Is someone a rule breaker if they broke a rule that didn’t exist yet? Or are they a rule maker? Sure, they didn’t come up with the rule per se, but they were the reason for the rule being made. Brain twister aside, the people who shared their stories all have one thing in common—a rule didn’t exist until they came along. Some rules were meant to be broken, but these rules were bound to get made.
1. Don’t Play With The Props
So in fourth grade, we had this thing called wax museum where you dressed up as a historical figure and gave a presentation. My friend was Harry Houdini, so he had handcuffs. As 10 year olds do, we were messing with them and my friend put them on me. These were not the cheap plastic ones at the dollar store but the prop ones made from real metal. So, they got trapped and to cut a long story short, I found myself in the office with three individuals huddled around me trying to unlock the handcuffs using pens and a pumpkin carving tool. My sister said when she had to do the presentation there were no handcuffs allowed. Thanks Nathan for trapping me.
2. Save Some For The Rest Of Us
I used to work at a place that had unlimited coffee for their employees. Three weeks after I started working, I realized that I'd burned some bridges. There was a sign above the coffee maker that stated that employees were limited to three cups a day.
3. That Trick Only Works Once
At my old high school, teachers of AP courses are no longer allowed to adjust grades based on your performance on the AP test. Lots of teachers used to offer extra credit points if you passed the AP test at the end of the year. My AP English Comp teacher took it a step further and had the incentive that if you passed the AP English Comp test, you would automatically get your grades adjusted to an A. I decided to do zero work the whole year and failed both semesters. I passed the test at the end with a four and got them changed to A's. Word got out and it was immediately banned.
4. The Honor System Never Works
This happened quite a few years ago at my hairdresser's. So usually, as you'd expect, the order you get your haircut follows the first come, first serve rule. One day when I went there, some family came in after me and insisted they came first. I was sure I came first, and so was my hairdresser. The hairdresser called me up when it was my turn, which resulted in the other family causing a big scene.
To avoid the fuss, I just told my hairdresser he could serve them first, which resulted in me waiting for their entire family of five to get their haircuts before I could. My hairdresser could see that I was upset by the wait, so he cut my hair for free that day and the next time I went there, he had numbered cards in which you had to take so he knew what order people came in.
He still uses those cards today and every time I think to myself, “I did this".
5. There’s Always That One Person
My senior year in high school I had an English teacher who allowed all work to be turned in up to the last week of class. I turned in pretty much every assignment right about then, apart from the end-of-unit projects. Next semester, all the work for all units was due at the end of the unit. Sorry, future students (but can you blame me?).
6. A Long Time Coming
I was going to my first guitar lesson at school so I asked someone where the band room was. He pointed in its general direction, so I tried to open the door that led to the room he pointed at, but it was kind of hard to open. So I pushed harder, and lived to regret it. A giant bookcase came crashing down onto the floor. I have no idea why they put a huge bookcase in front of a push door, but now there’s a permanent sign on the door that says, “DO NOT OPEN THIS DOOR—EVER!!!”
7. Watch Your Step, Por Favor
My high school made us leave our backpacks in our lockers because my Spanish teacher tripped over mine and sprained her ankle. She was on crutches and everything. She was the worst, but I still felt really bad.
8. How Was That Not Already A Rule?
Years ago, when my sister was seven—I think—she went up to a teacher and asked to go to the bathroom and was told no. She walked to the back of the room and peed. The teacher freaked out and called our parents who showed up and reamed the teacher and principal out. This caused a district wide rule, which stated that teachers could not deny a student a bathroom break.
9. It Was Too Late
We were allowed to play whatever we wanted during the night shift, so music would blast out the store's PA system. It was good. Until the day I messed it up. We were running late because the delivery was delayed by three hours. We finished work on the shop floor just as the shop opened and we went to finish our work in the back of the shop. I neglected to grab my phone, as I normally did this on my way out the store. This meant my music was still playing as customers came into the store.
My music mix is mostly reggae and modern rap so it went unnoticed for a while. I could hear it through the walls and immediately knew I messed up. If you've ever heard "Spread Eagle Cross the Block" then you'll know why this was an issue. The opening lyrics are “I [blank] the music, I make it [blank], I [blank] the music with my serpent tongue”. Not very family friendly. I ran to the office but it was too late.
The store handed out roughly £600 ($747) worth of vouchers to the Karens who immediately started complaining. I was given a stern talking to.
10. Way More Than Expected
There was supposed to be a cap on vacation time at one of my previous employers.
