I guess you have to hang around for an extra twenty days without pay before you are allowed to go look for another job 
My workplace is bizarre. Many odd rules, just there, I assume, as a control issue. I’m just a regular office drone.
My boss took me to an empty desk and said “That’s how I want your desk to look at the end of the day”. Co-worker had a difficult time seeing in her cube, she asked to bring in a small light from home and the initial answer was no.
The only women that are hired are for Assistant/secretary type jobs. Company has never had an employee handbook, because of some incidences with me, they are finally writing one. My father died while I was at work on Saturday, company did not have bereavement policy. They ultimately gave me a couple days off, but they came back and said “ya know those couple hours on Saturday you missed, you have to make those up”.
We had a Xmas lunch and the one & only temp we had was not included in the lunch. She walked out of the office crying. Why exclude her like that, fine, don’t make her eligible for the door prizes or the giftcard, but at least let her eat lunch w/ us.
Our hours are officially to 5:05, not 5. Apparently they don’t want to be cheated out of that extra work time.
I kept my cellphone on vibrate on my desk, I was told to put it away, either in my pocket or in the desk.
I work one Saturday morning a month, we have to each write e-mail to owner when we get arrive in the morning. My boss, Accounting Manager, was told that he was not allowed to write one e-mail verifying attendance for the whole group. In other words, the owners don’t trust their own middle-management to be honest.
I could go on for quite a while, but all it does is rile me up. At least I have a job.
For heaven’s sake, the point of taking a break is to get away from your co-workers. For me, anyway.
The point was to break you away from that habit which wouldn’t ever work for me or many other people.
The other really odd thing about Bose is that each sub-group in the department had to put on a “skit” a little more than once a year as part of a competition between different departments. To call them skits is the understatement of the year. They are much more similar to making of the movie Titanic and are taken very seriously. They were performed in a private amphitheater with all of the best Bose audio and visual equipment complete with an audience of hundreds of people and technicians working the sound, lighting, and visuals. I chose our theme as a take off on Blue Man Group before they became so popular and wrote most of the script. The entire effect wasn’t that far off from a real Blue Man Group show. That sounds cool until you know how seriously it is taken there and that you have to spend nights and weekends pulling it off as well as finding outside help like prop designers and carpenters. Other teams did things like have airliner cockpit mockups built complete with crew uniforms with giant visuals and audio to support it.
I’m like Qadgop. We’ve liberalized our cellphone policy in the last year. You’re now allowed to have a cellphone on the property as long as you keep it turned completely off and have it locked in your car out in the parking lot. Anything else is a minimum ninety day suspension.
Qadgop works in a prison. What sort of work do you do?
This is my thinking too. I’m pretty sure drivers aren’t allowed to smoke while driving, but they’re allowed to keep their cigarettes in their pockets or even take one out of the pack while on the bus, to light up once they’re off the bus. Getting this nitpicky is just going to make people angry. People are much more likely to follow reasonable rules than ones that inconvenience for the sake of appearance.
I used to work in a mailroom. I ate my unpaid lunch alone, in a small room, surrounded by stacks of junk mail and magazines ready to be tossed out. I was written up for thumbing through one of the magazines during my lunch.
I think the key part of this is recommendation for termination, as opposed to mandatory termination. I would presume that the former means that management has the option of whether or not to terminate the employee, but it’s not mandatory that they do so. Presumably management can take the circumstances into account; taking the device out of your bag while you’re exiting the bus is not the same as sitting in the bus and using it. Also, if the employee has been repeatedly reminded that he is breaking the rules but persists in doing so then he might be subject to termination.
I have a 10-minute video of a CTA bus driver talking on his cell phone while driving the bus. I was sitting in front of the rear doors and could see him perfectly reflected in the big mirror drivers use to see the passengers. I videoed him for 10 minutes straight, zoomed in on the mirror. He wasn’t even using a headset, he was holding the phone to his ear and driving the multi-ton bus with one hand!
