It’s insane how random some management rules are at places.

This hotel had a forbidden set of keys that no one was supposed to get their hands on.

But then something unexpected happened and the keys got more accessible than imaged.

Check out the full story.

Only one set of keys for the hotel.

I used to work at a hotel on a large property that did a lot of business conferences.

We had golf buggies to get around, 10 different conference rooms plus, lots of other hotel facilities, storage rooms etc.

They had some rules!

Upper management had a strict rule that important locks could only have one set of keys.

Upper management also liked to “save” money by never fixing things when they broke.

It must’ve looked good on paper.

One week we had a big spending client who had booked out the hotel for the week.

The client was extravagant!

Night one our sales team had got the times wrong for their dinner of several hundred people so all available staff were sent over 2 hours early to start setting up.

The hotel’s General Manager (GM) announced he would be over shortly to see how things were going, which was almost unheard of for him.

The GM wasn’t pleased…

What he found was about 20 staff standing around outside the venue. The conversation went something like this:

GM: Why is everyone standing around?

Supervisor(Sup): We don’t have the keys. We sent a staff member looking for the other supervisor who has the keys now.

GM: Where are your other sets of keys?

Sup: We’ve only been given the one set of keys.

GM: Why don’t the staff have a radio on them?

UH OH…

Sup: Radios have been broken for over a year and never approved to be replaced.

GM: Why did you only only send one staff member to look for them?

Sup: We only have the one working golf buggy.

GM grumbles and sends another staff member off on his buggy to look for the keys.

Eventually, after everyone standing around for nearly 20 minutes the keys turned up.

GM was pretty scared that the team would anger the client.

The GM was stressed out of his mind that such a big client might be kept waiting. For the supervisor it was just another Monday.

Malicious compliance: The supervisor had access to a backup set of keys that they were strictly forbidden from using.

Usually in a situation like this they would quietly use the forbidden keys and everything would go smoothly.

They found their way around the situation.

But because the GM decided to be there they didn’t mention the forbidden keys, causing delays and panicking management.

Fallout: The next week, each supervisor got their own set of keys.

Things started falling in place.

A few weeks later we got radios for the department.

Upper management also started checking in on how things were going from time to time.

Apparently making rules without knowing how things actually work isn’t such a good policy.

Geez! That’s one annoying workplace with their forbidden keys.

Let’s find out what the Reddit community thinks about it.

This user shares their experience about forbidden keys.

This math teacher shares how things were at their school.

This person has a comedic view of the story.

This person shares how tings were at his old job.

That’s an ancient story. This person has a tale from the 80’s.

That’s a lesson for most hotel managements!

These guys needed just one rich client to put them in place.