The purpose of productivity is to get the most value out of a chunk of time.

But the person in this story has a boss who has very different definition.

See how this employee cleverly found a way to meet his boss’s requirements without doing extra work.

Boss demands fauxductivity

My current job is a simple one and nice as it is WFH, receive work to file digitally, upload said documents, repeat.

The expected productivity according to my boss is laughably easy achievable by myself, however, others on my team seem to only be able to complete what is expected.

Every day I achieve above average uploads within a max of 4 hours every day. This leaves a lot of time to myself. I always stay by my computer, however, in case my boss or a coworker needs help with other things.

You might expect she would be praised for providing high value in a short amount of time, but alas…

Recently, I have been reprimanded for “productivity” issues.

Basically being told I need to be doing something at all times and that the time gaps in no work is unacceptable.

My boss demands that when I am clocked in, my upload records must always show that I have recently done something, and that there cannot be a gap in uploads longer than 10 minutes unless I’m clocked out.

Basically demanding I do more work for the same amount of pay.

Then OP found a way to appease her boss while also keeping her workload fair.

I set a timer that goes off on my phone every 3 and a half minutes telling me to complete one upload. So now I do the exact same amount of work over the course of 8 hours instead of 4.

Don’t want to pay me more for doing 3x as much work as others? I’m not putting the effort in then. It’s silly to think I would.

Here’s what some commenters had to say.

Probably, but you’d still need to be at your desk.

A lot of people shared the fallout of similar policies at their work.

When you don’t understand computers, you don’t detect things like this.

A very old and familiar story. It was cathartic to read this.

A lot of people shared how quotas motivated laziness instead of performance.

Pointless busy work seems commonplace everywhere.

Ugh!

If you thought that was an interesting story, check this one out about a man who created a points system for his inheritance, and a family friend ends up getting almost all of it.