I don’t know why no one ever picked up on this—it was a startup but people had still left before I did—but the vacation kept accruing. When I left, instead of two weeks banked there were five weeks in there and they had to pay me. I’m sure they could have jumped through hoops but there wasn’t anything in the handbook that had a cap in writing—although we were told it was two weeks—so they just paid me. The fact I didn’t leave on bad terms helped a lot, I’m sure.
When I got the check, it was for nine weeks, not five. Why nine, you ask? We also had a policy that after five years you could take a month long sabbatical. This was considered earned time. If you didn’t take it and left the company, it was payable as unused PTO. After I departed, they ensured diligently that no one had more than two weeks of PTO banked, introduced a new handbook, and discontinued the sabbatical for new employees moving forward—individuals who were already in the system were allowed to retain it.
11. Too Much Of A Good Thing
FINALLY MY TIME TO SHINE. So there's this local ice cream buffet near my house and along with MANY toppings, there is melted marshmallow as syrup, so a lot of times I would go there, get the biggest bowl, put only a small scoop of ice cream and LOAD my bowl with marshmallow. After about a month or so, they stopped serving the marshmallow and I thought they just stopped selling it. I was wrong. So, so wrong.
Until today, when I asked if they stopped selling it and the guy said that now you have to request the marshmallow, and someone will grab your bowl, take it inside and put the marshmallow on for you. He said they started doing that because there were "some people" who would go there to only eat the marshmallow and nothing else. I regret nothing.
12. Simulated Combat For Survival
My elementary school prohibited plastic knives in the cafeteria because my friends and I would collect a large quantity and act out Hunger Games scenes, playfully pretending to jab each other during lunch.
13. Just Doing What It Says
You can no longer write “whatever you want” for the creative component in the English exam.
In high school, we had to read the most boring book ever, The Secret River. I didn’t read it. So, for our SACs—statewide school assessed coursework, in Australia it basically defines your life—there is a creative exam where we have a visual prompt, and we were told you can “write whatever you want". What they meant was you could write a news article or a new perspective of one of the characters or a book review.
So I thought, screw it, I’m writing Secret River, the Musical. Two pages, 10 verses. None of the teachers knew what to do with it. Some thought I deserved an A because I was a mad genius, some thought I was clearly trying to hide the fact that I didn’t read the book. It has to be examined and cross-examined twice. But because they have to give everyone back their results AT THE SAME TIME, no one got their results back for a month. Everyone was upset.
When we got it back, I was told to never do that again.
14. Stay In School, Or Else
A friend and I were skipping state-mandated senior year testing because we didn't have homeroom classes. We were having breakfast at a restaurant—with our parents permission—when the school district superintendent and our high school principal got seated at the booth right behind us. After a few sarcastic remarks and a pair of instances where our parents interjected, we both walked away without any repercussions, although from the following year, the school collaborated with city and county law enforcement to prevent anyone else from repeating our actions.
As far as I know, they're still doing countywide restaurant sweeps some 20 odd years later.
15. Suffering So Others Wouldn’t
My first job ever was a bag boy at a national chain grocery store. I've been 6'2" since I was about 13, and cart doors are definitely not 6'2". I was returning carts one day, didn't duck low enough, slammed the top of my head into the frame around the cart door, which just so happened to have a screw sticking out of it, pointy side out. I knocked myself out, punctured the top of my skull and got a concussion.
I walked back in to work after gaining consciousness, holding my head, and then my manager pointed out that I was bleeding EVERYWHERE. They paid my hospital bills, and then after two weeks or so my name just disappeared off the schedule. ANYWAY, a little while later, I went back and there was a rubber bumper on the lip of the cart door and a sign that said "PLEASE WATCH YOUR HEAD" and apparently it was a company mandate nationwide.
Not sure if new safety regulations was the point of the post, but here we are!
16. Couldn’t Resist
Only two servings of fried okra allowed at my college cafeteria. I went to college in the South. I had never tasted fried okra before. I went crazy and couldn't stop myself. I ate plateful after plateful. I regret nothing.
Public Domain Pictures
17. Stay Grounded
No climbing trees. I climbed to the top of a tree—it was pretty big—and made a branch fall. It almost landed on top of a teacher's head. Needless to say, climbing trees is now banned at my school.
18. Doesn’t Work Well With Others
When I was a kid, we had a contest where we got divided into teams and had to design and build solar-powered model boats, which we were then supposed to race on the pond behind the school. We had an odd number of people, so I was put on the team that had three people instead of two. I got stuck with a pair of idiots that just wanted to screw off the whole time, so I asked if I could be on a team by myself.
