20 People Violated Rules In A Way The Authorities Did Not See Coming

Some rules aren’t thought of well. Why? Because short-lasting rules are often responses only to an incident and were only aimed to prevent that incident from happening again. Due to this lack of foundation for this new rule, people can find loopholes and exploit the rule until it’s no longer enforced. To show this, we went over this Reddit thread by Mercurydriver. In a thread, they asked their fellow community members if they happened to know a rule that didn’t go well because the people under it abused its provisions. 20 people stepped in and gave the best experiences they had witnessed “breaking” the rule so much that it caused the rule to be repealed! Find out their stories below! More info: Reddit

#1

Image source: Griff2470, Feliphe Schiarolli My high school put in a policy so that after the 3rd time you were late, you got detention. They didn't change the absent policy. Tardiness decreased by 52(?) %. Absentees increased 70%. Edit: The punishment for missing was nothing until social services comes in.

#2

Image source: SwordAvoidance, Duncan Sanchez My Dad was a corpsman with the Marines doing high desert training in the Mojave. They had a big problem with unidentified snakebites, ie people would get bit but not identify the snake, so it was hard to find the right antidote. So my dad got all the Marines in a room and said "If you get bit by a snake, bring it back here so we can identify it. Not even a full week later they had to alter the wording a bit, because a marine was bit by a rattlesnake and decided to bring it back-without killing it. This man had carried this snake all the way back to base ALIVE, and the snake decided to let him know exactly how he felt about that by repeatedly biting his arm the entire time. Needless to say, that marine went home, and they made sure to hold another meeting where they told everyone to KILL the snake, then bring it back. Edit: He kept the arm. They got him to base hospital in roughly 50 minutes and gave him anti-venom. He was out for 6 weeks. This was in 1995 at 29 palms (He calls it 29 stumps) 4th marine division, ie reservist marines out of Buffalo New York

#3

We found out our Catholic elementary school wasn't allowed to stop any sort of religious behaviour regardless if it's a Catholic school. Lots of "Hail Satan"s and uncomfortable teachers ensued Source: anon

#4

Image source: Feared_Penguin, Markus Spiske My School banned all balls over a couple of inches in diameter beacuse someone kicked a football through a window during lunch. Most of us that walked home walked past the woods by the golf course and had a ready supply of golf balls as a result. Golf balls were allowed under the new rules due to their size. 3 broken windows in one lunch period later they weren't.

#5

"Don't do anything unless directed by your Boss, any deviation from this will result in write-up/termination." This was a very literal directive from upper management that took place after an office incident. Our work is very fluid, and our team alone contained 20 people. Needless to say productivity hit unfounded lows. Source: squeeeeenis

#6

Image source: jenglasser, Pixabay Well, it wasn't a school wide policy, but I had a super [jerk] French teacher who would constantly hand out detentions for things as inconsequential as walking to the trash can to throw away a piece of paper. She absolutely could not deal with the fact that we periodically might need to actually leave our chairs for a perfectly valid reason. One day she locked herself out of the classroom and nobody would let her back in. "Sorry! We aren't allowed to get out of our seats!" She had to get the janitor, lol.

#7

Image source: bonjourkristi, Ron Lach If you violated the dress code policy, you had to wear these really big gray sweatpants or sweatshirts that said DCV in big orange letters. (Dress Code Violation). It became a thing to get caught because they were apparently really comfortable. When the admin finally caught on that people were trying to get them on purpose, they changed it so that you got in school suspension. Jokes on them for that too. Lots of kids preferred that over being in class.

#8

Image source: therealmrthomas, Israel Andrade We got a new manager for our office - she was an outside hire and was trying to prove herself quickly, and she was obsessed with efficiency. So, her first week here she sent out this very rudely worded email about employees eating at our desks (we have a very small break area - 4 tables and we have about 300 employees here) and that we all had to stop eating at our desks, because "it was not efficient to eat and try to work at the same time". Through a coordinated effort by some of the more sassy people at the office they all had their lunches at the same time and filled the break room with about 90 people. Elbow to elbow and they all ate standing up. Literally, the next day after that happened, she sent out a follow-up email saying that we could eat at our desks but she advised us to take a break from our work from time to time. It was pretty funny.

#9

Image source: Phemeto, Kobe - My Jr.high school adopted a policy to not allow kids to loiter in groups of 5 or more, in attempts to crack down on "gang mentality". this was freaking Jr.High. Anyway me and my group of misfits (6 of us) were always hanging out during free times, and the principal eventually stopped us and asked us to separate. I had to casually explain to him that were we not a group of 6, but 2 groups of 3 that were inter-mingling. People caught wind and that rule was basically dead. That was one of the few times i had to explain to my father why he was called into the principals office with me.

