Sometimes, the easiest way to please a boss is to give them the appearance of hard work, even if reality looks a little different.

So, what would you do if you had to sit at a desk with nothing to do for hours on end, bored out of your mind, and then get told by your manager to “look busy” or risk being seen as a problem?

Would you find more work tasks?

Or would you find your own way to fill the gap?

In the following story, a technical account manager finds himself in this position and opts for the latter.

Here’s what happened.

Want me to look busy? Ok, I’m on it.

20ish years ago, I worked as a Technical Account Manager at a large antivirus company.

This meant I was the go-to contact for several large companies that used our software.

When they had a problem with it, they called me, and I dealt with it or escalated it. 80% of the problems were minor annoyances in the online Wiki.

Teaching his customers how to help themselves actually backfired on him.

I taught my customers how to quickly bypass asking me and to look up the issue directly.

Sadly, this meant that I had TONS of downtime with nothing to do. This led to me being incredibly bored and developing a bad attitude about the job.

My micromanager took me aside and said that I needed to find something to do, as I was causing problems in the office. Want me to look busy? Ok, I’m on it.

I brought in my own personal laptop as the office provided one was crap. I installed World of Warcraft on it and proceeded to play WoW for anywhere from 6-8 hours a day.

Yes, I had that much downtime.

His boss loved his new and improved work ethic.

I went from wandering around complaining to sitting at my desk all day staring intently at my computer.

After about three months of this, the director took me aside to have a chat.

He said that he’s really proud of how I turned myself around.

Everyone noticed how hard I’m working and that I’m no longer complaining and wandering around all the time.

He really appreciates my newfound work ethic and wanted me to notice that my job performance has improved.

I kept doing that for 3 years until I moved to a different part of the state.

Too bad they wouldn’t let me work from home (didn’t exist in the early 2000s).

Wow! That was such a simple fix.

Let’s see how the people over at Reddit relate to such a situation.

This person played Skyrim for 5+ hours per day at work.

According to this comment, the IT guys at their job played Monster Hunter every day.

Here’s someone who encountered someone playing games at work.

For this reader, downtime is a big part of their job.

What a funny outcome!

The boss obviously had no idea what he was really doing!

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.