This being HN, let's talk about software.<p>I have seen people very wrong-headedly trying to apply rules to all employees because of one misbehaving person, under the misguided notion that this is somehow "fair". For example, a long time ago there was a person in the admin group that was basically a slacker - came in late, left early and didn't work very hard. Management got really annoyed by this and made a "Everybody in by 9am OR ELSE, no exceptions" rule. Well you can imagine how that went down will all us geeks who were slaving 14 hours a day till the witching hour to fix problems. They managed to piss off the most productive people in the building, instead of standing up to one person and saying "you will be in by 9am, because that is when your manager needs you, and if you're not, you will be fired".<p>So, unless you are managing an organisation that is so large, and you trust your middle management so little, that you can not address problems on a case-by-case basis, then stay away from sweeping rules. I'm with the OP on this one.