the storage labyrinth, the tape terrorism, and other things you thought were normal early in your career but were actually very weird

by Alison Green on April 7, 2025

Last week we talked about things that you thought were normal early in your career … but later learned were actually just weird things your old workplace did and which were not typical at all. Here are 15 of my favorite stories you shared.

1. The packed hotel rooms

My very first internship was the most bizarre work experience I’ve ever had, but I didn’t know it then.

My boss was personally wealthy, as in 1% wealthy. But she was super cheap at work. When we organized the nonprofit’s annual conference, we got X many rooms free for staff for however many attendees booked rooms. My boss told us that we were going to be bunking together because there weren’t enough rooms. She had her own penthouse suite though! Only unpaid interns roomed together. (The paid staff had their own. Unpaid interns made up about 70% of the organization’s entire staff.) I learned later that we got a discount for every hotel room we didn’t fill for staff.

I stayed in a large suite with 11 women. Three of us shared a bed. Three were on the pullout. I vaguely recall some people on cots and the floor. All of us broke fire code. But think of a medium-size hotel suite with 11 people staying in it. It was normal to me because I thought it was like dorm living on a Friday night.

At my next job, we were planning an annual conference, and I asked the VP of events, a very scary, fierce woman, if we could pick who we’d be rooming with or would she do it? She blinked twice and said, “No one ever shares hotel rooms. I’ve never heard of that! Hotel rooms for staff are the cheapest expense so cutting it makes no difference in the event budget.”

I was mortified for the remainder of my time there.

2. The phone answerer

The first “real” job I had in a small office, everyone answered each other’s phones when they weren’t in. It was encouraged by our boss so no customer or client “never left a message and felt unheard” during office hours. So, if I was in my office and Sally was out for the day, if her phone rang, I had to go into her office and answer it. I would say, “I’m sorry, Sally is not here for the day but can I take a message and have her get back to you?” This was office wide, no matter your position (so yes, we even had to answer our bosses phone). I didn’t know any better and I thought that’s just how things went when you worked in an office setting.

Fast forward to my next job. My first week there, my office neighbor was out for the day and her phone rang so I got up out of my new office and went and answered it. This was a bigger office, and the amount of “what the hell is this guy doing?” looks I got from everyone was astronomical. After I explained how it was in my old office, everyone laughed it off and explained that definitely is not how offices work and is why answering machines were invented!

3. The gang bang

I worked in TV news production in the late 80s through the mid 90s. First station I worked for called press conferences provided by an outside organization for all networks a “gang bang.”

First week at my second TV station as we were going through the newscast rundown prior to the show I asked if the live shot was a gang bang. And thus I discovered that it is not, as I assumed, an industry standard term.

4. The misplaced enthusiasm

At my first job, company IT support, we were not supposed to respond to manager messages in the Teams-equivalent with “Okay,” because it wasn’t showing enough enthusiasm. We had to respond with “Party!” Didn’t matter if it was something like a mandatory overtime announcement – “Party!” It ended up being a Thing a lot of us used mockingly outside of work, and I still sometimes do it. Definitely had to train myself out of it at my next more normal communicating job though.

5. The tic tacs

In my first job, which was at a call center, my team was all on the same anti-anxiety medication to the point that we called them “tic tacs” when we needed to ask a coworker for a pill.

6. The storage labyrinth

One university department I worked for right out of undergrad grossly misinterpreted the rules on retention of student records, both the types of records that need to be kept and the length of time required to keep them, such that they believed anything even remotely related to the student’s time at the university must be kept far longer than was truly necessary. This resulted in the entire basement of the building I worked in consisting of a labyrinth of locked storage areas full of boxes upon boxes of student “records” that should have been recycled a decade ago. It looked like that scene from the end of Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark except there was nothing cool hidden in the boxes, just lengthy descriptions of academic advising sessions from 15 years ago. I’m pretty sure nothing was ever cleaned out because the task was too daunting by that point.

Upon changing jobs, I realized that the laws surrounding student retention required far, far less stringent application and the only thing that most of the storage facility in the basement was good for was probably mouse housing.

7. The sleeping

My first job made me think that I’d have to deal with sleep-related topics in the office on a regular basis. This ranged through some … unfortunate … variations.

Conflicts from people sleeping in shared office spaces while others were trying to do their job at their desks. People falling asleep while on duty. People sleeping in their direct manager’s office! Being told to share a hotel room with a complete stranger (from a different, completely unaffiliated business) to save on travel costs. Being told to share a bed (yes, bed – not just a room) with coworkers (yes, PLURAL) to save on travel costs.

I was relieved to discover this is not at all normal after I changed jobs.

8. The glorious cornucopia of pens

In my first job after graduation, we had to ask a senior executive’s assistant for any new office supplies, although almost nothing was actually available anyway. My main request was for a new pen — the cheapest kind they could buy in bulk — which I could only get one of at a time. And you had to show that your existing pen was clearly out of ink. If I had lost it, the assistant would quiz me about what happened to my old one and where it was. When I moved to my next job, there was a whole closet of office supplies and I still remember the amazing moment when I was just casually told I could take what I needed. I was so nervous that for a long time I’d only take one pen at a time in case anyone saw me taking — god forbid — two.

9. The emails

At my dysfunctional office job after I finished college, it took three people and upwards of half an hour to send even a short internal email. You’d write the email, recruit a coworker to read over your shoulder and critique/wordsmith while you wrote, and then have your supervisor do the same.

This was not the kind of office that did life or death work, it wasn’t a field where that level of word choice mattered, and to this day I have not heard a better explanation than “someone in upper management was afraid of our department looking bad with an insufficiently perfect word choice.” I don’t even think the other departments did this! I was a recent college grad and had no idea this wasn’t normal for corporate jobs until I mentioned it to a friend, who looked at me like I’d grown a second head.

10. The mailing labels

We had to type the mailing labels … on intra-office envelopes.

11. The elevator access

An old employer that was notoriously cheap kept some costs down by not allowing employees to use the elevator without a doctor’s note. At first I didn’t realize quite how bonkers that was because I was fresh out of school and (at least way back then) plenty of high schools and below didn’t allow all students to use elevators, so I guess I read it as an extension of that? I realized how thoroughly bizarre it was when a colleague broke her ankle and had to crutch up and down three flights of stairs in a cast for the few days it took her to get a doctor’s note certifying that she did indeed need elevator access.

12. The permissions

I had one manager who found it “disrespectful and suspicious” for staff not to ask permission before leaving our department’s office. Like, to drop off a paper. Or to return a piece of IT equipment. Or pick up materials. If you were leaving your immediate desk vicinity, you had to find Ms. Boss, ask her if you could go take care of whatever business you had down the hall, and then finish it quickly once permission was granted. This boss did not last long (shocking, right?), but I was very young and so on-edge from her outbursts and micromanaging that I went to my next job with the habit of asking every single time I needed to leave my desk. Finally, after a couple weeks, my (wonderful) new manager explained that he really, really didn’t care if I needed to go give Jane a paper … I could just do it.

13. The letters

I work in a hospital. When we needed to send a letter to the patient, we would print it, fold it and put it into an envelope. Twice a day, someone from the internal post team would collect the letters and their team posted them. I did this from 2018-2024.

