Everyone has been in the position where their boss gives them instructions that are borderline impossible.

How would you handle trying to prove to your boss that their idea is, well, a bad one? One guy recently shared his tactic for solving this problem on Reddit. Here’s what went down.

Former manager said to update the checklist as items are completed

About 10 years ago, I was working the overnight shift at a large beer factory.

The company decided it was going to do away with management on that shift.

Seems like a risky idea.

To ensure menial tasks were completed, the company created a checklist for us to complete.

The manager from the previous shift was supposed to stay about 2 hours into our shift, then forward all the completed checklists to his manager.

Doesn’t sound exactly foolproof.

Well, there was no way that everything on the list could be completed in those 2 hours, so we all just waited to the end of the shift to fill them out.

The manager responsible for forwarding the completed lists was already long gone before we filled them out, so he had nothing to send.

After a few days of this, he ordered us to complete the checklist before he leaves at 1am (only 2 hours into our shift).

Classic manager line of thinking.

We refused, saying that it would be false information to complete the list before the work was done.

So, he decided that we would continuously updates the list as we complete tasks.

This way, he would have some portion of the list to send to his boss.

Can’t imagine this went over well.

We found out that each time the an item was checked off and the list was closed, he would get an email.

So, the 12 people on the shift all decided we would check off our lists 1 item at a time and close it (there were about 30 items on the list).

The manager started getting a separate email for each item from each person.

That’s corporate nightmare fuel.

After a few days of receiving 360 meaningless emails, the checklist went away.

Always hilarious when the suits think they know more than the folks on the floor. Let’s see what the good people of Reddit had to say about this one.

Some commenters were on the manager’s side.

Others found the story classically amusing.

Some doubted the validity of the story and had it checked for bots.

Which made the human commenters even more amused.

Sometimes there is such a thing as too much efficiency.

If you liked that post, check this one about a guy who got revenge on his condo by making his own Christmas light rules.