Ron -- Good point that requirements should be sensible or we who create them are doing everyone a disservice. However, sometimes the best of procedures won't "make sense" to that rare operator who wants to be a maverick.
Vincnet -- Agreed, positive reinforcement is the ideal and should work in the vast majority of cases (i.e. 98%??) . But in my experience in the "real" work world (20-couple years) I have come across those few problem people often enough to know that discipline is required for some of these folks, period. I don't own any black leather outfits, either!
In the end, for these problem folks, I find discipline can help end the problem one way or the other: Either they use-up their "strikes" and are tossed out of the company or they finally "get it" and start behaving.
Two employees from my past that I had to discipline frequently and who were both verrrrrry close to finally being terminated finally got their stuff together and became good employees. Both of them wrote me very nice letters when I left the company eventually, both telling me I was one of the best bosses they ever had and thanking me for my help! One of them still writes me often to this day and credits me with helping to turn his life around, the other came to work for me at another company a few years later!
But I have also had people who just couldn't or wouldn't "get it". The procedure wasn't the problem, the person was. Buy my personal motto is that
I have never fired anyone, they've fired themselves by knowing what the penalty was in advance and violating it anyway on multiple occasions -- all I do is process the paperwork.
)
than if you know that doing bad will get you 
on the :ca: . this rule being wrong for some people but it's not everyone who wear tight black leather gears at work, even in France 