In August 2024, I moved departments. When I printed a letter, everyone looked at me like I was crazy and told me it goes electronically to an off site printing company. I immediately emailed my old manager to tell her, thinking she would love this new information. Turns out she knew this all along but didn’t trust the process. So she made us do it all by hand. I asked the internal post guy about it and he said we were the only admin team that he collected packages from. His team’s actual job was to arrange transportation of clinical samples to labs.

14. The tape terrorism

In my early 20s, I worked in insurance (home/auto/life) for a few years at a few companies. The first office I worked at after receiving my license was a very large and successful franchise office of one of the nation’s top home/auto insurance companies, so I assumed (naively) that it was a well-run representative of the industry. I did learn a lot, but the owner/manager was an absolute tyrant who would scream at us while we were on the phone with customers, move our bonus requirements so she never had to pay us, and required everyone in the office (all women) to wear makeup and keep their hair done and call all the male clients “honey” and “sweetie.”

Beyond all this, she had a set of strange rules/requirements we could never quite understand. We rotated desks monthly, and she didn’t allow us to have any personalization at our desk: no photos, no decorations, no notes. She enforced this by outlawing tape in the office — it was impossible to find a roll of Scotch tape for love or money, and we were screamed at if we brought in our own. The only exception to this was our list of agent names/codes, which was taped to each computer monitor with one piece of tape. If we desperately needed tape for a ripped paper or another normal office use, we would very carefully tear off a tiny sliver of this single piece of tape. If the owner noticed that we’d put tape on something else, she would shrilly demand to know where we’d gotten it and what did we think we were doing.

When I started my next job at another insurance office, I opened the office supply drawer to find rolls upon rolls of Scotch tape. I felt like the richest person in the world, and almost overcome by emotion exclaimed, “Oh my god, tape!” My new bosss’s reaction to this made me realize such tape-based terrorism was not, in fact, typical in the industry.

15. The Miller time

I used to work at a startup where the owner’s last name was Miller. So much of our internal design-related things (not official logos) was a clear rip-off of the Miller High Life logo, and for major celebrations the featured drink was always 40s of Miller High Life. I was straight out of college, so this frat-like stuff didn’t seem that weird at the time!

I should also mention that the only place in town to buy 40s of High Life was a sketchy gas station…. So for major office events someone would have to go to the gas station and buy a bunch of 40s, totally normal work activity!

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{ 169 comments }

{ 169 comments… read them below or add one }

  1. Tantallum99*

    #2 is not that weird—at least not to me because we do it at the membership services org I currently work for! We don’t actually walk to others’ desks but our phone profiles are all set up so that if you don’t answer by the third ring it also rings on the phone of everyone else in that department. For the same reason: “so members don’t have to wait to get help”

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    1. FricketyFrack*

      I think it makes sense in that kind of context, but most offices I’ve worked in, there hasn’t been significant overlap in job duties. For example, I work in licensing (business licensing, like liquor and tobacco) and my boss knows all about the process but she couldn’t answer much about where I’m at on specific applications. None of my other coworkers touch licensing at all, so they couldn’t answer anything, and I couldn’t tell someone what my records manager coworker is doing with their request. It would often just be a waste of the caller’s time for us to answer each other’s phones.

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      1. Antilles*

        Yeah, if there’s not much overlap in job duties, answering a co-worker’s phone would serve no purpose because they can’t address anything. At which point, you’re just taking a note for me that Jim called and it’s effectively a much crummier version of voice mail.

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        1. Lacey*

          Yes and it sounds like that’s what was happening in the letter!

          Though some customers do prefer it, just as the LW’s boss thought.

          I worked in a small office where, if the first lines of defense were out, I would occasionally need to answer the phone.

          When the person inevitably asked for someone else I would say, “Hyacinth is out for the morning, but I can send you to her voicemail” and they would say, “That’s ok, you can just give her the message”

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        2. Proofin' Amy*

          I used to pick up a ton of temp jobs filling in for admin assistants who were ill or on vacation. The phone barely ever rang, but they wanted someone there in case it did, because they thought it was too impersonal to have voicemail pick up. I’d do that and make the occasional xerox; the rest of the time I’d read, surf the Web, or do other freelance work. Those days are gone, certainly.

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    2. bamcheeks*

      Yes, that was normal in every office I worked in until 2013 (when I moved to a job where our phone system went through our computers, so someone’s phone wouldn’t ring unless they were at their desk and logged in.) Most places had a system where you dialled hash and a code to pick up the ringing phone at your own desk— I feel like my fingers would still know the code if you put a mechanical touchtone keypad in front of me!

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    3. CzechMate*

      I’ve worked places where this was a norm. If it’s the type of business where you might expect general customers/clients to walk in off the street, it’s not that weird to just answer and say “hey Tim’s not at his desk right now but you can come in to see another associate” or something.

      In my current department has an answer-all-phones rule and the other has a never-answer-phones rule…and of the two, I can say that people tend to calm down a lot more when you just pick up and say “this person’s not available” as opposed to making them leave a voicemail that (at least, they think) may never be listened to.

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    4. Andrew*

      When I started work in 1989, if you heard a phone ringing anywhere up and down the group hallway, you dialed #23 to pick up the call (we all worked on the same kinds of projects so we’d all be able to respond sensibly to a call). I forget when we finally got voicemail. (we used to need management approval to send a fax too)

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    5. commensally*

      My work place is set up so that 90% of calls ring to all (relevant) phones – nobody gets an individual person’s desk number unless they need to speak to that person specifically, and most of the time it only happens if someone has already picked up the main line and then transferred the call. So most of the time, anyone picks up a ringing phone. But if only certain phones are ringing, you know it’s either for a specific person and there’s no point, or it’s the heavy breather and someone hasn’t figured out how to block him on their phone yet.

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    6. doreen*

      Almost everywhere I’ve worked people answered each other’s phones in one way or another. Maybe if I didn’t answer within 3 rings the call jumped tot he next person in line. Maybe it jumped to a receptionist. Maybe I had to dial a pickup code. The only way it didn’t happen was walking to someone else’s desk or into someone else’s office.

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    7. Dido*

      yeah, it makes sense if you work in a call center where everyone is basically all doing the same job. not so much when your jobs are so different that the only thing you can do when you answer a colleague’s phone is take a message

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      1. Charlotte Lucas*

        In that case, the calls go into a queue, and the system takes care of which calls go where.

        I do find it fascinating how many people answer their coworkers’ phones. That would never occur to me! But calls to our general lines go to specific people. And everyone else is the one person wanted when they get a direct call. (And we now use Teams and no longer have desk phones, so it’s a moot point.)

        Once I stopped doing retail (where there’s one or two phones that anyone might answer) and customer service (queues), most of my work phone calls were from coworkers who specifically wanted to talk to me and would rather leave a voicemail or email me. (And now most people just use chat functions for brief messages/questions.)

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  2. cncx*

    Re number two sends me back to a time where we had to answer everyone’s phones with the added bonus that one of my coworkers would then critique and nitpick how I answered the phone. I could not win.

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    1. Paint N Drip*

      Oh isn’t that just tops. My (vintage…) boss wants me to answer his phone when it rings and he’s not in his office, but also wants the caller info on his voicemail so he can refer to it later, but also I should know if he is RUNNING from elsewhere in the building to answer it and not answer those ones. You absolute madman… how should I do that?

