Automation is often seen as a way to maintain or even improve productivity. But it all depends in how you use it.

With the wrong approach, it might actually promote laziness and that’s what happened here.

Check out this wild conspiracy set in motion with the aid of technology.

You wanted zero idle time in teams. OK, we can do that

My sister’s company went work from home after the lockdown and stayed working from home.

They used a system that tracks your idle time in Microsoft Teams.

So I built a mechanical mouse turner. The mouse sits on the cradle and the disk spins without touching.

OP’s sister got herself a place on Easy Street.

It hooked into her laptop’s USB port, never being detected, and would turn her wheel decreasing her idle time down to zero.

Within 2 weeks she was recognized as a top performer.

So she calls me up and asks if I can make more of those, so I did.

Then one weekend I get a call from the CEO of that company.

All of his workers were using these mouse turners, and he wasn’t.

So when the company published the report on idle times, his was abysmally low.

Things get even more bizarre.

I tried convincing him to give up the idle timer requirements as it clearly wasn’t important and only harmed his company.

I laid out all of my points for it and pointed out that the CEO of the company is buying a device specifically designed to bypass his requirement.

He asked for a full list of my clients, promising that no one would be fired, he just wanted to know how many.

I told him that a list would be unnecessary as its every single one of his employees. Literally all 32 excluding him.

His response was to have the company reimburse each employee the 25 dollars for the mouse turners and set it up where his company would contact me each time a new employee started.

So a company set idle time requirements which caused issues at the company.

Now the company buys devices for each employee so that bypasses the idle timer.

Here’s what people are saying.

It’s almost like surveilling staff doesn’t actually help a business… (Rolling eyes.)

Um, I think it’s your job you should hate, not the timer. Yes, timers suck, but the market wants them, so they’re not going away.

I didn’t get this at all. It’s not like he made a lot of money from it.

Ah, this makes a lot more sense to me. How sad, though.

I work from home as a freelancer and I bill by project and don’t have to deal with this. I’m so glad. It’s silly.

I couldn’t sleep at night if I was getting paid to circumvent a system and watch Netflix instead of actually work, but that’s just me.

If you liked that post, check out this one about an employee that got revenge on HR when they refused to reimburse his travel.