Whether we like it or not, there are many rules we have to live by. From laws to regulations to unwritten customs everyone should be aware of, they surround us everywhere we go. But while some of us are team players who follow these suggestions and hope they will serve us well, others believe they should be broken, bent, stretched, or at least somewhat creatively interpreted.
However, there’s a whole other category of people who decide to spread a bit of chaos into our lives and almost beg for others to enforce brand new restrictions for their actions. So recently, Redditor TheBlackTemplar125 decided to find out what these troublemakers did to achieve such outcomes and raised a question on Ask Reddit: "What rules were put in place because of you?"
People rolled up their sleeves and delivered over 16k responses full of hilarious examples and the stories behind them. We at Bored Panda have combed the thread and picked out some of the best replies that stood out from the crowd. Continue scrolling, upvote your favorite ones, and don't forget to share your own experiences with us in the comments!
#1
In middle school i would use sharpies to tattoo myself, other kids thought it was cool so i started charging $1 per drawing wherever they wanted. Principal found out and after i wouldn’t stop, she put a ban on sharpies for the entire school. even the teachers couldn’t bring them in. i’m a tattoo artist now.
Image credits: Orbitalconfusion
#2
Military school I went to. After me, an adult is required to check the parade cannon to ensure it is clear, and closely monitor the students as they load it.There is to never be another flaming rubber chicken flying over the parade grounds ever again. Circa 1989.
#3
Back in the day a radio station had a weekly trivia contest. The prize was a free pizza and movie rental.Somehow my mom figured out which book they were using for the trivia questions. She bought it and memorized all the answers.
Each week we would call in immediately. Sometimes we were the first but even if we weren’t it didn’t matter because other people were usually just guessing. We won almost every time.
Even though we changed up who would actually make the call they eventually figured out we were all from the same household. So they made it a rule you couldn’t win if your family had already won in the last month or whatever.
Up till then, we enjoyed a lot of free pizzas.
Image credits: cavendar
#4
No sign language during silent lunch punishmentMy lunch period was so loud we got put on silent lunch for over a month straight. I decided the only clear solution was to teach my entire table sign language so we could still talk without getting in trouble. Apparently it was "unfair" to the kids who didn't know how to sign, so we had to stop.
Image credits: future-unperson
#5
In history class in high school, there was about 10 of us really close friends. We would take every opportunity to make “your mom” jokes. A couple months into class the teacher made us sign a “treaty” promising to stop making fun of each other’s moms. We signed it, and started making fun of each other’s dads.
Image credits: MoreMegadeth
#6
As a kindergartner I once fell asleep in the bus. When I woke up the bus was in the garage and I had to yell to get someone to get me out.So to this day every bus driver in my school district needs to walk to the back of the bus and check every seat before they park the bus.
Seems like a good rule to have.
Image credits: pikkdogs
#7
I got the Ryan’s Steak House buffets in Louisville, KY to put baby changing stations in the men’s bathrooms back in the 90’s.#8
School dress code. Girls must wear skirts. We lived in the country. Kids had to walk a half mile on a dirt road to catch the bus. Told the school that in cold weather my girls would wear warm clothing including pants. The changed the dress code.Hogh school wouldn’t let my daughter take auto shop. I talked to the school. They let her in and the following year auto shop was open to all.
These incidents occurred in the 1960’s
Image credits: Free-Cartographer-26
#9
I got our HR box taken away at work because the HR lady threatened not to pay us if we missed a clock in or clock out (in our defense the phones didn't always work and the clock in system was really unreliable) and I printed out the law stating that was illegal, highlighted it, and put it in her box when no one was around.She threw an unholy fit and tried to figure out who put it in her box, and from them on everything had to be handed in personally lol.
Image credits: Pollowollo
#10
My junior high made a rule against yo-yos in class after I tried to do a trick and my yo-yo flew across the room and broke a glass beaker set. I’m sorry, guys.
Image credits: FartAttack911
#11
"Don't trick your siblings or friends into eating soap."I would cut bars of dove soap into pieces, wrap them in old candy wrappers, and pretend like they were mints. I was 8 or 9.