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      1. Charlotte Lucas*

        Have you considered tracking him in the building with laser tag-style sensors?

        Or hanging a big bell around his neck?

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  3. le bureau des conneries françaises de Chicago*

    #2 My joint does this too but I think it’s a bit less weird since it’s a small firm with less than 10 people. Clients say they love never getting an IVR and we work to keep it that way.

    #4 « C’est parti, mon kiki ! »

    #5 I worked in a call center once and I can entirely believe this, the place was absolute bedlam.

    #12 reminds me of the “can’t squeeze a drop with say-so” scene from Shawshank Redemption

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    1. nanana*

      #2 My firm also has all the calls ring to all the phones, and everyone shares responsibility for picking up the phone at need. That includes the senior partners!! And they actually DO answer the phones!

      We offer rather pricey services to well-heeled clients, and one of the things the clients are paying for is that the phone will be answered by a human being, who will know whether the caller is one of our clients (that is, everyone is expected to recognize the names).

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    2. Academic Physics*

      Oh yes, I think #2 makes a lot of sense if you’re customer facing! I’d be so annoyed, however, if my office mate picked up and tried to either take a message when they could just leave one, or try to answer questions about say, our spec needs for a new cryostat. She’s a theorist, it would never work!

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  4. NobodyHasTimeForThis*

    #2 Not my department but the department we share space with always answer each-others phones. Both our departments are a combination of customer facing and our own specialty areas. We use a central phone number for the customer facing stuff and that always gets answered by whoever is available but our own numbers are our own.

    They have the same set-up in that they have a central number, but they still answer each-others calls. And then they have to tell the person that Joe is out and if they want to call back and leave a message they won’t answer the second time. So weird. They even answer for the manager of the department. 90% of those calls they can not help the person. It’s performative customer service as they will end up sometimes with the people most suited to help the in-person traffic tied up on calls they can’t handle, while other people try to step in and badly help the in-person.

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  5. Ace in the Hole*

    Number 11 sounds like an ADA violation! The employer isn’t supposed to require medical documentation if the need for accommodation is obvious… for example, the way it’s obvious that someone on crutches with a cast on their leg will have trouble going up stairs.

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    1. Slow Gin Lizz*

      I hadn’t thought of that! I asked in the post last week: imagine being that doctor and having to write a note for someone on crutches to use the elevator???? That’s just bananas. The doc must’ve thought their patient worked for a lunatic. Which, she did, tbh.

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      1. Academic Physics*

        If it was legal and I was the doctor I think I’d write that note even without making them wait for an appointment!

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        1. Academic Physics*

          It’s funny, since I would assume underuse would cause things to lock up faster aka break more?

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          1. MusicWithRocksIn*

            I would absoutly never want to take an elevator that was so rarely used. Also if they are so cheap are they actually getting proper inspections on the thing?

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          2. Coverage Associate*

            At my old gym, the elevators were used regularly by cleaning staff, who had rolling equipment, but gym members had to ask management for special permission and the key to use the elevator. (Which I thought was very reasonable because it was just 2 stories and most people going to the gym can handle that fine, especially because the pool was on the ground floor.) It might have been a building code thing. An office building of the same size might have needed more elevators, but a gym could build for a more mobile than average clientele.

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        2. Slow Gin Lizz*

          I guess? Also now I’m curious as to if elevators use more electricity if there are more people in them. Like, could OP have ridden in the elevator with the coworker who was using crutches? Or would that be verboten because it wasted too much electricity to have a second person in the elevator??

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          1. I'm just here for the cats!!*

            I’m not an expert but I believe the same amount of electricity would be used regardless if there was 1 or 2 people.

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            1. MigraineMonth*

              I suspect there would be a small increase (at least going up) to move the weight of an additional person. However, the elevator itself is so heavy the addition is negligible and probably nowhere near the amount of electricity required to move the empty elevator to where the original person needs to board it.

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              1. LazyBoot*

                Don’t forget that most elevators also have counter-weights, so the motors don’t need to lift the full weight of the elevator+people anyway.

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        3. Elara Harper*

          Never once in the 40 years I worked in multi-story buildings did I consider how much it costs to run an elevator. Nor did I ever work anywhere that restricted elevator access in any way except badging to certain floors. My mind is currently boggled.

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      2. EarlGrey*

        I am *certain* that the overhead cost of having someone manage elevator access outweighs the electricity and maintenance savings.

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        1. Sparklefizz*

          Probably not even much in the way of maintenance savings, as in most places elevators are serviced on a fixed schedule rather than by machine hours.

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          1. EarlGrey*

            And even this eensy savings is assuming the company owns the building and isn’t paying a flat rate for base building electricity via their rent. Takes a creative mind to come up with reasons that policing elevator use is rational behavior!

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    3. Antilles*

      I’m also not really sure how that even saves money in an office building. There’s no way your average office building personnel would be using the elevator sufficiently to change the amount of wear-and-tear, repairs, maintenance, etc required.

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    4. Phony Genius*

      The writer mentions that their school had an elevator, but they couldn’t use it. So one time, in band practice, there was a kid who had a walking disability. When it was time to go home, one of his friends would carry his trumpet case to his parent’s car every day. This friend was sick one day, so I was asked to fill in. I carried his trumpet to the elevator and he got in. The school aide who ran the elevator (which was an old-fashioned type that required an operator) said that I had to carry his trumpet down the stairs and meet them on the ground floor. It was a large elevator, so I guess the reason was… liability? (As if I would be more likely to be injured an elevator than carrying a trumpet case down the stairs.)

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      1. I'm just here for the cats!!*

        my high school was kind of like that too. You had to have a special key and so the teacher would walk down to the elevator to unlock it. One of my friends was on crutches so I was able to ride down it with her, but I don’t think we were supposed to.

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        1. Slow Gin Lizz*

          My middle and high schools were like this but a kid using crutches was allowed to have a friend carry their books for them and that kid was also allowed to use the elevator. It’s bananas that Phony Genius had to take the stairs with their friend’s trumpet, though. Especially with the extra burden of a trumpet, sheesh.

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        2. Magnolia Clyde*

          It was the same at my high school, right down to having to wait for The Teacher With The Key to unlock it.

          When I was on crutches for a month, I remember random students volunteering to help me carry things, even when I was able to carry everything in my backpack … just so that they could hitch a ride on the elevator. They let us have guests/helpers, but I think we could only have three passengers at a time.

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      2. Clorinda*

        My school still does this as part of a general policy of trying not to let kids be in a small room with no adults. “We don’t need any more School Name babies around here!”

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        1. Selina Luna*

          As a teacher in a high school, I can tell you one thing: there are so many places that don’t open randomly where kids would go before using an elevator.

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      3. Jaydee*

        My understanding was pretty much that our schools *had* an elevator because they were multi-story buildings and an elevator was necessary for students and teachers with mobility impairments to travel between floors and for the custodians to bring furniture and equipment between floors. But no one else got to use it because 1) there was only one elevator, so it couldn’t accommodate several hundred students and staff who just didn’t want to take the stairs, 2) most of my schools were old, so too much use would also increase the risk of the elevator breaking, and 3) kids can’t be trusted not to jump in the elevator, try to pack 30+ kids in the elevator at one time, stop the elevator between floors to make out, stop the elevator between floors to beat someone up, graffiti the elevator, poop in the elevator, or any other thing that could lead to the loss of elevator access/elevator privileges.

