This is funny and all, and I don’t want to turn this into one of those situations where the thread turns into a pitting of the OP, but I have to question Triskadecamus about his general work habits and his apparent disdain for his company.
Triskadecamus, are you putting the new cover sheets on your TPS reports?
By the way, have you read the memo about Terrible Popcorn Scorching? Please read that Terrible Popcorn Scorching memo, mmmkay?
Yeah.
I get memos and things like that all the time. I sign them and send them in. Why? Because:
At annual review time, whether or not you signed stupid-assed things like this matters. It matters for your final rating, it matters for my raise, and it matters for my bonus. Not signing a form saying “I promise I won’t burn popcorn” could very possibly cost me thousands of dollars per year. That’s a no-brainer.
In this economy, at a company which will fire you for wearing the wrong color shoes, you better believe I do all the stupid, meaningless bullshit like this. I’d hate to find myself next year wearing a hairnet and asking “would you like to supersize that?” because I didn’t sign a stupid bullshit form promising to wipe my ass or not poke myself with sharp objects.
I know the OP must feel secure in their job. Some people find that their job is not nearly as secure as they thought it was, however. The SDMB is rife with tales of “OMFG I got fired!”
Yeah, it’s the microwaves fault that grown adults can’t make popcorn without the fire department being called.
I HATE WITH THE FIRE OF 10,000 SUNS the idea of collective punishment in the workplace. It is lazy management. And I have stunted my career on many occasions by making that known.
Look, you know who the stupid fucker is who is
1> Burning popcorn
2> stealing coffee from the executive boardroom
3> Texting under his desk like he thinks no one sees it.
PUNISH THAT PERSON.
Don’t pretend you don’t know who it is, don’t play EMPRESS OF ALL DRAMA and stir up a big scene threatening everyone’s jobs or taking away the microwave or the coffee pot. Stop pissing off everyone else in the place. Do your fucking job and deal with the one individual (or the few individuals) who are causing the problem and leave the rest of us the fuck alone.
Is that how you crazy kids are calling it these days ? 
MEMO
From: Human Resources
To: All Employees
RE: Fire Hazards
Dear Employees,
It has come to our attention that certain workers are expressing umbrage towards certain Corporate Policies. While a healthy workplace relies on some degree of feedback, we must henceforth prohibit any such expression that involves temperatures approaching that required for nuclear fusion. We recognize that some employees are capable of maintaining proper safety protocols. However, other employees have been engaged in practices that replicate the heat of multiple suns, and in some cases, multiple thousands. For the safety of everyone at the workplace, we are instilling a policy that prohibits such displays of angst.
If you have any questions about this policy, please consult your immediate supervisor or your HR representative.
Do microwaves cause stupidity?
We had this same problem at work with microwaves causing fires or at least causing fire alarms. Mostly it was popcorn, but sometimes it was a TV dinner or something else. The solution here was to force you to watch the microwave. You are not allowed to put the popcorn in the microwave and walk away. You must stand there and watch it pop. I work in a large building with thousands of people and probably dozens of microwaves that all say “Do NOT leave the microwave unattended.” It seems to have worked.
I’m still sticking with my second solution - microwaves and management thrown off the building.
Where I worked, we gutted the microwaves and used the cases for RF test chambers (with nice easily-closeable radio-wave-proof doors). The electronic parts were. presumably, tossed (though with the right kind of impedance matching, you could turn the magnetron into a dandy microwave pistol…)
I 100% support this post. My work is the same. Any small issue has to be given a thorough ass-reaming by management so they can put it in their performance evaluation as something they did. Anything from a new memo you’re going to write regularly to an training you attended gets touted by the incompetent management as an action. They’ve banned fans at my work; no explanation, no discussion, and only the other managers got the memo instead of having it sent to everyone. It came out of the blue right before summer, written by a couple of sycophants who probably decided it while shitfaced in their lonely masturbation dens.
“Pyrocorn Maniacs” bwahahaha!
There is only one microwave in our building, which buried deep in the lair of our office manager (and none of the rest of us use it because it’s not worth getting the stinkeye from her when you ask to use it). Being a health nut, she typically brings her own lunches and some of them are on the pungent side. Normally it doesn’t bother me because I like the smell of onions and spices and things.
Once, I don’t know what the hell she had in there, but it smelled like week-old trout in toejam sauce spiced with mustard gas, with a side of garlic. It was so bad that another coworker and I had our office windows and the front door propped open (in November) to try to clear the air.
The boss actually told her not to ever, EVER bring that shit into the building again.
Many years ago, we got a note from HR that said that in order to save electricity, all PCs were to be turned off over night. Also, Security would turn off any running computers that they found. Unfortunately, there were a few of us who ran simulations overnight that took a few hours to complete. My notes about this to HR went unanswered. Fortunately, Security was too lazy to actually hunt down and turn off running computers.
This is what actually happens when you put a marshmallow peep in the microwave oven:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Cj3hGpCHYQ
Oh I loved that sort of thing back in my IT days.
Angry Red Faced Manager/Director/VP: So whose fault was it that such-and-such did not get completed on time?
Me: Whatever corporate baboon decided that my computer needed to be turned off at night and then made sure that it was turned off after I left.
Baboon: Why didn’t you complete this during your regular working hours?
Me: Last time I ran it, it took 17 hours.
I think at one point that we had one message from the energy saving people to turn our computers off at night and another from IT that said to leave them on so that they could push updates.
Anyone ever mention to them that the garbage thieves were in fact garbage men paid to remove the trash?
I’ve been dealing with stupid corporate office policies for almost 30 years. I gave up complaining or trying to explain why the policies didn’t make sense. The best way I found of coping was to report every single violation, real and/or imagined to my manager. Almost without fail, they eventually decide they don’t really want my input after all.
Band name!