A bicycle fisher is someone whose job is to ‘fish’ rusty and old bikes out of canals - not someone who fishes while riding a bike! In the Dutch capital of Amsterdam, around 14,000 rusty bicycles are fished out of the city’s canals every year.

If you ever go to Disneyland, you’ll notice that the employees in the costumes always point at you with two fingers instead of one. This is because in some cultures, such as in the Middle East, pointing with one figure only is considered rude. In order to not offend international guests in Disney’s theme parks, all of the employee cast members are told to point with two fingers instead.

Some companies such as the Scottish brewer, Brewdog, offer employees time off for when they adopt a puppy or rescue dog to help bond with and train their new furry friend. In the case of Brewdog (a company with a history of controversy in how it treats its employees), they introduced the scheme as a way to support workers' well-being and respect different types of family dynamics (source). What do you think? Would this kind of perk make a company more appealing to you?

Zwiebel left his workstation at least once to go to the toilet. While OSHA (the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which manages working regulations in the USA) gives U.S. workers the right to “toilet facilities”, Zwiebel’s toilet breaks apparently “unreasonably interfered with production”. The law on the use of bathroom facilities by workers remains somewhat unclear in the U.S.

This rule was the idea of Amazon’s CEO, Jeff Bezos. Bezos’s observation was that as meetings grew larger and larger, they became less productive. He decided that the solution was to never hold a meeting where two pizzas would not be enough to feed the whole group - though Amazon’s company guidelines don’t state anywhere how large these pizzas should be!

The practice of inemuri (an accurate translation would be ‘sleep while being present’) is frequent in Japanese workplaces. Japanese society places a high value on hard work, with both adults and students frequently working or studying more than 10 hours a day! Because of this, it’s common to see people getting a few minutes’ sleep where they can - in public squares, on public transport - and also in the workplace. Japanese culture is often tolerant of people sleeping in meetings, for example, because their tiredness suggests that they’ve been working hard the day before.

A professional queuer is exactly what it sounds like - someone who will wait in a queue for you if you’re too busy to do it yourself. They’re typically paid up to £20/hr, which means that if you want someone to queue for two days to get you a new iPhone, you might end up spending as much for the queuer as for the phone itself!

George Steinbrenner, former owner of the New York Yankees, enforced this rule in 1973 after he decided that players’ hair was too long when they stood for the National Anthem at the start of games. In 1991, player Don Mattingly refused to cut his hair as requested, and as a result he was benched for the game.