        That said, I’m pretty sure a classmate helping someone on crutches carry their books or musical instrument would have been allowed to use the elevator with their friend.

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        1. Old Bag*

          I’m pretty sure this is exactly why most schools don’t allow students to use the elevators. Plus the aforementioned prevention of adults being in a small room with a child and no other adults.

          I suspect the boss didn’t want to allow it either out of some weird sort of “the elevator is for clients / C suite” type mentality or out of trying to prevent “I was late because the elevator got stuck” kind of thing.

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        2. Academic Physics*

          I do think there is something to be said for an elevator in a school having a different system than at a company.

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      4. Retired Camp Counselor*

        My (tiny) high school had a (tinier) elevator, and our policy was only people who were approved could use it, but also, we HAD to have a faculty member ride with us (something to do with if it got stuck? Not for any clear operation reasons). Which sometimes meant I was in the basement frantically trying to either find a random staff member, or texting my advisor and hoping she wasn’t in class and could come pick me up. The elevator was ancient and had regular doors on each floor (there was a gate as well), and if any of the doors were open, the elevator wouldn’t run. So you would have to sometimes find someone else to run up all 4 flights of stairs to try and figure out which door was open. It was rough.

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      5. Coverage Associate*

        I’m now remembering that at one time, insurers did consider elevators an added risk, like swimming pools still are. I only know because there’s a legal precedent about an elevator that wasn’t disclosed on the application.

        I don’t recall seeing questions about elevators on insurance applications in the 15 years I have worked for insurance companies, but maybe the underwriting handles the issue with questions about age and number of stories.

        I see way more claims about failure to comply with the ADA than about elevator accidents. The one elevator accident I have seen was a residential elevator installed without permits or inspections using some hobbyist labor, and I was not involved professionally.

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    5. doreen*

      This wasn’t me – it was my sister. She worked at a state agency and the doors to the office building were super-heavy. There was an automatic opener with the button at the security desk – but for some reason, security wasn’t allowed to push the button for anyone without an ADA accommodation. I could almost understand the elevator situation if it was like my high school – one or two elevators and 4000 students means everyone can’t use the elevator (but someone with a cast and crutches shouldn’t have been questioned) . But everyone was going through the same door at my sister’s job – it’s not like pressing the button would have caused a traffic jam.

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      1. Coverage Associate*

        Those buttons usually result in the door being opened longer than the time for someone to open and close it manually/normally, so there are HVAC issues with overuse of powered doors.

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  6. Storm in a teacup*

    Number 3 made me choke on a nut
    (Pistachio – get your minds out of the gutter)

    A lot of the others also sound familiar – working in the UK health service. Especially the pen-keeper. But I had a secret stash of pens and post-its that a lot of colleagues knew about – that I had collected from drug reps and conferences.

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    1. Maleficent2026*

      During the 10+ years I worked in retails pharmacies, the drug rep pens were almost always the best pens, so they were CONSTANTLY disappearing. Eventually, I got so aggravated by having to spend so much time chasing down a pen, that I took 6 of my favorites and plastered them with neon pink drug warning labels that said “FOR VAGINAL USE ONLY”. Never had a problem keeping my pens after that.

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      3. Definitely Should be Anon Here*

        Looks down at pen he is chewing. Puts it down and realizes that this comment has instantly broken a bad habit.

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      4. LG*

        Back in the early 90s, Pfizer had the best swag of all the drug companies that came by our office, and we literally fought over their pens. One day my co-worker came out yelling “WHO TOOK MY VIAGRA PEN?!” right in front of patients.

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        1. Throwaway Account*

          Edit: a quick google search reveals that yes, yes, the general public can buy those stickers. hehehehe!

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      6. Coverage Associate*

        I worked for a gynecologist that hardly ever bought pens because the drug reps gave out so many, but I have never seen such a sticker.

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    2. Caz*

      I used to organise drug rep lunch meetings for nurses…they go absolutely FERAL for pens! I also ordered their stationery and there were plenty of pens – the good ones, too! – in the cupboard…

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  7. Seashell*

    I think I’d quit if I had to share a pull out couch with 2 coworkers.

    Party! cracks me up. Why not “Good!” or “Great”? At least slightly less ridiculous than “Party!”

    Reply ↓
    1. WellRed*

      One can only hope that the nitwit who came up with party reads this column and is now cringing with shame.

      Reply ↓
    2. Festively Dressed Earl*

      A restaurant I once worked at forbade hosts to use the word “party” when announcing that someone’s table was ready. Apparently saying “Smith party, your table is now available” conveyed the image that the Smiths were about to throw a kegger in the dining room.

      Reply ↓
    3. Ms. Eleanous*

      If we had to answer Party, I would work very hard to get the accent/ pronunciation from Wayne’s World.

      Reply ↓
        1. Beth**

          I used to have a colleague whose native language is Portuguese. Whenever she talked about parties (and it was often in the context of her pre-school children), it sounded like she was saying “potty”.

          Reply ↓
  8. Amagansett Llama*

    The year was 2006. I was freshly out of college and landed a job paying $520/week (no benefits) at a small publishing company in NYC. The firm was run by an ancient attorney who showed up once a week from his house in the Hamptons to lecture his junior employees on the stock market (how were we supposed to invest when a second slice of pizza for lunch was a splurge?). My boss had started out as his secretary and had the distinction of being one of the meanest and most miserable people I had ever met. Every morning, I printed all my email and brought them to her office. She read them and dictated what my reply would be. I would type that up, bring the drafts to her, and she would berate me for any typos she found or simply if she had changed her mind/forgot what she said. She would call me stupid, useless, she didn’t know how I graduated from college, etc.

    Most of my day was spent in the bathroom, trying (and failing) not to cry. We went on this way for 3 months before I quit, and she was nice to me in my last week, when my replacement started and she realized sh*t, she was going to have to train someone again.

    Of course, all our records were on paper. We also had a database in MS Access that was basically just a huge spreadsheet of all the titles we had on our roster. There were a few saved queries, but mostly when we needed any sort of list we had to manually copy and paste from the main spreadsheet into another one and print. One day I taught myself how to write queries in Access and could now pull up lists in a matter of minutes that usually took hours to create. When I showed my new boss this skill, she looked at me suspiciously and instructed me never to use a query again lest I accidentally f*ck it up and delete the entire database.

    We also had a typewriter so we could type mailing labels. We had a printer and I knew how to format and print labels but, you couldn’t trust that pesky new technology! A typewriter was much safer.

    Reply ↓
    2. MusicWithRocksIn*

      Man, you just reminded me of my first job where the owner kept a typewriter in their (never used) office so that if the power ever went out we could keep working (which was explicitly spelled out in the Manual). One day the power went out, and even though there was nothing that could really be accomplished by a typewriter we went to pull it out because the Manual said so, and we realized it was an electric typewriter with a cord, totally useless without power.

