On the trail of food related events and stupid rules.
A few years back, management decided to have an ice cream social day! Yippie! They/VPs bought 5 different 2.5gal buckets of ice cream (for a 150 person company) and lots of toppings (sprinkles, nuts, cookie crumbs, hot fudge, whip cream, cherries, etc). Corporate came in last minute, so they passed off running the social to HR. Once HR took control of passing out the ice cream, of course they had to put a bunch of rules in place, b/c well they are HR.
Rules emailed as "Rules for today's Ice cream Social" sent 30minutes before the event (with some extra 'guidelines' added by me):
-1 scoop is the normal, you can ask for a second, but it has to be the same flavor (because people don't like having more than 1 flavor).
-HR does scoops, no self-serve (and they will be super small, like a 3yr would even think it was small)
-only 2 toppings (again served by HR, so think like 1/2 a teaspoon of sprinkles. And yes, a cherry counts as a topping)
-no going back in line (even after everyone has gone through and over 90% is left)
-must eat in the nearby break room (no going back to your cube, staying in the hallway, outside, or the other much larger break room not near the HR area)
HR was surprised that only 30-40 people showed up (even after sending 3 reminder emails during the 45minute 'event'). Best was one guy took his 'scoop' as a single shot and offered the spoon back to HR since it wasn't used 'due to the small size'
That said, of the 12.5 gal of ice cream, about 10+ was left and 90% of the toppings. All of the extra was just put in the break room freezer. HR told off a few different people (myself included) that tried to get seconds later that day (normal rule is once the event is done and it goes into the break room fridge/freezer, company food is free game, just be respectful).
3 days later, when one of the VPs wanted to put his lunch in the freezer and there was no space since people couldn't eat the ice cream, he took all the ice cream out, reset up the toppings and sent an email blast that the rest of the ice cream was out and no rules were in place this time. Everyone really seemed to like that 2nd ice cream social. None of it was left an hour later and you had a happier workforce. I saw a line of 50+ people when I went (I was one of the first 10, because free ice cream).
Funny how when you take HR and stupid rules for the sake of rules out, people enjoy stuff better.