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It’s difficult to enjoy a workplace if teamwork is discouraged.

This woman was working as a project management assistant when a new marketing employee suggested organizing a simple pizza lunch for the office. The get-together was meant to help coworkers get to know one another after a busy period at work. What seemed like a harmless social activity turned into a plan that was quickly shut down by the management.

Here’s a frustrating workplace experience where a company talks about having a great culture but reacts very differently in practice. Read the full story below.

What’s the dumbest reason you got in trouble at work?

Just remembering a time where we had a new marketing assistant at a place I used to work.

I was the project management assistant. The marketing assistant had been super busy getting everything ready for a conference.

He didn’t go but he had to get everything ready for the people who did go.

Once he had everything set, he asked me if I thought it would be cool if we all did pizza together at lunch.

When the sales and marketing team had left for the conference. He hadn’t really had a chance to meet anyone outside of the marketing team.

So he thought it would be a good opportunity to get to know everyone and we could all pitch in for pizza.

This woman helped organize the pizza party for the team.

I thought it was a great idea and helped him set it up. All our project managers, designers, and writers were up for it.

Not a single one of them thought it was weird or a bad idea. Pretty small team, only about 15 total.

I sent out an email the morning of to determine what pizzas to order.

Our marketing manager ended up on the email thread and responded that everyone was wasting time planning a pizza party.

While they should be working and he should be ashamed of themselves essentially.

This was coming from a company that was all about good work culture and having fun. We literally had Nerf gun fights.

She and the marketing assistant where called into the CEO’s office.

When the CEO and marketing team got back from their conference, I got pulled into the CEO’s office along with the marketing assistant.

We got chewed out for wasting everyone’s time. I was told I should have known better than to do something like that.

And that I was lucky I wasn’t fired. Absolutely crap.

I went home and wrote “f***” in as many ways as I could in my journal and decorated it and colored it.

Over 10 years ago now and it still annoys me. 🙄😤

It’s hard to blame OP for helping organize a casual lunch when everyone involved was on board. If anything, the company’s reaction seemed completely out of proportion. Like seriously, what’s wrong with employees sharing pizza for lunch?

Let’s read the comments of other Redditors on this story.

Here’s a related experience from this user.

This one got fired from his job.

Here’s another crazy story.

People are sharing their weird workplace experiences.

Finally, a short but honest response.

You can’t promote a positive work culture if you keep policing social engagement in the workplace.