      Reply ↓
      2. Paint N Drip*

        LMAOOOOOOO
        I thought it was wild when my first post-college job had those big boy electric typewriters in 2013, but they had a (limited) purpose that was not related to the power lines. There is SO little ‘typing work’ now I cannot fathom what work you were supposed to hop on in the dark on your typewriter

        Reply ↓
        1. RedinSC*

          My mom worked at a university and they kept a specific typewriter around for the 1 grant application that needed to have that SPECIFIC font on it. You could not submit without using that font.

          Reply ↓
      3. Samwise*

        I still think fondly of the IBM selectrics I got to use in my 1980s office jobs. What a fabulous machine.

        Reply ↓
        1. AFac*

          My parents found a used one for me to use for college applications*. My mother insisted it get put away in a cabinet and only get placed on a table in the den when I was using it. I gained so much arm strength that year.

          (*Yes, I am from the Ordovician.)

          Reply ↓
      4. Coverage Associate*

        The law firms where I worked had a typewriter for one or more particular purposes until 2023. Usually, it was a senior secretary who preferred to use a typewriter for court forms over the fill able pdf. There was one lawyer who…also preferred the typewriter in case all the secretaries were unavailable and he had to fill in a form himself? I don’t know why we had one at my last firm.

        But sometimes I hear that there are still jurisdictions that require blue backing, which might be hard on a printer. (You see blue backing on Law & Order reruns where court papers always have a blue sheet as a kind of wrapper. I think some sort of label goes on the blue wrapper. I have never seen this “in the wild.”)

        Reply ↓
  9. higheredadmin*

    #14 – I worked at a well-respected private bank with multiple branches/offices, and post-it notes were completely forbidden. Couldn’t even buy them with your own money and bring them in. Never found out why, but I’m sure there was an interesting post-it note incident at a senior level that led to a total company-wide ban. When I moved to my next job I was in post-it note heaven.

    Reply ↓
    1. Chirpy*

      Post-it notes will cause damage to paper over time – the residue lasts for decades even if you only have the post-it on for a little while- so if the materials need to be archived, that would be a reason not to use them.

      Reply ↓
      1. goddessoftransitory*

        Or the wrong Post-It was seen by the wrong person when it got accidentally attached to something…

        Reply ↓
  10. ZSD*

    Earlier today, I was thinking that the boss who loved being told she was beautiful could lead someone to submit an entry to this list. “When I started my second job and told my boss how handsome he was…”

    Reply ↓
  11. Liz the Snackbrarian*

    Number one, three people to a bed…ugh, imagine how awkward it is for the person in the middle if they have to get up to pee or something. Or just getting out of bed in general. Like using the bathroom on an airplane.

    Reply ↓
    2. Big Rock*

      I mean just being in the bed at all sounds hellacious enough with no other factors! I think I’d opt for the chair…the tub? Ugh lol

      Reply ↓
    3. Double A*

      I can barely stand to be in a bed with my two children, and they are less than 100lbs combined and used to live inside my body.

      Reply ↓
    4. Artemesia*

      I am astonished that people agreed to this outside of say a village during Peace Corps. As a grad student I often shared a room with several other students at conferences and occasionally there were two people to a bed — always same sex in the rooms and everyone always had a bed space. Usually it was two single beds and one rollaway or something like that.

      Reply ↓
    5. CW*

      Yeah, this one just seemed so impractical! I was asked once to share a king sized bed with two other people – in college, when we were used to zero personal space, and we were a sports team traveling on a budget of basically nothing. We still said “Haha, nope” and the third person slept on the couch.

      Reply ↓
    6. Lexi Vipond*

      I think you’d have to do it heads and tails, so the third person just wriggles out the bottom, where their head is anyway. Not that I’m saying this is a *good* idea. (I have slept that way, but the other two were my sister and cousin, and we were all about 12 at most!)

      Reply ↓
  12. Laggy Lu*

    OMG tape! has sent me lol
    I also had the micromanaging boss that sent me to my next job unable to send an email without my boss’s approval. He eventually told me he hired me to this job so he didn’t have to do it, so please just send the email.

    Reply ↓
  13. Guacamole Bob*

    This list is more evidence that being super stingy with office supplies is pretty much never worth the morale hit.

    Reply ↓
    1. Antilles*

      It’s also not worth the staff time. The mass-produced Bic disposable pens are like 10 cents a pen. The wasted time and energy of having to “prove” your pen was dry, searching for your missing pen, explaining what happened to your missing pen, is way beyond the value of the pen.

      Reply ↓
      1. Venus*

        That one is unusual, but less so than those where tape and post-it notes had to be justified. The places where one can’t bring in outside supplies is incomprehensible!

        Reply ↓
      2. MigraineMonth*

        I worked at a very odd company where our billionaire CEO got up at an all-staff meeting to lecture us for fifteen minutes about how upset she was that we kept losing or stealing the company-branded pens. (Only the sales team was allowed to give them away, even to customers who requested them. These were prestigious company-only pens.) Did we even realize they were high-quality pens that cost nearly $1 each?

        Rough back-of-the-envelope calculation, given the number of people at the meeting and their salaries, that 15-minute speech cost the company $10,000.

        Reply ↓
    2. Seal*

      At my first full time job, the person who ordered supplies always second-guessed what people were ordering and then ordered half of what was requested. That meant you had to request twice the amount of supplies to get what you actually needed. Everyone grudging went along with this nonsense, until the supply person not only ordered half the number of items I’d requested (cones of string) but also ordered a smaller size (balls of string, which were a quarter of the size of a cone). When I tried to send them back, the supply person told me my unit was using too much string (we weren’t) and we should be able to get by with what they gave us (we couldn’t). That was the last straw for me, so I escalated the issue. As it turns out, everyone hated playing the supply ordering game, so the powers that be actually stepped in. Meetings were held and memos were issued, and among other things I was assured that going forward “string would be a priority”. The supply person continued to grumble but never halved supply orders again.

      Reply ↓
    3. NotAnotherManager!*

      I would be fired immediately from a place like #8. I have so many pens. I have a pen I know works, I have a backup pen, I have a pen attached to my notebook for meetings where laptops are not welcome, I have multiple colors of pens. I can’t even imagine how I’d function with a single pen and a prove-it’s-dead-before-getting-another system.

      I also worked at a law firm that provided the best pens ever. They were like $3/pen, and just sitting there in the supply room on every floor in four colors. (I ended up buying myself a box for home I liked them so much. Not going to lie, I hide them from my children because I want to see them again, preferably working, in one piece, and not smashed with ink all over the bottom of someone’s backpack.)

      The thing that used to cause problems at our office is staplers. There is a finite supply of the high-quality, metal Swinglines, and then someone started buying the off-brand plastic staplers that don’t really work. The people who have the Swinglines will do crazy things like chain them to their desks, paint designs on them for identification purposes, or engrave their name in them. The chillest guy I worked with nearly lost his mind over someone taking his precious metal stapler.

      Reply ↓
      1. Coverage Associate*

        I have an unusual pencil grip, and sometimes I joke that I became a lawyer for the quality pens.

        Which totally failed when I worked for the firm that bought the cheapest possible ball points, like the seconds that were sold by the gross or something because they were too low quality to put in boxes of 12 because they were bent.

