Most of us find phone directories really annoying, but for the person in this story, they came in handy at work.

Keep reading to see what he did to deal with his incompetent manager.

Boss wanted to me to increase active phone time

I had a job that was mostly calling and business development.

My boss was ridiculous and a jerk in many ways.

For example, he kept forcing me to be an independent contractor and then switching me to an employee, when it suited him.

One day, he contacted me and said,

“You only brought on 21 clients in the last 3 weeks and you have only been on the phone 50% of the time.

So, you could have brought on more clients if you were on the phone more. “

Whatever happened to quality over quantity?

I asked him what he wanted me to do. He said, he wanted my active phone time to increase.

He gave me no other instructions, such as bring on x amount of clients or make x amount of calls.

So I decided to comply by doing exactly what he told me to.

I found phone numbers that, when I called, I would have to listen to a menu that I would choose options from so I could be transferred.

Many of these repeated, forever.

The longest one I found was an hour before I disconnected.

OP’s compliance would be more tedious than malicious if he only did it occasionally. However…

So, I would sit there, increasing my phone time, while listening to these menus and knowing I would never select any option.

I would just indicate there had been “no answer” in my notes.

I called these same numbers, every day, to make sure my active phone time had increased.

I did this for more than a year, before I realized I was wasting my time, not accomplishing anything, and was completely bored.

So, I quit.

He, apparently, never caught on.

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Here’s what people are saying.

The automation geek is wondering how this could work. (I wouldn’t do it, though, I swear.)

Haha! I was surprised more people didn’t call out companies for this.

Can I get this on a t-shirt?

Why did you brother admit this to you?

Because OP’s manager is incompetent and lazy. That’s why.

Professional time waster FTW!

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.