When have policies gone to far?

For most of us, our work environment is controlled by polices, procedures, and standards. In most cases these are good safe guards ensuring safe practise is followed. Certainly you want to make sure that the person who is starting your IV or drawing your blood knows what they are doing and that their practise is guided by standards, policies and procedures. There is a certain comfort knowing that your pharmacist is dispensing your medication in a safe and accurate fashion, again based on practise, policies and standards.

There are many safe guards in place to ensure that these individuals meet certain standards and are following policies and procedures.

However, there does come a time when policies that are written and established leave you just shaking your head. Case in point, the other day I was having a casual conversation with one of my colleagues when some how the conversation got turned and twisted to us discussing undergarments. Don't ask me how we got there....we just did. We were casually chatting when another colleague walked by and my co-worker calls out "I hope you are wearing your panties under those scrubs". I giggled, I thought what the heck are your talking about. I truly thought she was making a silly comment, but truth been known there was more to this than I knew. My co-worker has an interesting sense of humour so I wasn't sure if she was joking or not so I called her on it. True enough she goes on to tell me that our employer is currently in the process of having a policy written on the wearing of undergarments!

Yes, you read that right. My employer in it's wisdom feels it necessary to have a policy in place with regards to staff wearing undergarments. Of course I was stunned by this, so I did a little investigation of my own. I contacted our nurse educator who indeed confirmed what my co- worker had told me. "Are your for real" was my response. WOW!!! So, now I am left with a couple of questions. First who is going to patrol/monitor this? How are they going to monitor this? Am I going to have to drop my scrubs to prove I am indeed wearing underwear? Is my employer now going to tell me what kind of underwear I can wear?

My employer keeps telling us they don't have money for certain projects, or extra help, or they need to cut back on supplies etc., but somehow they seem to have the funds available to waste on establishing such a policy. Am I the only one out there that thinks this is just crazy and a waste of valuable resources, time and money?

Unfortunately there are always individuals who push the dress code issue. But I question does undergarments come under a dress code policy? Personally, I don't look that closely at my colleagues to check to see if they wearing undergarments and I really don't care and or think it is any of my business. Again, how are they going to enforce this policy?

What about you, do you work in an environment where your employer has policies in place that just leave you shaking your head?