cutlery thief, the indignity of the font, and other very big work battles over very small things

We recently discussed very big office battles over very small things, and here are 15 of the funniest stories you shared.

1. The new broker

A couple of years ago, we changed benefit brokers. Not benefits, just the brokers. We sent out a quick announcement and had them come in so everyone could meet them. This did not affect people’s coverage. They actually got a dedicated phone number they could use for issues.

People went bananas. Like we killed their brother. They liked the old broker. How could we be so disloyal? Why do they need a special phone number, they used to be able to just email the broker? This is going to be a disaster.

Readers, it wasn’t a disaster. Our rates actually went down that year because our new brokers were much better than out old brokers.

Still to this day, there are employees who refuse to call the resource line and email me their questions. Even though it would be faster for them if they just called. And I still have one employee who tells me, every chance they get, that Old Broker was so nice and they don’t even know New Broker.

2. The thermostat wars

We endured months of full-blown thermostat wars. No one could agree on the “right” temperature. Employees signaled their discomfort through clothing – some bundled up in hats and blankets, while others stripped down to borderline HR violations. Signs appeared over the thermostat, then responses to the signs, then sarcastic haikus about the signs.

Eventually, the truth came out – the thermostats weren’t connected to anything! The temperature was controlled from a central system in the basement. The entire office had been arguing over a legacy plastic box that wasn’t even connected anymore.

3. The trash cans

A couple years ago, our office went from single trash and recycling cans at each cubicle to a few central garbage / recycling / compost stations. (About three big stations for ~100 people, and the furthest you would be away from one would be 50 steps. They’re all closer than our restrooms.) In service of the new stations, the individual containers were taken away.

My coworkers lost their minds. “I can’t believe they would do this to us!” “What are we supposed to do now?” “What if I’m on a call and I need to throw something away?!” People were going into the storage closet and taking back the individual bins, bringing in bins from home, and just non-stop complaining for about three weeks.

4. The timekeeping policy

The government agency I worked for switched from 6- to 15-minute timekeeping, and staff responded as though they were being told to take a 50% pay cut. People filed union grievances, shouted about it in agency town halls, and posted anti-15-minute-timekeeping manifestos on our internal website. It was truly bizarre how heated the reaction was, especially considering that the new timekeeping policy was significantly more generous to staff in terms of rounding up or down on sign in/sign out times.

The furor didn’t die down until management told everyone that we were the last agency in the federal government using 6-minute increments and the specialized software was costing our already massively underfunded agency an extra million dollars per year.

5. The etiquette classes

At one point I worked in, let’s say, the Teapot Regulations department, which worked closely with the Teapot Contracts department. The two department heads loathed each other and it came out in various small, silly ways. But the most ridiculous one was when the departments decided to host a joint holiday open house for our constituencies in other parts of the workplace, and Contracts Head tried to put her foot down and tell Compliance Head that she needed to make our entire department go to ETIQUETTE CLASSES before we could show our faces at the department holiday party.

There was absolutely no reason anyone needed to go to etiquette classes. First of all because everyone was a damn grown-up and capable of behaving as such for the length of a work party, and second of all because this was very much a “people standing around with little plates of cheese cubes” party, it wasn’t some sort of sit-down eight-course thing where someone was going to shock the guests by not knowing which fork to use for escargots.

They had SUCH a fight over it. It was incredible. (We did not end up having to go to etiquette classes, obviously, because what the actual hell.)

6. The bookshelf of meaning

When I worked in a publishing job, there was a bookcase in the hallway that had gone unused for many years. It became a trinket shelf. Story goes it started with a departing employee placing a couple small desk toys on the shelf that they didn’t want to take with them. Others followed suit, and then current staff started putting things they didn’t want on the shelf too, and it became a tradition … or really just a shelf full of junk no one wanted. It was an eyesore, and I always hoped visitors wouldn’t notice.

Eventually we needed to use the bookshelf. My boss told me I could toss the stuff and use the bookshelf for, you know, books. Well, some staff saw me placing the stuff in a garbage can and asked who gave me the authority to remove the stuff. I asked if they wanted any of it, they said no. They complained to HR, who was fine with me moving the stuff. But in order to avoid further outrage, I sent out an email giving people about two weeks to take items they wanted and remaining items would be tossed because we needed the space.

Some staff complained that two weeks wasn’t long enough because some staff might be on vacation for two weeks (no one was?) and wouldn’t have a chance to claim trinkets. Other staff did take some items. I got a lot of complaints and they went like this: “Why can’t you just leave it there, it’s not hurting anything.” “Do you want any of it?” “No, but (more complaining).”

