Help! How to deal with madness?

Two encounters: On our Perl list someone asked for help
and it turned out his manager set a policy not to use strict. On the local Linux list
while trying to help someone I found out that they are using a home made module called DB
for database access which I guess means they cannot use the debugger of Perl as that also lives
in the same name-space.

The thread starts here, no strict policy mentioned here.

The thread with the DB starts here

I really don't know how to deal with such situation other than running away.

I mean, my little children already know they should put on the seat-belts when in the car and should not run around with scissors.