#10

Image source: mekdot83, Kelly Sikkema When I was in kindergarten, during the morning announcements one day they came on and said "and please no throwing snowballs. There is a chance you might accidentally get some rocks in them." You could see on the faces of all 20-some students the realization that "OMG we could put rocks in them!"

#11

Image source: fdtc_skolar, Tembela Bohle My company, as part of its alcohol policy, said you should not drink for at least four hours before coming to work. When engineers got called about production problems over the weekend, they all "just had a beer" but could be there in about four or five hours.

#12

Image source: EarhornJones, Gio Bartlett In my dorm, if you did something that triggered the smoke/fire alarm, you had to do a safety presentation for everyone on your floor. This was intended to deter pranksters from pulling the alarm. A guy on our floor was making grilled cheese in the kitchenette, and burned it, which legitimately triggered the fire alarm. Afterwards, he explained, assuming that since it had been a legitimate alarm, and not a prank, that he wouldn't have to do a presentation. He was, of course, wrong. So, the next Wednesday night, the entire floor assembled, and we were treated to a thirty minute safety presentation on the dangers of grilled cheese sandwiches. It contained literally nothing about fire safety. It was all choking hazards and cholesterol. Our RA was furious, but the student pointed out that the write-up that he'd been given just said "safety presentation". We didn't get any more presentations after that.

#13

My middle school had a "no touching rule" which meant you'd get suspended for high fiving a friend. Girls got in trouble for hugging their friends. Our teachers thought this was ridiculous and would have students high five each other in their classes for a minute everyday. So many kids got suspensions that the rule stopped being enforced and only counted if you touched a kid in a bullying situation or sexual harassment. Source: ThaddeusSimmons

#14

Image source: gEazyIsTheBeesKneezy, etsystatic I went to a private school for elementary, where uniforms were strict. If you didnt wear a belt you'd go to the principles office and he would make you use a shoe string. Well when he opened the drawer there was like 6 different colors and everybody thought it was really neat so for a short period of time there was a bunch of kids coming to school with no belt so they could wear their lime green shoe string belt.

#15

Image source: Mumtaz3580, Trnava University If you return a library book late, your parents would have to return it and explain why it's late. It worked about as well as you would think. The rule lasted a few months before they figured it wasn't worth the cost of replacing all the books.

#16

Image source: justinmoore34, Just Daisy My High School made students wear these neon t-shirts that read "Dress Code Violator" if their outfit didn't adhere to the school's policy. They became so popular the school began selling them one week later.

#17

Image source: Myfourcats1, Maximilian Simson A school in my area jacked up the cost of the parking pass. People protested by not buying the pass. Instead they rode the bus. Funny thing is the county really relies on juniors and seniors driving because they don’t have enough busses for all the students. The parking pass fee dropped. People drove again. Don’t ever let them tell you driving to school is a privilege. They NEED you to drive to school.

#18

Image source: Nova297, Amir Esrafili My senior year of high school some guy in my class got an in school suspension for wearing a headband (he had long, curly hair) so the next couple weeks almost every guy on the football team started wearing headbands in protest. Keep in mind that girls could wear headbands, just not guys. No one really understood this rule Edit: this took place right in the middle of football season

#19

This was actually in the news a couple of months ago. We had a really hot summer last year, and the boys at my little brother's secondary school were mad that they couldn't wear shorts but the girls could wear skirts. The Junior Leadership Team bought it up at a meeting, and the headteacher jokingly went, "alright If the boys want to wear skirts,then let them." A group of boys went to school wearing skirts the next day. Then it wasn't just a group of them Source: woah_dontzuccmedude

#20

Image source: Bad-Brains, Casey I told this story before but in high school they banned backpacks in classrooms. Everyone was pissed. Some girls started bringing bigger purses to put their books in, so a bunch of dudes brought their mom's purses in and were using those for school books. Administration and teachers got upset because we found a loophole so they banned purses too. At which point a bunch of moms got upset because their daughters had to carry around tampons and stuff in their coat pockets, in addition to all of their books, notebooks, calculators, pens/pencils, and whatever else they have in those purses. Finally the school let everyone have their backpacks back. Edit: Knowing that other places banned backpacks makes me feel a bit better. What would make me feel a lot better is going back in time and telling Mrs. Gaines that she can eat a bag of decomposing dongs for suggesting that we get rid of our backpacks. That lady hated teaching, and she hated students - she just loved control. Already having an authority problem, I bucked up at her more than once. I remember one story where me and a bunch of other seniors started "compli-sulting" each other. We'd pay each other compliments, but in an insulting tone, start to act like we were going to fight, then hug it out. We thought it was hilarious, but Mrs. Gaines thought we were being disrespectful to her authority because we'd compli-sult each other a bunch outside of her door. Once we learned this annoyed her we started to do it more until some pink slips started coming out and people were getting sent to the office for "complimenting each other in a loud tone." What a joke of a teacher.