Image credits: Applesintheorchard
#12
freshman year of high school, I had to give an oral presentation on a random Greek god. this was at a Christian school, for context. I got Dionysus, so naturally I spent many hours researching on YouTube how to act drunk (wasn't much of a partier, so I didn't know) and pretended to be absolutely wasted for my presentation. it was a great success but my teacher unsurprisingly banned Dionysus for the following years. it didn't help that Dionysus was basically the god of orgies and b********y too, if I remember correctly#13
You can no longer skip to the end of training videos at Wendy's.I completed about 10 hours of this training when it was implemented, after I'd already been working there a year, in about 45 minutes.
Open, skip, skip, skip, skip, do test, rinse and repeat. I was quite proud of my "estimated time 45 minutes, time to completion 2 minutes".
My store which is a franchise location, got a call from corporate like an hour later. I didn't have to redo any of it though.
Image credits: Thegungoesbangbang
#14
I graduated with my PhD in April 2020.As graduation was virtual, they asked us to take a nice picture that would pop up when they read our names off. The email said family that had been integral to your journey could be in your picture.
So I took a picture with my dog and sent it in.
The next day they sent another email that said you couldn't have pets or family in your picture.
I never sent them another picture so they used it.
#15
Not a rule but a reminder to "please be respectful to our guest speakers". I was on a Zoom call and I didn't realize my cat umuted me when he stepped on the keyboard. When the guy asked if there were any further questions I said aloud to myself "yeah, can we wrap this s**t up so we can all get on with our lives?"
Image credits: disapearingelephants
#16
Local jobcenter no longer has working usb ports on public PC's because I found private files on multiple PC's with far too much private information about strangers.
Image credits: BelthazorDK
#17
Local amusement park added a "no blindfolds on rollercoasters" rule because of me.When I was in middle school, my friend and I thought it would enhance the overall experience if we blindfolded ourselves on the biggest roller coaster at a local amusement park. We got one of those pictures they take on the ride and there we are, blindfolded in the middle of a tunnel, having the time of our lives. Looking back, we easily could have strangled ourselves or worse because we literally just used scarves tied around our heads. Next year we went back to the same roller coaster and they had added a "no blindfolds or loose accessories" to the list of rules before the ride.
Image credits: idontcare4205
#18
"No makeup".I went to an all boys school, and apparently this never came up until me and my emo friends rocked up in black eyeliner and lipstick.
Image credits: DanteWrath
#19
Well, I doubt they're teaching the class these days. But when I took "Advanced Programming Techniques Using FORTRAN", our professor added a line to all our projects stating that all programs had to be written in FORTRAN and only in FORTRAN.When a student askef why he'd added that, he told the class to ask me. I just grinned. I still got a perfect score on the one where I had a FORTRAN shell call an assembler subroutine which did 99.99% of the work. Heh.
Image credits: HowdyDoobie
#20
I used to work for a company that had flex hours, you could work all you want but no overtime. So I would work 4-10 hour days and then take three day weekends. That lasted for about two months before my employer made a rule that we had to be there five days a week.Then I used to come in at 4am to avoid traffic, skip lunch then leave at noon, and nobody noticed for about six months but they figured out I was not coming back after lunch and changed the policy so I could not come to work until 8am.
So I started working lots of extra time and started banking my flex time and saved up about 430 hours by October (10-hours a week of OT) and was informed by HR that I could not roll it over in the new year, so I scheduled a 12-week vacation. Yeah, they made a new rule over that too.
When COVID hit and I had to stay home, I figured out I could do a side gig, so I got a second work from home job and worked both until I got caught, and they laid me off. After that there was a new rule.
I just like hacking the systems they set up, they were so difficult to work for that I wanted to figure out a way to make it work fo me.
#21
The valedictorian speech at my high school now needs to be reviewed by the principle before the ceremony for content and length.
Image credits: swankpoppy
#22
My high school biology teacher added "briefly" to all of the essay questions on his tests and quizzes because, if I was bored, I would write unnecessarily long answers in really small handwriting just to take up time.He pointed out the word "briefly" when handing out a test and said to me, "I added that for you." So I made my next answer even longer out of spite.
