Do you ever encounter dumb policies in business or at work?

Question

I typed up an important letter today, uploaded it to the Internet, and went to Office Max to have it printed in their print/copy dept. I was stunned when the copy dept. clerk told me she wasn't allowed to go online, even for this, and that she could get fired for doing it. A manager confirmed it and said sorry, I was out of luck. Office Max doesn't allow employees to go online because Office Max can't tell if its employees will be reading personal email or helping a customer like me with a normal piece of business in the 21st century. It just made me wonder, how many other places are so... constrained?

Answer 1

I frequently stumble over rules where I work that make no sense to me, but then maybe I do not have all the relevant facts, and sometimes for security reasons I cannot be told the whole story.

This policy may seem dumb to you, but these places are in business to make money in a way that makes sense to their top management, not in a way that makes sense to all customers and lower echelcon personnel.

You want an important letter printed by a place like Office Max, Office Depot, Kwick Kopy, or whatever

You A S K them in what format they are able to ELECTRONICALLY receive your material
* You put it on a CD Rom and hand carry to them (assuming you have CD Write & the format is compatible)
** ditto with diskette
* You make an attachment to an e-mail
* You put it into a PDF or ZIP file & attach to e-mail
* You have it on laptop hand carry into store, and they do direct connect

You find the methods they can receive
You match that with the methods you able to transmit

You A S K same kinds of questions at a bunch of different places in competition with each other to find the approach that is least hassle for you

So constrained ... it is not unusual
* Employees not supposed to have a break that involves using company computers for the break
* Y2K variant has clock ticking with predictable crash coming but boss not want to talk about it until after the crash
* Security rules blocking us from using TELNET FTP or some other data transfer method
* Computer setup with Windows deliberately removed, so all it is doing is being a conduit for a particular application ... the employee is there to do the application, not have to deal with blue screen of death, or any other "features" of Windows

Answer 2

...Office Max doesn't allow employees to go online because Office Max can't ...
he/she is talking about his single store
policy. OM permits employees to go on line; i Have been in the store and
they went on line there to clarify
a situation.

BUT you also asked about dumb policies?

I could not do justice to such a fantastic query in under 1 week.

YOU should ask this of everyone and write a book about it.

every company in the world has policies that are seen as dumb to
some employees and essential to
the officers--who have different
people to satisfy! too bad that the
ones who are writing them can't
talk to the recipients of the policies BEFORE putting such policies into effect.

I will help

I am writiing a book called
"Unintended consequences."

Answer 3

The co. I used to work for had this stupid rule that you could not send out an email building wide...like people used to to announce someone who had a baby or a death notice, things like that. You had to tell your manager and S/He could send it out. When my mom died, who also worked there, I could not send out the funeral info myself. I had to tell my manager and she sent it out to the rest of the building.

We also had a ridiculous dresscode. We could not wear open toed shoes, shoes without socks or hosery, or tanks. Some tanks I understand, but but not all tanks look like you're on your way to the beach. We worked in an office environment so there was no reason for the open toed shoe or socks/hosery rule.