at school. You need a pad? A dollar. Tampon? A dollar. You want to buy breakfast (which is usually just a stale muffin or kolache or a tiny thing of cereal with a milk and a juice)? Yeah that'll be $3.50. I don't know, just feels wrong to charge students for food and resources.

If there is an emergency at my school, such as a school shooter or legit fire, we have to put our phones away. Turn them on silent, and tell our parents to check the FCKIN school website. Like lmao who da fck would listen to that? Not me, I’m calling my parents and booting up and leaving as fast as possible.

i got scolded for bringing my back pack into class. even when it was used to carry heavy books and pencils. so i got a large pink and white bag that i carry around like a purse. its long enough hang down to my thighs. i never got in trouble for bringing it to class

Employer tried requiring us to log how we spent our time per shift in 15-minute blocks (e.g. 11:00-11:15, 11:15-11:30, etc.) What makes this even wackier is that we were salaried (paid the same if we "worked" 20 hours a week or 60, we got 40.) Didn't last a week, as it was both tedious to compile and analyze... But more than proved the "Pareto Principle" (80% of the work is done by 20% of the people, in this example.)