35 Corporate Policies People Found Out Existed Only When They Started Working

In the US, flood zone maps are modified by Congress and lobbying. It’s not a pure science & engineering map.

High end European car company offers leases to all employees. Said leased cars come with included fleet insurance. Company policy is that you can let literally any licensed driver, even some rando walking down the street, use your lease car for up to 7 days, fully covered by insurance, to promote the experience.

No down payment, discounted lease payment, no insurance or registration costs, you get a brand new car with ~8 miles on it every year (or less depending how many miles you put on it), and you can let almost anyone drive it.

There is a wedding venue company in San Diego that makes their clients and all vendors sign basically an NDA, disallowing them from speaking ill of the company, venues, or their experiences.

I will never understand how that isn't a red flag for people.

When I was a F&B department head for a large golf resort, I was tasked with "bringing new blood" into the department. Problem was that I could not increase my head count and if someone left I could not place a request in until after their last day. The process of hiring someone new took about 10 weeks. In which time I would be short handed.

I would get s**t from my boss that certain people were still there, then get s**t for paying overtime. When I would bring this up to my HR recruiter she would just give me a knowing look. Basically middle management hell.

If you are an American Express Platinum member and you book a bargain vacation package, your Platinum benefits do not apply. It's there in the fine print on the website... somewhere.

I worked for an insurance company. Insurance companies are the **worst**.

People would call and ask why their rates were raised. The closest thing I got to a real answer was, "Because they'll pay more, and if not, they'll threaten to cancel. If they do that, then we'll send them to retention, who will then lower their rate."

Rates were being raised simply because they could.

Also, when signing up for an auto policy, your mileage directly correlates to your risk rating and will either lower or raise your rate. The company I worked for would allow your mileage to be what you said for the first 6 months. At renewal, your mileage per month always jumped for 12k. Or higher if your initial mileage estimate was already over 12k. It'd be about a $50 increased a month, depending on your state.

F*****g criminals.

Christmas Day comes out of London Tube staff’s annual leave allowance despite the fact that the entire tube system is closed on Christmas Day.

Old workplace decided to have a weekly compulsory company meeting that started (and finished) outside business hours.

If a student literally shoots another student but isn't immediately charged and arrested they can still attend class (and in fact we're supposed to let them) until such a time they are arrested and charged. So students can basically be made to attend with their attempted murderer, not just with their rapist like we always knew about.

Unlimited Paid Time Off policies are scams.

When employees have vacation balances in their accounts, companies have to carry the value of that time as a liability on their balance sheets. Some genius figured out that by offering "unlimited" time off, employees don't take any more time off than they would under the limited time off system - some studies suggest employees actually take less vacation with Unlimited PTO - but then the company carries zero liability on their balance sheet.

Edit - The replies below like "no, I love my Unlimited PTO!!" show that people truly don't understand the impact of these policies. Or understand what it even means.

One of the most surprising company policies I’ve encountered was at a retail store I worked at. They had a strict "no asking for time off during holidays" rule, which makes sense. But what people don’t know is that we actually had a secret list of employees who were allowed to take time off during these peak times, based on favoritism. It was kept very hush-hush to avoid any backlash.

Comcast (now xfinity) likes to f**k you over, and then when you complain enough, they verbally promise credit whatnot only to f**k you over even more.

When I worked at a major cable internet provider, it wasn't that we weren't giving you a credit because we didn't want to, we weren't giving you a credit because it went against our scorecard and we'd get in trouble. Call at the beginning of the month and you'll get more love.

I worked for a state government, and they had a policy stating you could be required to sleep at the building (at times of bad weather) due to staffing requirements, and they weren't obligated to give you breaks or lunch breaks. We had people regularly forced to stay for 20 hours.

The president of our division thought khaki pants were ugly so she banned them.