Most of it was still left at the end of the two weeks. On the aforementioned day, I again placed the items in a garbage can at my desk. One colleague saw them in my garbage can and proceeded to dig items out that he wanted while muttering complaints about how I should have asked him directly about it because I should have known he wanted it (he admitted he ignored the company-wide email because he didn’t think I’d really follow through). I was sitting right there working as he kept saying, “Ugh, gross” as he picked out all my used tissues out of the trash can (I had a cold! it was indeed gross!) to get to the items. He left the tissues all over the floor. I cleaned it up.

But at least we never had to talk about the stupid junk shelf again. Just kidding, I still had to listen to nostalgic sighs of “I can’t believe it’s really gone…” when people walked by.

7. The yoga parkers

The office at a previous job had a very small private parking lot, with ample signage saying that only people working in that building could park there and all others would be towed. However, there were a number of people who attended yoga classes in another building nearby who would always park in our lot. Even stranger, a few people were notorious for parking their cars in front of other cars, blocking other cars from moving until that person drove away.

Keeping an eye out for “yoga parkers” was a company pastime. One coworker had a desk near the window and the moment a yoga parker settled in, the coworker would send a message about it and people would rush to be the one to call the tow truck on them. Window Coworker then switched to only telling the office manager about it when it happened, and people complained heavily. It was unfair, they said! The yoga parkers are a menace, everyone should be allowed to help stop them!

A few people switched to working in the conference room, which had windows overlooking the parking lot so they could be the first one to call the towing company. You could tell when it happened because suddenly the conference room would get unusually loud and aggressive. When the execs told people to stop hogging the conference room, coworkers started wasting time by regularly taking long breaks to walk through the parking lot like unpaid security staff.

The yoga parkers eventually caught on to this, but instead of switching to finding parking elsewhere, they figured out how long it usually took for the towing company to arrive and would run out to move their cars before that, drive around the block a few times until the truck left, then go back and park in their previous location. It was astonishing to see people carrying yoga mats run as if they were competing at the Olympics. Once, a coworker parked in front of a yoga parker’s car so they couldn’t leave. The yoga parker in question hid in a bush nearby, waited until the tow truck arrived and the coworker moved, then sprung out and bolted over. The tow truck person did nothing as the yoga parker drove away.

Eventually there was talk about sending a mole to spy on the employees of the yoga studio. People regularly spent time talking about it at lunches, plotting who to send and what would be a convincing cover and whether the mole should aspire to work their way up the studio ranks (yes, really). Planning this spying mission even came up in an all-staff meeting, although the CEO was smart enough to tell people to stop. I don’t know if a mole was ever actually sent to the yoga studio, but I doubt it.

The owner of the studio did eventually come by to try to make things right … by offering to trade use of the entire parking lot in exchange for free yoga classes for the executive teams of every business that worked in the building. This happened a few times before someone figured out that the owner was using it as an excuse to see if the most aggressive members of the Volunteer Parking Patrol were in, because they could use the lot for longer on days the VPP were out.

It took a year and a half for the yoga parkers to stop using the lot.

8. The copier paper

We had a marketing exec QUIT because we switched to Staples brand paper for the copier and it was “the wrong color white.” This wasn’t the production print machine, we let her keep her preferred paper in that machine. This was the copier that was used 99% of the time for internal stuff. She took her complaint all the way to the CEO, who told her no, so she quit on the spot. It was a wild day.

9. The GIF debate

At my previous organization, our weekly web and social media campaign pitch meeting had to ban discussion of whether GIF is pronounced with a hard or soft g because it would invariably derail the entire meeting. We were instructed to call them “gif-jifs”.

10. The indignity of the font

For decades, a high ranking administrator insisted that Times New Roman was the “official font” for all communications within our unit. Long after she retired, a new director expressed a preference for a clean, modern, ubiquitous sans serif font. That preference was endorsed by the comms team, who noted that it was more legible and compliant with good practice for accessibility, translated well across common online communication platforms, etc. etc.

Few people noticed. However, one person wrote a fiery memo (in Times New Roman) complaining about the “indignity” of the new font and threatened to take the issue up with higher-level authorities who were perceived to have a strong interest in the respectable representation of the organization. (They did not care.)

This person brought it up repeatedly (always in Times New Roman). I was tasked to respond to these complaints. Each time, I used the new font, increasing the pt. size in each response. I think I got to 17pt. before our correspondence ceased.

11. The cutlery thief

I work in a legal office (in-house counsel) of a large organization. We are about 10 people, and we have our own building, and within that building is a very small and shoddily stocked kitchenette. Within this kitchenette is a set of mismatched dishes — some random plates and bowls, and one butter knife, two dull steak knives, about six spoons, and one fork. They’re all mismatched and likely yard sale finds — I have no idea how they wound up in our office or who initially supplied them.