        Reply ↓
    4. Skooge*

      I did the office purchasing for my last job. My company was very generous with office supplies – we encouraged people to “fill your pockets!” with pens and post-its and notebooks, and I could always special order any kind of office supply – purple sharpies, steno pads on recycled paper, calculators – any employee asked for. Anything. It was fun and people enjoyed the perk.

      My office of 150 employees spent at MOST $200 / month on office supplies. Most months nothing at all. Easily less than a thousand dollars in a year.

      The cost was so tiny in the company budget, and it made employees so happy. Managers getting hung up on a 5-cent stick pen or piece of tape are people who are not good at seeing cost v benefit.

      Reply ↓
  14. Lacey*

    The tape had me cracking up!

    Feels a little bit like leaving my job where we still used paper tickets in the year 2017.
    My new job asked if I thought a different digital ticketing system would be better and looked slightly concerned when I said it was glorious just to have one!

    But tape is a whole other level.

    Reply ↓
  15. Lurker*

    8. The glorious cornucopia of pens

    I had a similar experience. My first job after college, the supply guy was so stingy. If you asked for paperclips he would ask how many you needed. You couldn’t have an entire box. Same with pens, etc. I think we were able to have an entire box of tissue at once, but I don’t remember for sure.

    When I went to my next job, the office manager was showing me around and opened a cabinet of supplies: post its! Wite-out! pens! And told me to take whatever I needed. I was so excited.

    Reply ↓
    1. Goldenrod*

      Why are these people so often weird and stingy about supplies??

      I’m the supplies orderer in my department – I make a point of telling people they can have whatever supplies they need! Honestly, it’s a small thing you can do to make people feel supported.

      Reply ↓
      1. I'm just here for the cats!!*

        exactly! You’d swear it comes out of their paycheck or something. I also am like “Oh you want a certain pen? I’ll get it on the next order. You want a ergonomic mousepad. Look on the website and send me a screenshot with the item number and I’ll get it for you.

        Reply ↓
      2. Governmint Condition*

        I remember an admin who did this because they knew that they could and wanted to make everybody’s job harder and hurt morale because she felt slighted by management for various reasons over the years. (Some of it was valid, but mostly not.) Her title included being in charge of office supplies, so it was pretty much like this all the time.

        Funny thing is her position has since been filled by the polar opposite, who won’t stop giving you supplies even after you tell her you have more than enough. If you ask her for a pen, you’ll get a minimum of 3 boxes.

        Reply ↓
      3. Lurker*

        In my situation, the place was a proprietary college. The owner was stingy, too, so I can only assume it was some misguided effort on the office supply person to save money or stay under a minuscule budget? But this was in the late 90s(!), I’m guessing a box of paperclips was like, what, 25¢.

        That place was kind of a time warp. No bare legs or open toes shoes allowed for women; the registrar was using DOS to keep student records (which was a back up to her paper index card system), and there was no voice mail.

        But it was my first job out of college (and I had only been a lifeguard prior to that) so while I thought a lot of that stuff was weird/not normal, I didn’t have enough experience to definitively confirm it.

        Reply ↓
    2. cat herder*

      In this year of our lord, 2025, my fancy, nice office closet for all your office-y needs. … except whiteboard makers. Those are under lock and key (!), which is very silly, since all the executives have whiteboards in their office. If they want to actually USE their whiteboard, they either have to BYO markers, or borrow someone else’s, because the curmudgeonly facilities manager in charge of the office supplies will only dole out a whiteboard marker to a new hire. [file this under “strange hills to die on” as well, I suppose]

      Reply ↓
      1. NotAnotherManager!*

        The offices in our building all have a built-in white board, but no one in the building stocks the markers. They’re also placed in the offices in a way that you have to practically crawl onto your desk to reach it.

        Reply ↓
    1. Wendy Darling*

      I was doing social science fieldwork in a rural area and was, with the rest of my team, socializing with some locals. As a female PhD student from a major coastal city who doesn’t smoke and can’t even pretend to smoke due to asthma, you couldn’t get much more out group than me. So when they handed me a lukewarm Bud Light Platinum I couldn’t really turn it down. (I mean I could have if I’d had issues with it other than “oh this is gonna taste real bad” but it wasn’t worth potentially mildly offending our hosts to avoid terrible light beer.)

      I don’t even like beer but I’ve tried some beers I can understand why other people like. That shit, though? Far as I can tell its only redeeming feature is it’s cheap and contains alcohol.

      Reply ↓
      1. Richard Hershberger*

        Its being lukewarm is the worse part. Back when I was a kid, there was a regional brand that advertised itself as being “brewed to be drunk ice cold.” Even at that tender age I understood this to be an open admission that if it wasn’t ice cold you would be able to taste it, and no one wanted that.

        Reply ↓
    2. Her name was Lola*

      40s of Miller High Life? Does that mean a case with 40 cans? That’s a lot of bad beer (of course, all beer tastes bad to me. lol)

      Reply ↓
      3. Bella Ridley*

        A 40 refers to one single 40-oz bottle. Usually in this context it’s certain varieties of beer or liquor. Beer by the can is usually sold single, 6-pack, 12-pack, 24-pack, or 60-pack, very occasionally in different quantities.

        Reply ↓
      5. Quercus*

        For those from non -American or non cheap-drinking cultures, a “40” is a large bottle containing 40 ounces of cheap beer.

        Reply ↓
      6. Ally McBeal*

        Others have already offered the answer, but please allow me to introduce you to the concept of “Edward 40-hands,” wherein irresponsible people in their teens and 20s duct-tape 40-oz bottles of beer to both hands and drink until both are empty. This is always a race against the clock (or more accurately, against one’s bladder) and has never appealed to me. But a 40-oz beer, wrapped in a brown paper bag (to ward against public-intoxication laws) and consumed while sitting in a park or on a stoop, is a lovely way to spend an evening.

        Reply ↓
      7. goddessoftransitory*

        Me too. Tastes like straw that a horse peed on. It makes me nuts when people ask on the phone what such and such a beer tastes like because my honest answer is A) “Bad” and B) I wouldn’t know because we aren’t allowed to chug suds while taking calls!

        Reply ↓
  17. Madame Desmortes*

    #6 is what happens when records management professionals are deemed unnecessary such that records management becomes a whisper game.

    Seen it happen too many places.

    Reply ↓
  18. Wendy Darling*

    I was like “I’ve never worked anywhere outside of academia that was THAT unreasonable!” but 12 made me realize I’d memory-holed the god awful temp job I had right after I left grad school.

    My manager was a tyrant who wouldn’t give me time off for anything and wanted to know every time anyone left their desk for any reason. I took my lunch at the same time every day but had to tell him every time. I also had to tell him any time I needed to go to the bathroom, or refill my water bottle. This was not a job that involved coverage and there was literally no impact to me leaving my desk other than he might have to wait two minutes if he wanted to tell me something.

    One day I was having an unusually heavy period so was going to the bathroom unusually often and trying to just sneak past. He took me aside and told him I couldn’t go to the bathroom without telling him. Fine, next time I told him. He asked why I needed to go again already.

    I said, “I’m having an unusually heavy period so I need to change my tampon or I’ll bleed on my chair.”

    He turned tomato red and let me go to the bathroom without asking after that.