I made my boat a catamaran design, made in one piece out of insulating foam, and made it an airboat instead of trying to fiddle with a water propeller. I used one of the little red plastic props off the old balsa fliers we all loved as kids. My boat TROUNCED the field, so they ran the race three more times with the same result, then made a rule that you had to be on a team defined as "more than one person" to compete.
Right, it's totally unfair that I had no one to help while you other jerks did. Unfair to THEM, somehow.
19. This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things
My elementary school used to have a microwave that kids could use to heat up their lunches. The staff eventually took the microwave away because I decided heating up cold spaghetti-o’s with a metal spoon inside was a good idea. Now the entire school district has a rule that students can no longer use microwaves, no matter their age. This was a very long time ago but the rule is still in place today.
20. Caught Off Guard
My work had an open Q and A session at town halls. Now, the questions have to be submitted a week ahead of time so the speakers “have a chance to prepare”. This is IF they have a Q and A session now. It absolutely has nothing to do with filtering out the questions they don't want to answer, absolutely nothing at all.
21. Saving Someone A Trip To The ER
No playing darts by throwing scissors at the cork wall in the classroom.
22. Who Knew Grass Fights Were A Thing
No throwing grass when you're on school grounds.
This was in junior high. The school grass was just cut and drying up, so in just a few seconds you could easily get a big handful of grass. My friend and I were throwing it at each other—I started it—and a couple other people did too after seeing us. They had an announcement each morning for the next couple days to not throw grass.
23. Right To Be Concerned
The school I graduated from now has a rule that their history teachers can't study serial killers anymore, even as a side or bonus project.
My older sister had a project on a serial offender but struggled to choose one, given that, like an average person, she only knew about two or three and didn't want to choose an overly common subject. I, however, am not normal and at the time I was big into killers. Well, my Facebook wasn't private and that was the only way I had to send her links, and no, the thought of using messenger hadn't crossed my mind.
Well, at some point, someone's helicopter parent was snooping around other students’ pages and came across mine. They tried having me suspended out of fear that I was planning something—this was 2013, so about a year after Sandy Hook. When my councillor told my dad he informed her that I was helping with a school project. Then next week, my sister’s entire class got C's and the project was cancelled.
I'd like to mention that they also removed all those biographies of individuals involved in multiple homicides from the library.
24. Maybe Scratch Game Night All Together
My sister and I were on the same team for Pictionary. I pulled “9/11”—my aunt made some really odd topics. I drew two tall lines for the buildings and then started to draw a plane/bird as two arches. I got halfway through the first arch and she got it. A giant fight erupted with my big Italian family as they thought we were cheating.
This was, of course, not the first or last game banned by my grandma. Our highly competitive and argumentative family isn’t allowed to play spoons—bloody nose—Apples to Apples—old people don’t get younger people choosing the funniest answer, not the correct one—or musical chairs—broken arms. No more Pictionary at grandma’s house.
25. Wait Until You Get Home
I got into an argument with a high school teacher who'd been gone for three weeks about how a paper was graded, as the substitute we had did not relay instructions correctly. We talked and talked and talked about how instructions where relayed versus what he had told the sub to tell us. Several other students backed me up. He wouldn’t consider a redo on the assignment that half the class failed.
The argument ended with me tearing the paper in half and tossing it in the garbage right at his desk. He tried saying that was extremely disrespectful to do as he spent a long time grading it. I said, “its extremely disrespectful that you claim your instructions were relayed a certain way when you weren’t even here and you have no student agreeing with you".
Quick note—the teacher I had argued with was a LONG time family friend of the principal. They went to the same church, had children in the same grade, and grew up in the same small town. I was sent to the office and was kicked out of that class. The principal tried to suspend me for being insubordinate with throwing away my paper that was handed back. I said, “I dare you to suspend me for something that every single one of your students does, including your daughter in my class". Insert smug look.
Three days later, grades K to 12 were gathered for an all school assembly and the rule was unveiled. All the guys in my class laughed because they knew the story. The principal’s daughter and her friends glared. Good times. Good times.
26. A Badge Of Dishonor
At my job, if you do something both stupid and novel, the rule gets named after you. This way you cement your legacy in the annals of company history.
The Rosario rule is, “no holes in boats".
When I was a new-ish gondolier, I managed to catch a strong stray gust of wind, pushing my boat into a bridge support with a rectangular base. Which was about a quarter inch below the waterline. Normally, when you crash into something with a wooden boat—and it should be noted that this is ideally a rare occurrence—there's a jolt, a bump, scraping sound, and then you carry on with your day. This time, however, I heard a crunch.
