Recently, we rounded up some of the dumbest rules people in retail and service had to follow, and now we're back with more from the comments!
Here are 28 more infuriatingly stupid rules employees were forced to follow.
1. "I used to sell maternity dresses for women mainly for evening parties or weddings — small market I know, lol. I quit because my boss would tell me to do this: 1. Ask for the date of the occasion. 2. Convince them to buy a smaller but 'stretchy' dress so they have to come back to get another one due to obviously growing a baby."
"These dresses were NOT cheap. She bought them wholesale for like $80 and sold them to hormonal pregnant women for $445+. Sometimes two! She would say, 'Oh, you don’t want to wear the same dress twice, and you’ll probably be pregnant again, so it’s an investment!' I quit after a few months of not getting any commission and tricking pregnant ladies into paying wild amounts for a decent dress."
2. My first job was at Bath & Body Works in college. They gave us a list of things we should say to specific people. The one that made me cringe hardest was to suggest massage oil if we saw a male and female shopping together."
"But what if they weren’t even a couple? Plus, I was 18, but looked younger, and didn’t feel comfortable suggesting something obviously meant to be sexual to people much older than me. I’m 40 now and would definitely be weirded out if a teenager suggested that to me and my husband."
3. "When I was a teenager, I worked at a large department store (since sold to Macy's). We were always supposed to address a customer by name, if they paid by card or check, which was most of the time. So I would have to say something like, 'Have a nice day, Ms. Smith' when they were done. And they had secret shoppers to bust people that didn't do this."
"Not the worst rule in the world, unless I didn't know how to pronounce the name. As someone whose name gets messed up often, I'd rather people not try unless they know."
4. "I fell down the stairs and was paralyzed from the neck down. I had work the next day, and I couldn't use my phone in the ICU, and also couldn't move my arms. So my friend called my boss from outside the ward before my morning shift started and explained what happened. Boss was so pissed. I somehow recovered (no one was sure what happened, but I gradually became not paralyzed). When I went back a few weeks later, my boss said that in the future, I had to personally call in sick, not get a friend to do it for me."
5. "I worked at a well-known chain jewelry store, and we had looks we had to wear. Every day we had to listen to a recording telling us what jewelry to put on and model for our shift, including earrings. Those would then be wiped down with an alcohol wipe and put back on display. So anything you bought from this store was probably worn for hours by an employee. This was in the early 2000s."
6. "In the late '90s, I worked at Staples in the financial district of my city, which was a total ghost town on the weekends. I mean, we'd be lucky if we saw five customers ALL day. Anyway, I was the only cashier that was ever scheduled to work on the weekends, and I wasn't allowed to sit or read the magazines that were near the register. If I was caught, I'd get reprimanded."
"The boss expected me to spend the day organizing and reorganizing the snacks and magazines, and wipe down the counter. Things never went well when I'd tell him that one could only do those things so many times."
7. "The most infuriating was working at a cafe chain and having to throw out the baked goods that didn’t sell that day. We couldn’t eat it, take it home, donate it, or even just hand it out to homeless people right outside. It was the worst rule."
8. "I worked at a McDonald's the summer before I started college. The manager had a rule that ALL female employees had to wear a hairnet, but male employees only had to wear a hairnet if their hair touched their collar."
"I asked why this was (like, girl hair is different from boy hair? Can you tell the difference if it lands on your food?), and I was told that it was a rule from corporate. So because I lived in my state's capital city, I called the state ombudsperson, who referred me to the Equal Opportunity Commission, and of course, the rule got changed, but the manager was...explosively pissed off. He couldn't do anything about it because the policy was illegal. I even got offered a JOB at the EEOC in that state, but told the woman I had to leave for college. When I went back to apply for a summer job after my first year (because I AM that dumb), the manager took a REALLY long time in the back, and then came out to tell me, 'We're not hiring.' Anyway, I'm a doctor now, so whatever, right?"
9. "I worked at a retail store, and their rules were to list their company on our personal social media and delete/unfriend and unfollow anyone we know who worked at a competitor's business."
10. "When I worked in a Jack Astor's, they...would tell you if you weren't wearing enough makeup or tell you to try a push-up bra. The uniforms were one-size-fits-none. They said, 'You should look like you're going to the party, not coming from it.'"
"And they refused to pay overtime, even though they're legally required to. They'd just adjust your hours even if you worked five 14-hour days in a row, which is wage theft and fraud."
11. "I worked at a neighborhood bar in Houston. When I started the job, they changed my name from Erin to Erica because there was already an Erin who worked there. The other Erin quit, and I had to keep going by Erica because that’s how everyone already knew me."
12. "I worked in a 24-hr medical call center, and we were not allowed to answer the phone with 'hello.' It had to be 'good morning/afternoon/evening.' And they were very strict about times, too, so as a night shift worker, at 12:01 a.m., I was required to switch from 'good evening' to 'good morning,' and I'd lose points on my call quality monitoring if I didn't say the right one."
"Let me tell you, a lot of people are surprised when you answer the phone with 'good morning' at 1 a.m., and even though they're probably calling the doctor at that hour to page the on-call because they aren't feeling well, many of them will still pause to comment on how weird it is."