Image credits: HawaiianShirtsOR
#23
I put a croissant in one of those hotel toasters. It soon became engulfed in flames and needed extinguishing. Next day at breakfast they made a sign that said “if you’d like your croissant toasted, please ask a member of staff”
Image credits: thatbitchlol
#24
My older brother got a curfew enforced at Boy Scout camp when one of the leaders noticed him walking around the area in the daytime with his eyes closed, counting steps. He may have just been practicing being blind, but the adults assumed he was figuring out how to get around at night without lights so he could get into some kind of mischief. Which, knowing my brother, was also possible.PS: If you're one of those people saying "BUT BUT BUT", you're not thinking like an 11-year-old.
Image credits: Fuck_you_Reddit_Nazi
#25
No typewriters in class.I was kind of a s**t kid and while my school allowed us to use laptops, I would play videogames. Primarily Warcraft 3. In class. No sound or anything so I wasn't being a complete nuisance, but I wasn't doing my work.
A teacher told me I couldn't use my laptop.
I happened to have a 1950's Remington Quiet-Riter portable, all-mechanical typewriter. It was anything *but* quiet, with all of the TAKKA TAKKA TAKKA TAKKA... DING! you'd expect from a typewriter.
After one full day of studiously taking notes and doing my assignments via typewriter, my teacher said I could use my laptop as long as I didn't bring the typewriter to class.
#26
The school website is no longer accessible out of school hours.So you know how in harry potter, there are 4 houses and they compete or something like that? Well, our school does that. Every kid is put into 1 of 4 houses and they earn "house points" throughout the school year. At the end, whoever has the most points gets a bonus field trip to someplace cool (previous rewards include Crazy Pins, Sky Zone, and this one place with a bunch of bouncy houses).
Anyways, I was poking around the school website and I found an archive of all the winners over the years. When I scrolled down there was a button that said "Add Points" and naturally, I clicked it.
I was redirected to a new page that had 3 things: a dropdown, a text box, and a button. Select the house, input point value, add points. I added 25 points to my house as a test and saw that it worked. Over the following days, I'd slowly add more points.
Eventually, some teacher got suspicious of my house staying in 1st place for so long (rankings typically change daily--its a very close competition). They checked the logs and saw that there were being points added after school hours.
Unfortunately, they disabled access to the site after 3:00 P.M. on Monday-Friday and you can't use it on the weekends. Sorta my own fault but everything we do on our school computers is tracked so I couldn't add the points during school hours otherwise they would've found out it was me.
#27
“No bouncy balls in the bathrooms.”In middle school we had a school store that sold supplies and these tiny bouncy balls (I still don’t know why).
The bathrooms in this school were narrow and made of brick from floor to ceiling. I discovered that if you threw a bouncy ball in the bathroom as hard as you can it would bouncy until the end of time. Get 3-4 of your buddies in the bathroom with a ball of their own, you now have an epic game of life and death. It became the most popular sport the school has ever seen. People were even placing bets.
When one kid had to explain that his bruises didn’t come from his parents my operation was shut down.
#28
My elementary school was located in the center of the neighborhood, and my 5th grade class was the first to get outdoor trailers for classrooms. We'd ask for bathroom passes and then walk home. Next year they built a fence around the school
Image credits: YT4000
#29
Back in elementary school I remember there used to be this kid who followed me everywhere and actively tried to hurt me. When talking to a teacher about it they went "oh, he just has a crush on you". The next day I walk up to the kid and shove him into a wall. After that there was literally a rule in that grade " Don't follow other students". That backfired poorly.#30
At a ballpark I worked concessions at, they had an all-you-can-eat promo day where tickets were more expensive than usual, but concessions around the stadium were free (excluding alcohol). So I worked that day and of course it was chaos, but when the lines started dying down later in the game they started sending some of the hourly employees home, myself included. But of course, I didn't go home. After I clocked out, I stayed in the stadium and got some cheeseburgers and Philly steak and soda and found an empty seat in the crowd for the last few innings.Next year, same promo, but new rule for staff: if you get sent home early, you have to actually leave the stadium.
Image credits: SANTAAAA__I_know_him
#31
Not me, but my wife missed a lot of high school for several reasons. She’d go long periods without showing up, but would always make up the work and kept her grades up. Once graduation came around she was told she couldn’t graduate because she “missed too many days.” She argued this because there was no attendance policy in place. She was allowed to graduate after writing one final paper, but they quickly added a new policy after she left.
