Breaking the Rules

Businesses make rules for a reason. Sometimes those reasons are irrational ones, but mostly (I'm an optimist at heart) there are good reasons for the rules--although many of them are long forgotten.

But even good rules need to be broken now and then. As the mother of a potty-trained 3 year old, I appreciated this post about the need to break a few workplace rules. Julie Coulter Bellon writes about a trip to the post office when her 3 year old decided he needed to go potty now.

I leaned over the counter and said, "Do you have a restroom we can use?"
The teller barely looked up at me and said, "No. It is against the rules to let any public person use our facilities. If the inspector came while an unauthorized person was in the back, we could be fined. It is definitely not something we can do. We do not break the rules."

Go read how Julie gets the obedient post office worker to bend a little workplace rule. If you've ever been caught with a recently potty trained child in a place without a public restroom, you'll appreciate her tactics.