13. "I worked a customer-service-heavy job where we had to say 'my pleasure' instead of 'you're welcome,' which felt so unnatural and gross, all because my manager was a weirdo who may have time travelled from another decade."
"This wasn't a store or call center either; our clients were mostly Silicon Valley tech companies."
14. "I once had a manager who told us to push the [store credit] cards more, even if the customer says no, because a no could be changed into a yes."
"Me saying, 'That’s not what I learned in sex ed' was not well received, but I ended up getting the store manager in trouble with her boss over making people sign a 'contract' basically saying that they could be fired if they don’t get X amount of applications (very much against corporate policy)."
15. "The one I hated most was when I worked at Lane Bryant in the 1990s. You couldn't tell customers that the store was closing or even hint at it, and people would come in five minutes before we were supposed to close and just stay FOREVER. It sucked."
16. "I used to work for a Disney Store. Just a mall one, not one of the ones at the parks. It was fun, but oh my gosh, there were so many rules. We basically had to follow all the rules that park cast members do, including no pointing and no saying 'I don't know.'"
"It was usually fine, except one incident where I had a couple of guests ask me the rare question I didn't have the answer to, and when I called Guest Services to ask, I couldn't get through, so I sent them away with: 'I'm not a hundred percent sure on that, but here's a phone number for you — they can definitely answer your question!' Apparently, I was unhelpful, according to what they told Guest Services when they called to complain about me."
17. "At Browns Socialhouse, I got fired because I refused to buy new shoes when they changed the dress code to get us to wear high heels. As a server. Can you imagine?"
"This was also after being harassed by the franchise owner/GM, who eventually ended up getting forced out by the company after having an affair with an underaged hostess."
18. "I worked at Abercrombie & Fitch back in the mid 2000s, and we could only wear certain colors, like blue and gray."
19. "I worked somewhere with bag checks. They'd also count how much money you had on you and take note of any electrical items. The process was repeated for breaks and on closing."
"They also had a rule that you had to approach customers and ask how they were, and if you could assist them in any way in a cheery manner. It was a pawn shop — the amount of times that customers told me to f*** off and die was horrible."
20. "I worked at a department store in the '90s. They made us use clear purses but did not supply them. I worked for another mall store in the '90s-2000s that made us lift up our pant legs and visibly pat ourselves down any time we exited the store, to prove we weren’t stealing anything."
"I worked at Macy's and once was taken into a back secret room by LP (Loss Prevention, a group of plainclothes employees they hire to pretend to be CIA and stop theft lol) and accused of stealing because my mom stopped by and gave me a non-clear bag of some mail that had come to her house."
21. "I work in a service that caters to older rich people. We have a lot of rules with COVID policies, but if the people breaking the rules are big donors to the company, we are told to look the other way. We’re also told to apologize for any dissatisfaction, even if it has nothing to do with us. Bad weather? It’s cold inside? The performance is starting late? Valet was slow getting their car? Apologize."
22. "My mom works in the weed industry, and the 'look clean' rule is universal. The men can't even have stubble, and if they have a 5 o'clock shadow, they are given a razor and told to shave before work."
23. "We had a 'card everyone' policy at the Australian-themed steakhouse I worked at in college. The best part? You got told off by a manger if you didn’t card at all; you got told off by a manager if you DID card, but the person looked older, and you got told off extra if the person who you carded got angry and complained to the manager that they were carded!"
"No matter what you did, you were always doing it wrong."
24. "I worked at a place once where we were not allowed to have food with any kind of 'strong odor' in the break room. This included anything fried, anything with onions or garlic, vegetables, fish, anything spicy, anything grilled, the list goes on and on."
"A newbie made the mistake of eating some teriyaki beef jerky. For two or three days after, our manager complained the smell of it was making her nauseous. Only she could detect it. I only ever saw her eating the same lunch every day: two lemon yogurts and a Diet Sprite."
25. "At my last job, in the dress code, they said, 'No extreme piercings,' but did not define what they considered extreme. I got my septum pierced, and they threatened to not schedule me again unless I took it out. Meanwhile, another girl was hired with her septum pierced, and they never said anything to her."
26. "I worked at a restaurant that wouldn’t allow us to say 'hey guys' if there was a woman or girl in the party. We would get in trouble all the time, and I’m from the Midwest, and that’s a normal greeting for us!"
"At another bar I worked at, we got in trouble if we called them 'bar rags' instead of 'bar towels.' I mean, I get it sounds better, but to get in trouble for it? Stupid."
And finally, just leaving managers with a final message...
"A few year back, a friend and I were early for a movie, so we were looking at some nearby shops, and went into a Francesca's. Never shopped there, but we saw something that seemed vaguely cute. But the second we stepped in, an early twenties-aged sales assistant was ALL OVER US. Just nonstop trying to push things on us and get us into a fitting room. And very clearly, it was what she had been told she HAD to do. Ugh. We left fast. Message to management: Your stupid 'rules' for employees are painful and awkward, and they do drive customers away."
Now, we want to know what's the stupidest policy you had to follow at your retail/service job? Let us know in the comments below!
Submissions have been edited for length/clarity.