Don’t change anything about your posting! You’re literally one of the best posters I’ve encountered on here.

I’m sorry your experience has been less than ideal. I enjoy every single one of your posts that I’ve caught and I truly appreciate them.

I suggest doing what I did, just accept that every experience (in this case, post on social media) is a learning opportunity for yourself and others.

Some people have more learning to do, and we don’t have to blame them or feel badly about ourselves for being discriminated against, or not being understood/accepted, or having our intentions misread. You clearly aren’t trying to hurt anyone!

You said it in your reply earlier to me, embracing yourself and all your quirks helped you move forward. That helped me! Think about all of the people who are helped by the discussions you spark and move forward proudly! 💚

Nah sis, your post is totally on point, and I love it. Authority is something we must question!

If I tell someone to move their car because they’re blocking the bike lane, I’m not inviting a debate about whether it’s a good idea to have a rule like that.

To be fair, most people doing stuff like that know very well, why the specific rules exist, but do not care, and are intentionally breaking them. In this example, if you have a driving licence, I image in most places they require you learning the rules of traffic, so they can be assumed to already have the knowledge. If they cared about the actual specifics of the reason, they would have asked, when they had to learn about it: thus them demanding answers for the rule on the fly, should also be assumed to be dishonest.
And also in this example, if you are unable to figure out on your own, why you should not endanger bikers, by putting huge metal obstacles, with suddenly opening doors in front of them, means you should not have a driving licence at all.

They always have some reason, they think is good enough for rule breaking - and might be, like some medical emergency or something, but those times would normally be solved with a polite discussion anyway, after the situation allows it - but usually it is just them being selfish morons.

What happens in the interim? Is the rule enforced while it’s under debate, or does the question suspend the enforcement?

I guess that would depend on the organization and the nature of the rule. If it’s over 100 degrees outside, and there is a rule forbidding shorts and temperature-appropriate clothing, would you enforce a rule and make somebody wear pants and long-sleeves if there are no safety concerns or reputational risks for dressing down during the heat?

If I tell someone to move their car because they’re blocking the bike lane, I’m not inviting a debate about whether it’s a good idea to have a rule like that. The rule is there to save me (a biker) time on my commute, and stopping to explain the rule would defeat the purpose of the rule.

I was more talking about workplace rules that are not time-sensitive. Like another commenter put it, we’re not talking about debating rules during a bomb defusal.

Same with the tech support caller who insists that the support agent explain everything to the user, without the background knowledge of being able to understand the explanation. It’s a waste of time.

As somebody with a background in IT, I disagree. You can’t assume to know what somebody does or doesn’t know, what they can understand or not - otherwise you risk offending that person. What you can do, however, is document higher-level procedures, terms, and concepts into writing as you go and pass that along with a broad, but succinct, explanation verbally. When they ask for detail, you have already provided it in writing. You can direct any further concerns to email or text (if you have that option) to save time, or schedule another call at a later point to address any concerns.

Or, if a rule is suspended while being challenged, then people can opportunistically challenge rules to try to get an advantage. That’s why pretty much any sport that allows for challenges during a game/match limits the number of challenges and limits the scope of calls that can be challenged, and has a specific limited period for proposing rule changes (in the off-season, to take effect the next season).

Each workplace can handle this on their own. I have no specific thoughts on this matter besides to say that I am someone who is not an advocate for hierarchy and traditional workplace/ownership structures. I think worker-owned cooperatives are an ideal to strive for as a society. Workers deserve a piece of the pie of the place they work hard at. In such an organization, rules would be likely made to preserve the integrity of the space e.g. no bigotry or discrimination.

Sometimes people are just annoyingly obtuse, and their challenges to a rule or the application of a rule do more harm than good. It’s important to be able to justify a rule, but it’s also important to limit the time, place, or manner in which that rule can be challenged.

I specifically made sure to include that I specified “in good faith”. That is subjective, though. If somebody is challenging rules to game the system or get an undue advantage, I’m not sure that is in good faith. I guess it depends on the nature of the employment. For example, if it’s sales related, and employees compete for sales, I could see questioning a rule, such as an ethical rule, to increase sales or performance in a way somebody can personally benefit from as not qualifying as being in good faith.

As for somebody being perceivably “annoyingly obtuse”, that is also subjective. There should still be a procedure to deal with the rule being questioned, that doesn’t waste resources or time on trivial matters while still addressing the concern with a pro-social process.

But you might improve something or expose malfeasance. You’ll have to be killed. Sorry; just the rule.

See if starvation is a little more charismatic.

This is why Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest sunnuvabitch in space!

Rulemakers not being able to explain something in a way you do understand is not a you a problem though.

Doesn’t that depend on who the “you” is, and whether the rule itself falls within that person’s expertise?

There are plenty of safety rules written in blood, enforced by those who might not understand the background or the theoretical reasons behind the rule. But someone knows the reason why, and sometimes the reason is difficult to explain to someone who doesn’t have sufficient background. I’d rather someone build a house to comply with the fire code than to ignore the portions he can’t justify to the homeowner.