Image credits: falconsomething
#32
At my elementary school, I was the third person to break my arm after falling off the track slide on the play structure.Everyone treated me as if it was all my fault… But what about Ivan and Bobby, huh? WHAT ABOUT THEM?!
#33
No Pokemon cards at school.I came to school one day to show off the holographic Charizard I had gotten the day before. Later that day it went missing and I was devastated. The next day another kid shows up with one and I know it's mine. He claims he got it from a pack and his brother can back him up but I didn't buy it and others didn't too. It lead to this whole big thing and the they ended up banning Pokemon cards to avoid future situations like that. It sucked that I was partly at fault to ruin something for others, but I had suffered a great injustice because I knew that was my card.
Image credits: -eDgAR-
#34
"No dice or regular playing cards." My friends and I created monsters of our fellow classmates by getting dice games and poker games started at lunch. Soon people were throwing dice in the hall and calling hop bets before class. My best friend and I kept a sheet of those who owed money to the "house" (my part time job money and his chore money). Someone's mom called the principal and complained that her son owed some other students $50 and he keeps spending all his money.We would still throw dice for a while in the back stairwells or the outdoor area at lunch time. We collected about half of the money we were owed ~$350.
After that we turned to selling candybars and soda from our lockers. That got banned too, but we finished selling our stash. It was a profitable senior year.
#35
No stealing from the cash drawer at work or theft in general. I wasn't the one stealing but was managing a hotel when I caught an employee taking $20 out of the cash drawer and putting it in his pocket. I of course fired him on the spot and figured that was the end of it.Two weeks later a get an unemployment notice from the state showing he filed for wrongful dismissal. I responded back stating he was terminated for theft. A week later they ask me to send them our employee handbook and training materials.
Shortly thereafter I received notice that they awarded him unemployment because nowhere in our handbook or training materials did it explicitly state he was not allowed to take cash from the cash drawer. You would think that would just be common sense but apparently the state of Wisconsin didn't agree.
From that moment on, it was explicitly stated in the handbook and training materials that employees were not allowed to take money or any other property that does not belong to them.
#36
"No more than 4 margaritas per person" on dollar margarita (& beer) night.....In college, some friends and I used to go to a mexican restaurant every Thursday (?) and often on Saturdays for $1 margaritas. As a group, we would go through A LOT....then they put the rule in....then they changed it to $2 margaritas (& $1 draft beers)
Image credits: Poonjangles
#37
"Golf users can no longer return an unlimited # of balls for tokens. "When I was maybe.. 12ish there was a kids outdoor play area. Go karts, batting cages and indoor was something like a Chuck-E-Cheese, token based games, etc.
You could get a wrist band for maybe $15 and it'd get you unlimited rides, mini-golf and some other activities. Everything else cost tokens.
When you finished golfing you'd get 2 tokens for bringing your ball back. Unlimited golf, $0.50 worth of play value inside. So my friends and I would go there, speed run two golf games and give the balls back. $1 to our pockets.
Later on we started just fishing balls out of the water hazards and turning them in. Subtly at first and then in bulk later. The guys working there didn't care or actively laughed at it.
So we'd have a few hundred tokens.. then we started selling them 5 for $1. We stopped buying the unlimited bands. I'd bike there and earn $25 in a couple of hours. Management eventually caught on and altered the token for ball exchange.
#38
Back in the 1980s we were allowed to pick our own high school classes. My freshman year I picked two gym classes back to back and the school said no one has ever done that before. Only one gym class was allowed to be scheduled after that. I’m kind of a legend.
Image credits: nuF-roF-redruM
#39
I had to sue my school district back in high school just to leave special education after fighting it for over a decade.Special education students now have the right built into every single IEP to attend any standard education class in their grade level or below, earn the associated credits, and also go to both health education and driver's education. They could do *none* of that before the lawsuit.
#40
Male students are not allowed to wear hair accessories. We had the rule about hair not touching collars, couldn't be past eyebrows, or over the ears. I grew my hair out and just put it up in head bands. After receiving multiple detentions and fighting them and winning, the next year, they made the rule#41
Not exactly a rule, but the fact that you can easily acknowledge your favorite grocery store employee since 2015 is because of me.The bakery folks invented a one off cinnamon roll "cake" for my kids birthday. I went straight to the store manager and told that dude how much that meant to my kid. And who exactly put it together for us.
