Having a boss who is a micromanager can be a real hassle.

What would you do if your boss started demanding that you use a time tracking tool that made things very difficult to get done?

That is what happened to the team in this story, so they made sure to use the new tool exactly as instructed, resulting in a dramatic loss of productivity and the boss removing the tool to go back to how things were.

Check it out.

Boss introduces new timetracking tool to “avoid time manipulation”, backfires on him

I work in a small startup company of around 12 people.

It’s a very good atmosphere in the office and everyone pulls their weight and is super motivated.

However, our boss likes to micromanage us, even though he has no expertise in any of our fields (Marketing/Design/Accounting/…).

Especially us in Marketing and Design suffer a lot from that, since he will make changes to our strategies/posts/website, sometimes without telling us, and then gets upset at US when the customer feedback is bad and we aren’t reaching our predicted goals.

So recently, he told us that the reason he thinks we aren’t seeing enough results is because we are manipulating our hours and not actually putting in the work we should.

The system is working, so of course the boss changes it.

Until then we each wrote down our hours manually in an excel sheet, but with the new time tracking tool, he would see how long we were working down to the minute.

We also could only log in on our desk PCs (and previously approved home office devices), but not mobile because “if you are not at your desk, it is not work”.

After our initial shock passed and our boss left for the day, our manager called for a meeting and we came up with a plan.

This all sounds very reasonable.

We would do as he says, in the most “just following the rules way” possible.

1. We would not engage in work related conversations with him unless we are sitting at our desks and are clocked in.
2. Any questions by him which are asked after we are clocked out will only be answered once we clock in again the following day.
3. Every phonecall, textmessage or otherwise work related things outside of the office would only be answered once there was an option for us to clock in, either next day in office, or for some of us on our homeoffice device.
4. Since we no longer have the option to “shift” time manually, all work minutes and hours would be clocked exactly when they took place (sidenote: in my country, weekends pay better, Sundays have to be paid double and working after 8PM warrants additional financial benefits by law. Previously, if we needed to post something real quick or had a question, we would just add the weekend hours or late time to the upcoming Monday. Basically, out of good will. But no more of that!)
5. We would stop any independent activity (like posting on social media or writing an email) and would send him EVERYTHING to approve before following through.

After about a week, our boss was so fed up with this, he gave us the option to clock in from our mobile devices, so he could get a more immediate response to his questions.

However, this of course led to us clocking in way more frequently (since, as I said, he likes to micromanage and is therefore asking a LOT of questions).

At least he backed off.

I’m happy to report that as of 2024, we have abolished the system again and regained most of our independence.

Even though our boss is still mad about how we exploited the system, it brought the team closer together and hopefully taught him a lesson.

I doubt he learned anything.

Let’s see what the people in the comments think.

Absolutely. This was great team building.

Yes, he was good at hiring, not at managing.

I’m betting they will never learn.

Good point.

Sadly, this is true.

But will he stop micromanaging?

The jury is still out.

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