Every company secretly (and often not so secretly) thinks that it’s the best thing since sliced bread and that people should be falling over each other to work there. But sometimes it goes too far.
Take Health IQ in the USA. According to this article , the company has office rules that make you laugh out loud. Let me summarise them for you:
All sugar is banned. Seriously it’s worse than those schools who send home nasty notes when you send you your kindy kid in with a home made muffin. If you take in your bottle of soft drink and a vanilla slice to Health IQ, they will take them off you and turf them.
They make you pledge to be health conscious for the REST OF YOUR LIFE. I have no words. Actually I have plenty of words, but the boss will make me take them out…
They have a gym in the MIDDLE of the office and staff are expected to use, wait for it, treadmill desks so they can work out in meetings. I don’t know about you, but it’s hard enough concentrating on what the Accountant is saying in a meeting as it is, without having to put one foot in front of the other at the same time in a coordinated manner
And here is my favourite…and remember this is supposed to MAKE YOU WANT TO WORK FOR THEM…
They let you finish at 5 or 6pm so have time to go to the gym, eat a healthy dinner and see the kids before they go to sleep BEFORE you are expected to get back online at 8 or 9 o’clock to do conference calls.
This is unreasonable, because in Sydney, you would never make it home from work in time to go to the gym, eat anything more than peanut butter on toast and lose a screaming match with your three year old who refuses to sleep in her own bed before having to log back on to work. If you wanted to eat that healthy dinner they bang on about, you would have to forgo something else and you get in trouble if you don’t interact with the spawn of your loins.
Needless to say, the company became a bit of a joke on the internet and they had to reword a few rules to stop being mercilessly mocked, but I suspect they still promote these values behind the scenes, in those middle of the office treadmill meetings.
Go on, tell me what outrageous, funny or downright stupid office rules have you discovered in your job(s)?
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