    Reply ↓
    1. I'm just here for the cats!!*

      Love this. My mom has a similar situation from an old job. She was just starting menopause so things were not as regular as they normally would be. she worked housekeeping at a nursing home. One day she ducked out to her car (which was parked in the back right next to the employee entrance) was only gone less than 5 minutes. But it was cold winter day, so she grabbed her coat on the way out. He boss meets her at the door and starts scolding her that it wasn’t break time and she had no reason to go outside. She throws the (clean) pad in his face and said I had to go get a pad. Would you rather me misuse resident supplies? He apparently got super embarrassed.

      Reply ↓
    2. Paint N Drip*

      You hired an employee, right? This is a place of business, not my daycare, right? People like this have NO IDEA how ready I am to spill my real (or fancifully imagined) body horror in retaliation for the modicum of control they think they can have over me.

      Reply ↓
  19. Georgia*

    I worked for a university that definitely had some interesting personalities and odd quirks because they were so self-isolating (for historical reasons that made sense in the 50’s, but in the 2010’s was incredibly detrimental to the students and staff). I needed to fill out a form to request my travel be paid for and my manager insisted it HAD to be typed by a typewriter. No electronic forms, no hand writing. He pulled out a typewriter that was older than me and painstakingly filled out a form for 20+ minutes that would have been done in 1-2 by hand. I walked it across campus to the other department and got it approved. I found out later that the typing was no longer a requirement, but this Looney Toon just loved doing it and typed everything. He was also out of date on his professional education to a scary degree because all continuing education was done by other in house staff or graduates.

    Reply ↓
  20. Goldenrod*

    These are all amazing! I can’t get over #14 tape terrorism…I mean, not ordering tape is weird enough, but not even allowing people to bring in their own!! ;P

    I can relate to #6 with the huge basement of unnecessary stored boxes. My first boss at my university job was like this. I found out later she was a hoarder in her personal life. I was so excited when I learned about record retention dates – and also a service provided by the university that allowed you to store boxes off site.

    She was always complaining that there wasn’t enough space for all our records, so I assumed she’d be thrilled – turned out, she KNEW about all of it, but just had an emotional attachment to those boxes and boxes of unnecessary files…Ours was just a big closet, though, not an entire basement!

    Reply ↓
  21. Steve from Minecraft*

    I worked in a place that did the phone thing too! It was a newsroom, so they didn’t want to miss out on breaking news, but not once in my time there did I answer a call that anyone but the person they were calling needed to take. Most often, the person would be confused that they were waiting for voicemail and some random person answered. So I’d send them back to voicemail and someone else in the newsroom would pick up the call, starting the whole thing again.

    Reply ↓
  22. Wilbur*

    #7 “Being told to share a hotel room with a complete stranger (from a different, completely unaffiliated business) to save on travel costs. ”

    Was this a one time thing for a conference or was this a regular occurrence? How were these business strangers found? Was this a Craigslist situation-“26M looking for someone to share hotel room 4/7-4/10 in Portland” What was going on with your boss that made them think this was manageable?

    Reply ↓
  23. Lola Lola*

    Similar to #9, not my first job luckily, I had a boss who would make us draft tweets for his approval. Then he’d send them back to us to make edits and he would have to approve again. This meant that we completely missed the window of relevance and he somehow didn’t understand that when I tried to point it out.

    Reply ↓
  25. Honeybadger*

    #8 must have worked in the same department as me! At FirstRealJob, I worked in a group that was part of finance org. We were all low-level support teams (think payment processing, collections research etc) and not located in the main office building but were across the street. All supply requests in that building needed to go through the Senior Exec’s Executive Admin. They were submitted by leads for their individual groups on Monday and you picked up your requested supplies on Thursday. No problem there. But you were only allowed a single yellow highlighter, a single pen, and a single pencil. If you were a lead or above, you could have a mechanical pencil but you could only have one single lead for it at a time. To get a new pen/highlighter/pencil/pencil lead, you had to prove that your old one had been used up. No paperclips, no post it notes, no legal pads allowed. You had to use scrap paper that was cut up for notes and staple them. You got one line of staples at a time. After 3 years, I moved to a group that was located in the main building. Multiple supply closets on each floor and you just took what you needed. It was like night and day.

    Reply ↓
    1. Mutually Supportive*

      so you submit your request for a new pencil lead on Monday, it arrives in Thursday.

      With what do write on the rest of Monday, and Tuesday and Wednesday, and Thursday first thing!?

      Reply ↓
    2. MigraineMonth*

      If you were a lead or above, you could have a mechanical pencil but you could only have one single lead for it at a time.

      WOW. I didn’t think it could get worse than the 1 pencil thing!

      Reply ↓
  26. Amy*

    #1 – You shouldn’t feel mortified about having asked the question about hotel rooms. In some industries, having two colleagues (not 11!) share is normal.

    For many conferences, the rooms are in fact a significant total of the entire conference costs. At my company’s 700 person conference, we spend about $600K for rooms for 4 days out of a $1.1M total
    budget. They’ve definitely toyed with doubling employees up to save $300K but always get too much pushback. But don’t be ashamed you asked the question.

    Reply ↓
    1. Wilbur*

      I think the difference here is that it sounds like the non profit runs the conference, but other businesses/non profits attend (X free rooms for every attendees). The hotel is giving a discount because any rooms the non profit doesn’t use can be sold to conference attendees.

      Reply ↓
  27. Sigh.*

    The thing I’m taking away from this list is, nearly all humans (but especially humans in leadership roles) REALLY need to learn to get over themselves.

    Reply ↓
  28. law*

    In my first job, which was at a call center, my team was all on the same anti-anxiety medication to the point that we called them “tic tacs” when we needed to ask a coworker for a pill

    Okay, I really hope that this submitter realized (quickly) how very NOT normal (or safe!) this was. I also kind of wish a disclaimer had been added, pointing out how very NOT safe this was, at any point in time. Do NOT share pills–especially Rx pills. Yes, even if you’re supposedly all on the same medication. You don’t know each other’s physiology, medical history, what other medications (prescription or OTC) they might be taking, what other health conditions they have, you’re (presumably) not all doctors or pharmacists, etc. You don’t know each other’s tolerances, or who likes to chase their pills with booze.
    You especially can’t all assume that no one in the office was lacing their own supply of Xanax or whatever with something else so you don’t actually know what is in that pill they handed you. You don’t know if they’re the type who–when they get their prescriptions each month–just dumps every bottle into a tupperware container and is like, “okay I take 3 pink pills and 1 white pill every morning” or whatever. Yes, there are people who do this. You know them. You are related to them. Yes, sometimes they are younger than 85, or even 55.

    I’m not just saying just because I’ve been watching The Pitt all season (slight spoiler). Or because I have a bunch of family members in healthcare, including in pharmacy. And I also work in healthcare. I’m saying this because it’s just good sense. Please don’t share pills.

    Reply ↓
    1. Festively Dressed Earl*

      My late mother shared her Xanax with a friend who was about to drive home. Said friend ended up in a car accident that paralyzed her from the waist down.

      Reply ↓
    1. Endless parties*

      I am so confused by this. I cannot imagine any helpdesk context where “Party!” would be an appropriate answer.
      – “My headset stopped working.” “Party!”
      – “There was this phishing email in my inbox.” “Party!”
      – “Wifi for our visitors isn’t working.” “Party!”