So did both my passengers, and the accordion player. We also all noticed that we were stuck there. No bounce back. Once I managed to get the boat off the submerged corner of the bridge, the whole rest of the trip I watched the air bubbles trailing out. Not a fun day. So remember the Rosario rule: No holes in boats, people.
27. It’s Just A Game
My office has officially been declared a Nerf toy-free zone following our most recent skirmish. I took hostages, declared myself a warlord, and demanded the developers pledge their fealty to me in exchange for their freedom.
28. Bitter Old Lady
There was a little library across the street from my middle school that I went to everyday until closing so I didn't have to go home. The librarian thought that I was too young to be alone in the library—yes, I did look way too young for my age—and as there was no rule against children being there without their parents, she made a point of banning elementary kids from coming without a parent/guardian.
She was also angry when I showed her my middle school ID, proving that I was not too young. I have no idea why she didn't like me. I sat in the same chair in the back corner everyday without making any noise. I never talked to anyone and had never spoken to her before she informed me of the new rule. I left five minutes before closing everyday and treated the books like gold. I was literally one of the only people who went there. After the incident, I noticed her glaring at me a few times, but I had nowhere else to go and just ignored her. It was really weird in hindsight.
29. Should Go Without Saying
When I first started working as a vet tech, we would put syringes with sedatives for the animals in our scrub pockets for easy access. Then one day, I forgot I had sedatives in my pocket because both the doctor and I had drawn the meds up and he chose to use his own. I bent down to get something and felt something stab me—it was the syringe with sedatives.
I accidentally injected them into myself. Luckily, it was a small dose, so they drove me to a hospital, gave me a tetanus shot, and then I went home and slept it off. Now there's the “no sedatives in pockets” rule.
30. The Picture Of Equality
There is a required password to change profile pictures on the classroom iPads now. This is because I decided to change every staff member’s profile picture to a truly beautiful image. The school iPads now feature a smiling, old Mexican man.
31. New Bacon-ings
Three pieces of bacon each.
Background—there was a catered breakfast for us at the kickoff of a two-day “anything day” event where we partnered up and used company resources to work on whatever we wanted, even if it wasn’t an officially sanctioned project—it was a buffet. At the end of breakfast, we noticed a huge tray of bacon still untouched. So, we piled two plates HIGH with bacon, I'm talking five to six inches of carefully layered bacon each.
We put both plates in the center of our conference table our group was using. We lovingly named the piles “Community Bacon” and ate off them the rest of the day. Senior Leadership saw this and questioned it, but said nothing. Fast forward to the next morning, we hit the buffet and were greeted with a terrifying sign. It read, “limit three pieces of bacon per person".
That's when I started my campaign, “There is no way this is a top 100 places to work if I can't even have more than three pieces of bacon”. This was after my other “what do you mean we get waffles but no chicken to top them with” not top 100 campaign. Management loved me. Oh, chicken and waffles was added to the cafeteria two weeks later to shut me up. They take their top 100 ranking seriously.
32. Fashion Statement
You can only wear one tie at a time.
33. Keep It PG
I used to play open mics every first Tuesday at a church nearby. It was run by the high school music program, so it wasn't gospel music or anything like that. My friend and I decided to play “Stacy’s Mom". It...did not go well. While everyone loved it, they began to enforce the "Stacy’s Rule" after that, meaning all songs had to be "school appropriate".
34. Will Somebody Please Think Of The Children!
Non-alcoholic drinks from the bar now come in different glasses. They all used to come in pint glasses. I was printing a check and noticed the “virgin daiquiri” I rang in wasn’t a virgin. I provided a 12-year-old with a beverage. From then on, virgin drinks had a different glass, so if anyone made the mistake I did, they would notice before serving it to a minor.
35. Too Hot To Handle
In high school, my group of friends and me started bringing a grill to school. It wasn't nefarious or anything, we just wanted to make toasted ham cheese sandwiches during our lunch breaks. Soon after, a revolution began. More and more kids brought their grills to school. After about a week, the school banned grills on school property, as they claimed it was a fire hazard.
36. Overkill
Back in 1997 when MP3s were starting to hit but the best portable storage was a 100MB zip disc—if you were lucky or rich—we were trying to figure out a good way to get them between our friend’s computers. Floppys were too small and CDs were not really an option yet.
Living in the University dorms, I thought why not just email them. At the time, there was no limit to what you could send other than what your computer could handle, and through a little trial and error we found the sweet spot to be at just under 400MB. So, I would load up a 380MB attachment of MP3s, address them to four or five guys on the floor and send them. It took awhile but since downloading a song on a 56k connection could take 25 minutes, this was easy and “quick” across the University's network.
