Optics is really important to some employees for some reason.

They don’t care about productivity as much as they care about the appearance of productivity.

The people in this story found a way to use that to their advantage. Take a look at what they did, thanks to a weird policy.

Can’t be visibly doing nothing, it affects employees morale. No problem.

My buddy and I were hired to be a glorified help desk and support for senior managers of a special project.

My buddy’s job was to actually go to their desk and hold their hand with what ever issue they had. He was great at it.

Things go really smoothly, but there’s a problem.

After the first couple of weeks things settled down and we received very few calls. So my buddy was sitting at some desk doing nothing.

After a few days one of the admin assistants complained that he was doing nothing and said it was bad influence on those around him.

I realized that our service level agreement said we had to respond within 30 minutes. So I suggested he go off and do what he wanted as long as he was back in time.

If they called for help, occasionally they would ask how long it would take and I’d say he’d be back in thirty minutes, or whatever.

The solution is simple and goes off without a hitch.

The busybody admin assistant called about a problem one day and said ” I never see him at his desk anymore, where is he ?”

“He is much busier now,” I replied. “His morale and I’m sure your staff’s must be much better now”

No one ever found out about this. The managers he helped loved him and wanted him to stay on.

About a year later he was made a manager and about 6 months after that he had that admin assistant fired, the morale really improved around there after that.

Here’s what people are saying.

It does! I’m so curious to know what sector this is. I bet it’s a big tech corporation.

I hope! They sound close.

That’s how it should be!

Definitely! Creative thinking is valuable.

“Long con” is a good way to describe it. Ha.

I wonder if he had to show people how to download things.

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.