I guess Sylvester with the caption "Would you mind taking your silly ass problem down the hall?" falls within the commercial category.

One place I worked, our branch had a monthly birthday party with cake that was not official policy.

At another place with round-the-clock shifts, we all tried to get to work a half-hour to an hour early to relieve members of the previous shift. This was completely against official policy but our manager overlooked it.

At my last workplace, it was verboten to have anything in your cubicle -- piles of books, vases of flowers on shelves, etc. -- that was above the "sight line" (the cubicle walls).

That was not an official policy, though it was informally enforced by all of us including the Dept. Head.

* decorations for 30th, 40th, 50th, etc. birthdays
* birthday card everyone in office/deaprtment signs
* non-stop stream of food from outside sales force, vendor sales reps, employees

Whenever an employee leaves, gets married, or has a baby, our dept. secretary sends around an envelope with a card in it. We're supposed to sign the card and throw a few bucks in for a gift. It's generally acknowledged, but not vocalized, that if you don't really know the employee you still have to sign the card, but you don't have to donate any cash.

two words:
beer-thirty.

Um, that's a tradition in [some] IT and software development offices. It means having beer at 3:30 every Friday. Here we do it at 4 p.m. (21 minutes and counting!), but it's still considered "beer-thirty".

One place I worked had "Blue Monday", blue pants and shirts (guys only) on Monday. Same place had the rule that you brought donuts in on your birthday.

three words:

half-past sandwich.
(lunchtime)

We have that rule, tommasz. We bring in treats for our birthdays. The person whose birthday was before yours circulates a card and everyone puts in a dollar. The money is supposed to pay for the treats, but it doesn't really. Not enough people contribute. So they decided to discontinue the 'put in a dollar' part and keep the card part. And people still want you to bring the food.

matilda, I had no idea that Friday beer was an IT tradition. Our company always did it (though it was 5pm on Fridays for us), but that would explain why the IT guys were always responsible for buying the beer. (I think the dept. paid for it, though.)

At a travel book publisher I worked for, we put the really stupid and/or funny reader mail up on a wall for public mocking. I think for a while it also included some of our *own* work, from past editions of the guides that we thought were particularly bad. (It was always a feel-good thing, though; we never used it to mock current employees.)

At that same place, we would always have Ben & Jerry's during the weekly staff meetings. And that was when Snapple was starting to get popular, and there was a Snapple truck that would drive around the neighborhood and give out free samples, so any time someone spotted it, they'd send an email around, and the entire office would clear out to go get free drinks.