Dissatisfied Employee Fools The Managers Into Thinking He Is Working More Than He Is Because They Wouldn’t Let Him Work From Home

Some employees do the bare minimum, and some get creative when the office rules stop making sense. One Reddit user says he landed in the second group after his company refused to let him work from home full time.

He said he hated the office and was frustrated by a strange productivity system that judged workers by whether their chat status showed idle. Because he often finished his work quickly, managers decided he was not remote-work material, even though his queue stayed empty.

So he found a workaround that made him look busy all day, and the result was more satisfying than he expected. Read on.

This employee recently reported how he was denied the ability to work from home since he was frequently seen idling on work chat.

Elina (not that actual photo)

OP shares his story

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He hates the office and doesn't want to return. But he has to

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OP asked the managers about the logic behind the decision

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Because it was hard to understand

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And the explanation was ridiculous

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OP doesn't have to be active all the time - just when he has work to do

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Thanks to his capabilities and good time management, his queue is always empty.

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That left him with a pretty obvious workaround.

So, he wrote a code that would make him appear always online

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And now he is the star of the company.

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He later said plenty of other people had run into the same problem.

Also, this office monitoring mess feels similar to the coworker banned from the office fridge after lunch theft.

OP posted an update. Apparently, many people had the same problem and solved it with a mouse jiggler.

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OP even shared the code

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And explained how it can be adjusted

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Some readers were not impressed, and he pushed back hard.

Some people criticized OP, so he gave them a piece of his mind

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What do firefighters do? They fight fire when there is fire. They don't run around pretending to work when there is no fire around.

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Reddit had plenty to say about the company’s idea of productivity.

Redditors were angry about the way the company measures productivity

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Others shared their tricks

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Primitive, but it works...

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Managers can be fooled so easily...

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In a nutshell:

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Some ridiculous rules there:

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Other Redditors shared their experiences:

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Bots rule!

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The bottom line:

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One rule that the managers still haven’t learned is that whenever they impose some ridiculous rule, employees will find a way around it. Being honest with employees and listening to their suggestions is the best way to run a company.

But somehow, they fail to see it. And cooperation ends up being a competition.

Want more office chaos? Read about an employee booking a desk and accidentally starting a full-blown hot-desking feud.