“I don’t understand gravity so fuck it, Imma just throw a cat out of the window so that it can go for a walk”

Meaning there are different kinds of rules, different reasons and different understanding capabilities. Some rules are bullshit, some rules I will be able to verify only by experiment, simply because my knowledge and perception are limited

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It can go too far in either direction. If you’re writing a report you know no one will ever read it can help to ask why and push for an answer, but it isn’t the driving instructor’s job to explain why you should stop at the red light.

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This post is apparently about giving people a space to “um, actually” to their heart’s content 🙄

“Its something to do with how the proteins unfold when you get them wet. I don’t Know, I’m not a bread wizard, but it goes bad when we don’t and we already started kneading. Look it up later and get all fucking autistic at me sometime”

Actual thing that has been said to me. He did not appreciate the infodump later.

I was commenting based on the title not the picture.

The meme itself sure absolutely healthy behavior to know what the heck you’re doing before just ignorantly launching in. Whole point of pre-job briefs, job site reviews, anyone down to the newest person being able to stop work and not proceed in the face of uncertainty.

But the title “If you can’t explain why the rule matters, I won’t follow it” will fly over like a lead balloon.

The title says, “If you can’t explain why the rule matters, then I won’t follow it.” In nuclear you’re expected to follow the procedures and instructions and so on as written unless you went through whatever necessary process to get an exemption or relaxation from that standard. If you know what the rules are and intentionally don’t do that (the “then I won’t follow it”) that’s considered willful disregard and that can get not just the person doing it but also a site tolerating that behavior punished by the regulator to be an example to others because they want nuclear people to strictly adhere to processes regardless of whether they individually think they’re important or not. Everyone has their own view of a facet of some very complex operation and things that appear insignificant to one dude and his coworkers who just see one step as some BS that doesn’t really matter may be necessary to meet a key assumption that is the bedrock of another person’s analysis.

Procedures are often not written in a terribly efficient way to complete the task. That may be intentional if a more obviously efficient method imposes a risk somewhere that the creators/revisors of the procedure didn’t want to take. It could also just be whatever method the writers were familiar with even if a better one exists out there somewhere. So a frequent tension is “Why are we doing it with [Method A] when my used-to plant used [Method B]?” If this other way is immediately better for safety then maybe work should be halted until an exemption or fast track revision is done to have the words match the safer method. If it’s just an efficiency thing though it may take a while to process even a uniformly better method into a new procedure revision such that it has to be done under the existing guidance for the time being… you may well be told that the existing method is flat out worse than the way in the upcoming new rev, but you are expected to fully follow the text of the existing revision regardless.

Or for a different sort of thing with a hypothetical example where there is a guy caught up at a radiological boundary on his way out of the plant. He sets off an alarm on a machine known to be sensitive to the point of occasionally alarming off of background radiation even if you are totally clean. The rule is to wait for radiation protection to show up and clear him before he could go to the cleaner side of the radiological boundary. Most everyone experiences this and generally the way it goes 99% of the time is RP shows up, asks you where you’ve been, they have you go to a monitor another time and sees if you pass or not and if you pass generally they let you go right on through or if not then they start having to be a lot more involved. This guy is impatient after some extended time waiting on RP because he wants to go to the bathroom just on the other side of the boundary and since he’s dealt with a similar situation before he feels it’s OK to just skip the wait for RP, rescan himself again and pass through to the bathroom when he comes up in the clear. By common sense there’s not really a problem, it’s what RP was going to have him do anyway… but it’s not just a matter of common sense. He has just demonstrated that at least in one situation he will not obey the rules that govern radiological boundaries, so how can they be sure he will follow the others? At a site where observing radiological boundaries may make a difference between a normal day and injury or death, that’s actually a huge problem that he can no longer be trusted to always safely stay within the lines he needs to at the times he needs to, an assumption underpinning what areas people are allowed to access. So for that and to enforce the standard and ensure people seriously follow the rules about radiation boundaries, the guy gets fired even though everyone knows that the guy wasn’t actually contaminated upon leaving the boundary.

I wouldn’t personally expect that of people. There are a very VERY substantial number of rules in a vast array of disciplines needed to operate a plant generically before even getting into the specifics of the site and all the equipment on it and how that evolves over time as things happen like equipment upgrades or degradation and new operating experience from the same or other plants getting incorporated. Or instructions provided on a case by case basis for performing a task that is now different in some way that matters to one stakeholder who needed a change but that may not be apparent to others. Even people who have been working at the same place for decades with plenty of continuing training can get caught with their pants down on a task they’ve done all the time when a new revision changes something they were accustomed to doing which is why they have to be ensuring that they’re working with the latest revision for each task every time. Often when you’re working with other departments on a common activity you may need help finding out what the applicable procedures or or other guidance that you’ll need to be following even are, let already knowing the latest details on what changes have been made to them and why. And in recent times the industry has a lot less gray and bald heads than it used to so many more people are freshly learning what their own positions are and don’t have the experience and perspective of watching the place evolve over the decades.