Basic Trope: A character's scrupulous adherence to the rule book aggravates another character, intentionally.
- Straight: Officially, checking out equipment at the Ministry of Troping requires completing three separate forms. This process is normally reduced to just writing one's name on a sign-out list because the official process is too long and inconvenient for normal purposes. Alice the Obstructive Bureaucrat insists that Bob fill out all three forms because she's upset with him, for some reason.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice makes Bob fill out twelve forms before she'll let him check out any equipment.
- Alice refuses to let Bob check out the equipment because he made a very minor error on one form, even after he corrects it in the presence of six neutral witnesses. Or, even worse, he becomes a Persona Non Grata in the Ministry of Troping.
- Downplayed: Visitors to the Ministry head office are officially required to sign a sign-in sheet, but few people ever do and nobody cares enough to complain.
- Justified:
- The Ministry workers can't legally strike, so they decide to Work to Rule to force management to the negotiating table.
- Jeff, the new boss at the Ministry, is an unpleasant Control Freak who insists on doing everything by the rules, so his subordinates do so to show him just how unreasonable he's being.
- Inverted:
- Officially, there are no rules about checking out equipment. The Supplies and Inventory staff implement a sign-out sheet without official approval to keep track of their equipment better.
- Officially, the equipment check-out procedure is very simple, but Supplies and Inventory intentionally adds more required forms because they're fed up with being overworked and underpaid.
- Subverted:
- Bob fills out the forms and hands them to Alice, who simply chucks them in the trash and hands him the sign-out sheet.
- Bob wishes to do a "rule-to-book" protest. Charlie makes clear that he will fire him or worse if he does.
- Double Subverted:
- Just as Bob breathes a sigh of relief, Charlie fishes the forms out of the trash and overrides Alice because the forms weren't properly filled out.
- Bob breaks out a rule that forces Charlie to go through a very long and complicated review of Bob's performance of the last three years (minimum) to fire him, which buys him another week, at least.
- Parodied:
- It's literally impossible to check out equipment according to official procedures because they require forms that are no longer printed, approval from offices long since absorbed, renamed, separated, transferred, or closed, and signatures from people who have long since died, been fired, or retired.
- People complain about the unhelpfulness of the official procedure because there is no official procedure. The Ministry keeps its guidelines in a Blank Book, so people get what they need however they can.
- The rules demand that people do unrelated, bizarre, unpleasant, or even physically impossible things before they can check out equipment.
- Zig-Zagged:
- Alice and Bob's adherence to proper procedures changes by the day. Management is stumped.
- Alice and Bob use Work to Rule as a weapon to make each other's lives hell. Which one thinks rules are stupid and which one uses them to rule with an iron fist changes from episode to episode.
- Averted:
- The procedures aren't complicated enough for following them to the letter to become an issue.
- No one ever insists on such strict adherence to procedure.
- Enforced: Executives either hate the Obstructive Bureaucrat or believe they're "unsung hero" material, whether it's a specific person or the job description, so they ask for an episode that will either focus on people's plight to deal with bureaucracy or will have someone buy time for the Big Damn Heroes using paperwork.
- Lampshaded: Bob complains about the pettiness of paperwork and Alice says, "That's life."
- Invoked: Bob is applying for a government job and Alice doesn't want to have to work with him, so she decides to contrive obstacles for him from the rulebook.
- Exploited: Bob is committed to taking the Lawful Good path, however much it may annoy him, while his Chaotic Good rival Mike uses extra-procedural means to get the same things and accomplishes what he needs to accomplish much more quickly.
- Defied:
- Alice tells Bob, "Well, officially, you're supposed to fill out all these forms, get them countersigned, stamped, and approved ... but I can see it's urgent, so let's forget about all that."
- Alice's boss Jeff points out that the forms she wants to fill out are from an outdated version of the rules and the new version allows Bob not to use them.
- Alice was trying to invoke a "rule-to-book" protest, but there're so many rules that she sees the hassle would end up making things worse for her, so she decides not to do it.
- Jeff pulls rank and tells Alice not to mind the rules and just give Bob the things.
- Chancellor Evulz summarily executes (or fires with extreme prejudice, if he's in a good mood) anybody who tries to slow down his requests, regardless of how many rules are supposed to be followed, in front of all the other personnel. People catch wise after the first five or six times.
- No matter how obstructive Alice gets with her rule following, Bob is never bothered by it at all. He may even end up praising Alice for her meticulousness.
- Bob makes Alice's life a greater hell by forcing her to follow the rules even more meticulously on letter and spirit than Alice wished to do. Alice is allowed fifteen-minute breaks every two hours, but the spirit is to get a glass of water or maybe a cup of coffee, she is not allowed to run to the nearest bar during them. This definitely turns Alice's work even more tortuous.
- Discussed: Alice is teaching new recruit Diane about proper procedure. All her explanations on how things are officially supposed to be done are appended with "but that's too complicated, so normally we just use a sign-out sheet."
- Conversed: "If the writers are making us wish to hate the DMV more, they sure are doing a pretty good job at it."
- Played for Laughs: The Ministry of Troping has its own tree farm because it issues new editions of its rulebook every month, with every rule having been changed in some way since the last edition and many new rules added or deleted in each.
- Played for Drama: Bob needed to check out medical equipment to save Betty's life, and every superfluous form he is made to sign costs him valuable time.
- Played for Horror:
- Alice is The Sociopath and exploits her management of the rules to make Bob's life such a living hell loaded with red tape (that has left several people he loves dead, or at the very least suffering) that he will come begging, pretty please with a cherry on top, for her to stop. And she will, of course, not. Serves him right for taking the last doughnut.
- After enduring several months of this, Bob decides to turn Alice's brains into a Jackson Pollock painting.
- Implied: Bob refuses to apologize to Alice at first, but then does so after a few days of her being mad at him. He is asked if he could report her to management for her treatment of him, and he says, "No I can't. She didn't break the rules. She followed them."
- Deconstructed: A prolonged period of working to rule effectively shuts down necessary government services, costing lives and money.
- Reconstructed: ???
If you want to go back to the main trope, normally you'd just click the link, but just to spite you I'm going to insist that you fill out forms TR-0 and P-35 in triplicate, get them approved and paw-printed by Tropey the Wonder Dog, and have Trope-tan complete, sign, and attach a supplementary ID-10-T form.
Ah, screw it, here's the link.