Two weeks later, he tells me that my story went all the way up the chain to corporate.
A month later, here's a big ol' box with slips and pens...
Image credits: The_Patriot
#42
No playing with the bean sprouts during recess.Next to the playground at my elementary school, there were 2 or 3 [northern catalpa](https://bit.ly/38nWKvG) trees.
I didn’t have many friends in elementary school, so sometimes I would sit on the edge of the playground and play with the bean sprouts. By play with, I mean I would pick them up off the ground and fully peel them apart, butting any actual beans or seeds in my pockets (I might have the wrong type of tree there but you get the gist)
Anyway, other people gradually started doing the same thing until eventually there were just recesses when a lot of people would just play with bean sprouts the entire time (our elementary school had strict playground rules; no running on wood chips, no playing the game wood chips, no twirling the swings, no climbing on monkey bars, etc).
As more people began playing with the beans, beans would just end up in the school. Like. Everywhere. On desks? Beans. On the floor? Beans. In baskets? Beans. It became a definite issue, and with beans come bugs. As a result, they banned us from playing with the beans
I still did it tho because like- beans ?
#43
A local self-serve frozen yogurt shop had a special for birthdays, where you pay for a small cup and can load it up as much as you want. Typically, the yogurt was measured by ounces and you paid based on the weight.In high-school, my friends and I (about 8 total) did this for everyone's birthday. We would make towers of yogurt that looked like Christmas trees sitting on a very tiny stand. Definitely over a pound of yogurt each.
On the last attempt, the owner recognized us and immediately told us that we needed to pay for our yogurt. We told her that the rules were as much as we could fit in the cup. She tried fighting us, but being stubborn high-school students, we wouldn't budge.
A couple weeks later, we attempted to get our service again, and they had changed the birthdays to 12 and under. No more ridiculously cheap yogurt for us.
#44
Our company operates on Discord, and a lot of people just made it so their personal discord became their professional discord rather than making a second account.It made it easy for managers, including me, to invade the lives of their employees by pinging them when they saw a green light in Discord.
I wrote a long email to the directors about the separation of work and home life since we are a complete remote company. I suggested that we make it a rule for people to have a work discord that they log out of at the end of the day so that any messages sent after hours can be dealt with the next day. Since we are a remote company, people are in many time zones, and I don't want to invade someone's evening or early morning when I am in the midst of my work day.
The directors agreed, and it became a thing. It is annoying to juggle two accounts, but it is better than people in different time zones being up in each other's s**t all the time. What I would like to happen is that we use Slack instead, but everyone likes Discord.
#45
I used to ride on the bottom area of the shopping carts at our nearest grocery store. I thought it was fun to put my hands on the front of it, sliding them along the ground while the cart was moving (yes, I was gross). One sticky spot on the ground later and my hand was pulled back and thumb went right under the wheel. Crunched my little thumbnail and my mom had to remove it. Anyway, the store put up signs after that saying it’s against the rules for kids to ride in the bottom of carts.#46
My high school created a rule that no one can graduate early. Mine and my brother's fault.I'm sure they just want the tuition money.
#47
The dual major on my degree is no longer offered after I proved it would have been logistically impossible to graduate with it without my specific transfer credits.#48
One of my favorite childhood moments sometime in 3rd grade. I got watermelons banned from handball.Watermelons in our school were when you could duck under the ball in place of hitting the ball against the wall. Only your torso or head were allowed to go under the ball and count as a watermelon.
My fine moment came when I made a diving leap head first on a low hit because I knew my opponent was too far away to recover. Unfortunately I did it face first and I slid along the gritty concrete and skinned half my face off. I had to wear a face bandage for at least a month.
I made it. Everyone agreed it counted as a watermelon. I won that round and had to go to the nurses office. 100% would do it again.
The next day watermelons we're banned and everybody hated me while high-fiving me at the same time.
#49
My younger brother was always late to school (small school) and was tardy. He figured out if he just skipped first period and went to second he was counted as being on school and no late penalty because he was at 2nd period on time. They changed this the following year.#50
not me but a coworker- the whole company now requires that if you have a lanyard for your name tag it must break away on the back because she got it caught on a top shelf and it choked herfrom Bored Panda https://bit.ly/3NDqseW
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