      Reply ↓
      1. MigraineMonth*

        I think it was the required acknowledgment to IM directives from management, rather than actual helpdesk requests. So:
        –“My headset stopped working.” “I’m so sorry to hear that. I’m going to go through some troubleshooting steps with you, and if that doesn’t work we’ll send over a replacement.”

        But:
        >>All staff are required to work until 8pm on Thursday to work through ticket backlog. >>Party!
        >>Staff may not eat or drink at their desks. >>Party!
        >>Staff are reminded that confetti and glitter are banned. Throwing confetti or glitter at management, or releasing balloons in management offices, is grounds for dismissal. >>Party!

        Reply ↓
    2. Galadriel's Garden*

      It immediately made me think of Wayne’s World, so I may respond to a Teams message with “Party on, Wayne!” in the hopes that I’ll get a “Party on, Garth!” in reply.

      Reply ↓
  34. Jonathan MacKay*

    While I still think it rather odd – in context, it really isn’t all that strange.

    In our front office, there is a photograph of a former employee that is placed in plain view such that anyone entering through the front door sees it. This former employee passed from Cancer several years ago, but was quite close with everyone (she was the ex-wife of our sales guy). One might consider such a thing as a shrine, as the photograph also is set out at our order desk during our in-house trade shows, but I don’t begrudge the sentiment of honoring the memory of someone like that.

    I’ve never verbalized that I consider it strange either, because I’m the one coming into this environment, and it does no harm.

    Reply ↓
    1. WellRed*

      Were they still working at the company when they died? It’s weird either way but if they had already left the company it’s down right bizarre.

      Reply ↓
  35. Baska*

    When I was in my late teens, I worked the reception desk for a summer camp. The only people in the office were me (at the front desk) and my boss, the camp’s director (in her own private office). As you might imagine, after the morning rush of parents dropping off their kids, it was pretty darn boring at the registration desk. I asked my boss if I could play some music, even just classical music, to relieve the tedium. She told me unequivocally no, that any music in an office was “unprofessional.”

    Reply ↓
  36. HRneedsAdrink*

    I’ve worked in HR for many, many years and have had many, many conversations with Supervisors regarding employee behavior. I want to stress to all Managers/ Supervisors that sometimes, just sometimes, your newish employee may have been trained into doing things a certain way in their past. So please give them some grace (and maybe just ask them about it).
    1- the newish employee that didn’t come to work until 8:20- 8:30 (workday started at 8am) so he was late every single day. Manager was ready to fire him. I asked the employee why he was late every day. He looked at me like I had 3 heads. Turns out, his old employer actually made fun of anyone who showed up early or on time and then didn’t work late. He was mortified. But he was early every day after and was a stellar employee.
    2- the newish employee who asked questions. A lot of questions. Too many questions. Every. Five. Minutes. Questions. Boss was going mad. When asked, the employee stated that at her last job, she was basically micromanaged to death and couldn’t even use the bathroom without asking.
    3- the newish employee that never took lunch. Apparently at his last place of work the boss reprimanded anyone who wasn’t working through lunch. And weekends too. Sadly, he seemed very surprised that we paid overtime.
    4- the newish employee that went to lunch at 12pm every day. Literally walked away from a customer one day in the middle of a transaction. She stated that at her old company, lunch was at noon, no matter what. If you didn’t eat at noon, you didn’t eat.
    5- the newish employee who was ALWAYS on the phone. Not her cell phone, the company phone. New Manager was upset that she was always talking on the phone- he assumed it must be personal. When asked, the employee stated that if her old employer caught anyone NOT on the phone, they were written up (“if you’re not on the phone, you’re not working”). It was NOT a call center either.
    6- the newish employee that seemed to only come to work when he felt like it. When asked, he stated that his last job was working for his dad, and dad didn’t seem to care if he showed or not. Employee seemed surprised this wasn’t the norm. Unfortunately, he didn’t last long.

    Reply ↓
    1. NotAnotherManager!*

      Yes, thank you for saying this! I have a lot of fresh-out-of-college folks on my team, but also some who’ve come to us from some really dysfunctional workplaces. It’s much easier to state your expectations and talk about your culture upfront than to make assumptions about what they know/don’t know. We cover a lot of these things in orientation.

      The head of HR’s first question to anyone who approaches her about a performance issue is, “Have you talked to the employee about this directly?” It is amazing to me how many people skip this step. HR now does basic performance coaching and does a lunch about the steps managers need to take before you get them involved (and #1 is directly state what the issue is and what needs to happen instead – “You’ve been coming in every day at 9 AM, but our workday starts at 8:30 AM. Going forward, you need to be here no later than 8:30 AM on a regular basis. If you are not going to be here by 8:30 AM, please call/email/communicate with me.”).

      Reply ↓
  37. Ms. Eleanous*

    . . and call all the male clients “honey” and “sweetie.”
    Beyond all this, she had a set of strange rules/requirements we could never quite understand.
    BEYOND calling male clients honey and Sweetie??

    This rings the weird bell IMHO.
    Didn’t the men get uncomfortable?

    I’d love an update, also love to know what place this was in.

    Reply ↓
  38. Crencestre*

    #8. The executive’s assistant who made the LW turn in their used-up pen before getting another must have been the twin of an office manager at a former job of mine. This was back in the 1980s, when electric typewriters using correction tapes were the norm – and the OM had an absolute bee in her bonnet about those tapes! Before I could get a new box of correction tapes, I had to submit the old (used up) ones as proof that I did indeed need new tapes…and every time I did so, I had to listen to the OM scold and poormouth about how expensive those tapes were.

    Meanwhile, of course, I had to go without a correction tape in my typewriter because, since the last box of tapes wasn’t ENTIRELY used up, she wouldn’t release a new box to me. (It didn’t help that the OM was in a different branch of the organization that was 6 blocks from where I was working.) Finally, I spoke to my direct supervisor – the CEO of the agency. I’ll never know what she told the OM but I had no further difficulty getting those correction tapes from then on – and I never had to submit another box of used-up tapes, either!

    Reply ↓
  39. Beth**

    @12 I started a new job in the early 2000s. The most senior admin person in our physical office was my Head of Department’s PA, who had worked for the company for 20 or 30 years and was in her late 50s or early 60s.

    Every time she needed to visit the bathroom, she would make a big announcement to anyone near at hand. When asked about this, she explained that back in the day, she had been required to ask for permission to leave her desk for any reason, including answering a call of nature. While she was aware that this was no longer required, she found it impossible to break the habit.

    Her general attention seeking behaviours reminded me of my MIL. This was not a good thing. I was not sorry when she took early retirement about a year after I arrived.

    Reply ↓
  40. Brain the Brian*

    Number 6 is not the only place that grossly misinterprets records retention rules. I’ve been going through some old boxes recently after a longtime senior exec retired, and I found photocopies of drivers licenses of people who participated in programs we ran back in *1996* (yes, *that* 1996) still in storage. Straight to the shredder with those, thank you.

    Reply ↓
    1. Academic Physics*

      Whereas I just found some training materials that relate to my lab from 1990 that I am delighted by! It’s all in the specifics.

      Reply ↓
  42. Jinni*

    #13 – I wonder if you work for my health system. 99% of correspondence comes through the app and 1% – printed/mailed.

    Reply ↓

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