He was paying such close attention to things that it took him 10 minutes to notice a passenger blatantly pointing a camera at him. He was square in the mirror from my view, which means I was square in his vision, too, if he was paying attention in the slightest.
I think it’s sad that such nitpicky-sounding rules have to be made, but considering safety and how people try so hard to get away with selfish and stupid crap, I totally get where they’re coming from, and I hope the biggest rulebreakers get caught and terminated as examples. I’m one of the “cell phones are not needed to be answered and used every second” types, and I find people who think their phones can’t be turned off to be endlessly exasperating. They ALL have power buttons, people!
The over 20 dead in a train in Valencia recently don’t think it’s draconian (the driver, who was among the dead, received a call while he was exiting the station).
I’ve worked in many situations where we had to establish rules and the thing is, “no phones AT ALL while in your vehicle” is much more clear than “your cellphone can be used under the following circumstances (list of 115 points)”. Given the amount of rules lawyers and people who think “it’s all right when I do it” out there, you need the rules to be clear enough to make glass feel opaque by comparison.
ETA: Skald, IIRC Nemo works in a prison too, but not as a doctor.
Digger1914 writes:
> The only women that are hired are for Assistant/secretary type jobs.
This sounds like blatant sexual discrimination, and if it is, you should seek legal recourse.
Not true. My phone, a Palm Treo Pro, can not be turned off unless you take the battery out. It can be put into “flight mode” but you can’t shut the power off to the unit itself. I agree with your point though, I’m just as likely to leave the thing at home if I don’t expect to need it.
I work on a government contract and it is against regulations for us to take any personal photos at work. This is unfortunate because we see some pretty cool stuff.
Way too lenient.
I am pushing very hard for a cell phone ban in my work place,and I just work in a kitchen.
The same.
My job requires me to have a cell phone pretty much all the time. And really in this day and age, most people carry one so the idea of using a pay phones seems a bit silly. But I can understand forbidding them if there is a safty or security issue.
Honestly, I’ve never worked in a place that was as bizarre and strict as what people are describing. The only exception I can think of is this weird cult-like consulting firm I worked at in my mid-20s. My team apparently had a rule where if you were late to a meeting you had to wear this big wall clock like Flava Flav. And the one time it became an issue I simply told the project manager that “she was out of her fucking mind if she thought I would wear that ridiculous thing.”
Were you allowed to go the bathroom alone or did that have to be in groups too? :eek:
Yeah, I think that this has to be the reason for the “no phone out of the bag while on the bus” thing. It also stops the “I wasn’t actually using it, I was about to carry it off the bus” thing, when they had really just been using it. I mean, the rule is a bit silly, but it does make sense to have it be that way.
My company has a strict policy on cell-phone use while driving, which applies to any company-supplied phones or vehicles, or while driving on company property. It includes hands-free devices. It’s a pain, but it’s a sensible policy. (I wonder if it affects their liability insurance rates?) There are no restrictions on using phones when not driving.
Our policy may be strict but it’s not bizarre. Cell phones are serious contraband inside a prison so we have very strict procedures to keep people from bringing them in.
At my first job after the military, the company policy was no radios at your desk. It was a Monday - Friday job, and because I was on the phone so much I understood the need for the policy (I worked at an HVAC company, and was dealing with service calls & technicians all day).
During the summer we were shorthanded at work and I got behind on billing, so I decided to go into the office on a Saturday to catch up. Since I was alone in the office and the phones were on the answering service, I brought in my CD player so I could rock out while I worked. 2 hours into the stack of invoices, I was burning through the stack. I was focused on the computer, and didn’t hear anyone come up behind me. The owner tapped me on the shoulder and scared the hell out of me. He asked why I was there, then told me to read the company policy on radios at the desk.
I packed my stuff up and went home. I was on salary, so I wasn’t getting paid for being there…and if I couldn’t listen to music on my own time, I wasn’t going to be there. Eventually, that incident was used against me in my termination.