I often bring my lunch and I often forget utensils, so one day I used the fork (I always wash and return when done). As I was finishing up my lunch, the big boss — the head attorney — starting raising a ruckus because said fork was missing and he needed it. He sounded absolutely irate and began badgering the legal secretary about it. I’m hearing this all from around the corner, and while I’m not proud of it, I silently slid the fork into my desk drawer and listened to him rage for a good five minutes about people in the office stealing forks. It was not his fork, to be clear, but he sure thought it was, and I wasn’t in the mood to be berated over my use of the communal office fork, so I just kept my mouth shut until he finally stormed away.

He then sent out an email saying that if people are going to “steal” forks, we all needed to be responsible for making sure the kitchen is fully stocked and start pitching in, either to buy a set of utensils or to keep the kitchenette stocked with plastic cutlery. Our office manager said she’d just add plastic cutlery to the office supply order, but oh no, big boss was not having — we needed to pay for it ourselves. (He made some excuse about how the organization wouldn’t allow such a purchase, even though the office manager pointed out that it would definitely fall under the “supplies” category and the cost was low enough to be justifiable.) Now, this demand that we start pitching in for utensils was coming from a man who easily earned 2.5 times what the other attorneys made, and 5 times my (and the other support staff’s) salary and could have just ordered a cheap set of cutlery off Amazon Prime each month and hardly noticed the bill. This pissed everyone off, particularly the support staff, but no one wanted to call it out so instead, cutlery just started to vanish. I had returned the fork on the sly a few hours after the meltdown, but the next day, it was gone again … along with half the spoons. The knives disappeared soon after, which was a real blow come bagel day, when we all shared the one lone remaining spoon to spread cream cheese on our bagels. Finally, there was no more cutlery, everyone in the office was complaining, but no one was willing to shell out their own money for cutlery and the big boss admitted defeat … and allowed the office manager to buy plastic cutlery.

Months later, the big boss’s executive assistant found our old stash of cutlery in the boss’s private bathroom. Unclear as to whether he took it himself to try to force our hands, or if it was planted by some unidentified cutlery thief. I have never fessed up (at work) to my part in instigating this whole mess, but now we have enough forks to go around!

12. The ice machine

My company has exact specifications when it comes to developing a new office space – the color of the carpet, the types of forks you buy, the whole nine yards. We’re located in many states, so before they put these specifications in place, offices just ran wild with their preferences. In my office, that wild thing was an ice machine. We love our ice machine, we are obsessed with our ice machine. It is a core part of our breakroom and when it breaks people will buy bags of ice to put in the freezer until it’s fixed.

A few years ago we outgrew our original office space and needed to move into a new location. During the retrofitting process of the new space, our office manager let slip that corporate wasn’t going to let us have an ice machine and the office flipped its collective lid. Someone made a petition and got every single person in our office to sign and sent it to the corporate facilities person in charge. Multiple senior team leads emailed the CEO of the company and complained. Someone (possibly me, don’t tell), made Save Our Ice Machine Now! protest posters and put them up in the break room on the fridge, ice maker, and doors.

After two weeks, corporate relented and let us have an ice machine on the grounds of “maintaining office culture,” and updated their policy for the entire firm to include allowance for elements that are unique to individual offices that don’t infringe on like, the look of the brand, etc.

13. The tracking board

My healthcare organization has many hospitals and surgery centers. Over the years, each area got to make their own decisions on how they wanted the surgery tracking board to behave. Most of the customization was around the colors – one area wanted the color to be a light green when the patient entered the operating room, while another wanted it to flash.

The high level of customization slowed down the entire system, so our software vendor pushed us to standardize the colors and rules. There was OVER A YEAR of meetings related to the tracking boards, with input meticulously gathered from each location.

When we finally took the changes live, end users melted down. They slammed our helpdesk with tickets. They insisted that standardization of colors could cause clinical harm because they could no longer trust the colors (even though there is also a text column with the status and the changes were circulated well beforehand).

I remember two specific tickets: one user said he could no longer use the tracking board because the red color was giving him a migraine (he absolutely did not need to constantly stare at it all day), and another said the color we chose for a specific post-surgery phase looked too much like poop and thought it was a joke in poor taste.

The colors did not change back, but we got tickets about it for at least six months.

14. The seafood tower

Our holiday party moved to the same location for a several years, a nice event space with cocktail hour then a buffet dinner. The cocktail hour included a seafood tower with an ice sculpture full of shrimp and other seafood offered over a table of ice. Well, this must have been included as an add-on in the initial deal for the space, so one year we showed up and there was no seafood tower. There were passed apps, crudite and charcuterie, an open bar. Plenty to go around, plus a full dinner after. Well, the uproar from the staff was unbelievable. The CEO was aghast and was searching out the planners AT the party as if it was some kind of obvious mistake. The following year, the seafood tower was back. We’ve since changed locations and ditched the seafood tower, but people still talk about it.

15. The grief training

We’re having a mild reorg. No one is losing their jobs, no one is being demoted, no one is really seeing their day-to-day change slightly – just teams are getting shuffled slightly.

In response, our management led us through a training on the stages of grief.

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