A lot of bosses thinking improving productivity means surveilling every little thing your staff does and asking them to defend it all.

But as this team knew first hand, it’s actually counter-productive and annoying as heck.

See how they made their point to their micromanaging boss.

If you want to track our time down to the minute, that’s exactly what we’re going to do.

I was basically the CEO’s assistant and would do everything for her. Coffee, reports, meetings with clients.

She loved to keep tabs on us and she’d send messages nearly every single hour asking for a progress report on tasks, screenshots, and what have you.

She had me doing a million things a day and would get viciously upset if things weren’t done to her ‘standard’.

When this boss couldn’t hover physically anymore, she did it digitally.

And then the pandemic happened, and things got pretty bad.

All of us had to shift to a WFH routine, which was nice for a bit while we were all getting settled.

Pretty quiet, even.

Until my boss started trying to track us through endless Slacks and emails.

I proposed using a cool time tracking website that tracks timing and tasks and worded it in a way that she’d be happy with.

She liked that, so we tracked every single thing. Down to the minute too, as she said.

The play-by-play is ridiculous and makes their case.

9:12AM: starting on report for client 83

9:49AM: toilet break due to coffee

9:57AM: washing hands (with soap)

10:11AM: sneezed

You get the idea.

It was difficult for a while, lol. But it was worth it to get her off our backs.

Last I heard, she was still micromanaging, just not as bad as it used to be. Yay.

Here’s what folks are saying.

Depending on her settings, yes! That makes it so much more satisfying.

That’s because it’s not about productivity. It’s about insecurity, ego and control.

Wouldn’t have been as funny, but probably would have been more professional. It was WFH anyway.

Do what you gotta do!

This sounds like a good solution.

Another reason why I charge by project and not by hour…

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.