Weird dog rules: One group wants vegetarian dogs, another bans Dachshunds
Some rules make sense while others are ridiculous and made to be broken
Rules are made to be broken. Rules are meant to be broken.
You will see one of these phrase variations on job personality assessments. It is a setup. If you say “yes,” you will be viewed as a difficult employee. If you say “no,” you may be viewed as having minimal leadership skills and won’t speak up when something is wrong.
Some rules absolutely make sense. Other rules are just plain peculiar.
I’ll give you a couple of examples. One recent example is authorities in the Russian republic of Chechnya banning songs that are “too slow” or “too fast.”
"Musical, vocal and choreographic" works will be limited to a tempo of 80 to 116 beats per minute (BPM) to "conform to the Chechen mentality and sense of rhythm," said Culture Minister Musa Dadayev, according to the Russian state-run news agency TASS.
Who has enough time in their day to dictate the flow of a song? In their eyes (and ears), Amy Winehouse’s “Rehab” song is “too slow” and wouldn’t make the cut. Same goes for Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You,” which is downright foul. On the other side, the only song I really like by Britney Spears — “Toxic” — is too fast. And “16 Carriages,” one of my go-to songs on Beyonce’s country album, is also too fast. I can’t imagine not listening to these songs because the government is bored.
Some rules create tension where there was none before.
While Chechnya really is a dictatorship, sometimes even an office space can feel that way. I recall working at a temp job with three other graphic design temps. One of them joined later than the other two and wanted to sit next to his friend.
Instead of keeping those three designers together and moving me (a marketing editor) elsewhere, my temporary boss insisted I stay at my original cubicle and let the other graphic designer sit on a completely different side of the office in a whole other department.
This would have been OK if the newest temp did not talk nonstop, come in during my early hour (when I enjoyed a completely empty building and editing in silence) and tell me my name wasn’t “normal.” I asked my temp boss if I could switch places with the lone designer because I couldn’t focus on editing. Her answer was no. Why? Because she wanted to be able to “see” me, as though I was a toddler and not an editor for more than a decade and in my 30s.
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I found a permanent position elsewhere, opted out of extending my temp job and turned down a ghostwriting job offer she had for me. Why? Rules again.
She insisted on seeing multiple byline pieces to make sure I wrote well but then refused to allow a byline on any future pieces I submitted to her. In her exact words, “Readers don't need to know how the sausage is made.”
Don’t make rules just for the sake of proving you’re the boss.
And lately I’m running into dog rules that make just as little sense: two in particular. One of them is why dogs should be on plant-based diets to “reduce a dog's carbon pawprint.” The second one is Germany trying to ban Dachshunds because the breed has back issues.