Two days later, I had a personal visit by the head of IT, a chat, and a 10MB email attachment limit installed across all of campus. I'm the reason we can’t have nice things.
37. Never Punch The Same Way Twice
I worked for a place called Taco Del Mar. I put in my two weeks and left on really good terms with the owner. A month or so later, the store was sold to some other guy. Little did he know, that was good news for me because I had made a butt load of punch cards and given them out to all of my friends. The kind of punch cards that gave you a free burrito after purchasing 10, or something like that.
Now I could use these cards guilt-free at my old location. When I made them, I would punch five or so at a time and I guess I punched them all in roughly the same way. A while later, I found out the new owner had taped one of my "fake" punch cards to the register so employees could compare any punch card presented to them to ensure it was on the up and up. I messed with that new owner pretty bad, for no reason whatsoever. I like to think I've grown since then.
38. Ruining It For Everyone Else
At my company quarterly meeting they would have three random drawings, one for each month in the quarter. For each resume submitted to HR, you got one entry. A resume only counted for the month it was submitted, which is normal. My then-boyfriend’s employer had a HUGE layoff, so I got him to tell everyone to send their resumes to me. I absolutely stacked each month’s drawing box with my massive resume submissions.
At the quarterly meeting, the CEO selected a name at random from each monthly bucket. When our CEO pulled the paper from each month he announced the winner—me. I won all three drawings in a row. Each prize was a $100 Amex Traveler’s check. I won all $300. The CEO was super-annoyed that I had somehow “hacked” the drawing process. He had to say my name onstage three times in a row and give me $100 each time.
It wasn’t hacking, it was stacking—stuffing, really—but he didn’t appreciate the distinction and was visibly annoyed, which kind of made me a minor legend among the other engineers. They didn’t realize just HOW MANY resumes I managed to score. If the CEO didn’t know my name before he never forgot it after that.
Following his building expression of annoyance onstage, they changed the rule so that the same person couldn’t win each time. This of course disincentivized me from submitting resumes as they came in. To guarantee at least one month’s win, I’d hold them all back and submit them all at once. This screwed the company AND the candidates, as they didn’t get access to candidates in a timely manner. By the time they called to interview, the candidates already had other interviews and even offers. Each time they changed the “rule” they just screwed themselves more.
I took that boyfriend to a fancy pants Michelin three-star restaurant and we spent the whole $300—and maybe more—on fine food and champagne.
39. They Are The Rulebook
I had a cooking class in high school, and had a few rules put in place that had to do with me.
First one was put in place by the school, not the teacher. It was that when using the blender, food had to be cut up to be no bigger than an ice cube. The recipe called for ground turkey meat. The teacher supplied us with a complete portion of turkey. When we said it wouldn't work, she told us to use it anyway, which resulted in us putting two of them, with whatever else we had, in the blender, which burned out the motor, almost catching the blender on fire.
Second was that all choices would be eliminated. We used to be able to pick from certain options. For example, if it was baking a dessert, we might be able to choose from a few different types of cookies or cake. Well, the teacher didn't like my choice because I was the only one to pick that particular item, and she would have to order stuff that wouldn't get used up. I argued that she made the options, and gave me the choice, so if she didn't like it, she had nobody to blame but herself. She eventually just told us what to make. This didn't last long, because that wasn't the approved curriculum.
Another rule made by the school, and not the teacher, was implemented because of my group. In class, we split into different work groups. I was the only grade 12 in class—we didn't have many people, so they combined a class—so I was on my own. A few of the girls, and one of the other guys, abandoned their groups to work with me because their partners were being immature and bringing down their grades. We stayed with my grade 12 projects—I'm not sure what the difference was, but there was a difference. They said they should get a grade 12 credit. Teacher thought they should get a grade 10 or 11 credit because that's what grade they're in. Principal agreed that they're doing grade 12 work, so they should get a grade 12 credit.
This teacher obviously didn't like me much for all the BS I put her through, and I like to think I was at least partially responsible for her retirement the next year.
40. Dangerous Amount Of Detail
My high school used to have a drug project where we’d have to give a presentation on a certain drug. There was a little thing on how it’s made, like in a lab or as a plant or whatever. I misunderstood how in depth that part was supposed to be. To summarize, I took 15 minutes to instruct the entire freshman health class on manufacturing illicit black tar substances, featuring a comprehensive PowerPoint presentation.
They don’t have that part of the project anymore.
Sources: Reddit,
.jpg){kind=link}
