Imagine working in a position at a company where the boss doesn’t understand your job. If that meant that the boss assumed you were lazy and didn’t actually do anything, would you willing to prove to him just how busy you really were?

In this story, one IT Admin at a construction company was in that situation. When the president accused him of not doing anything, he decided to prove him wrong.

Keep reading for all the details.

The Skunk Factor

Mid l-2000’s, I was a selt-taught IT Admin for a small local construction company.

Everyone was pretty much a type ‘A’ personality and you could’t tell them anything they don’t already know.

They were also a bunch of cheapskates who looked to squeeze every last cent out of anything, lest we not maximize profit.

How I ended up in the position is an example of this, but that’s another story.

Here is an example of how they were frugal.

But to attest to their frugality, we served up our own website, email, and project management software on two servers, which were actually converted desktops.

All network data storage and backups were run off these two servers too. This all on a single DSL line and modem.

Don’t get me started on our phone system, which also came on the same DSL line.

The president clearly didn’t understand OP’s job.

Apart from constant battles to upgrade equipment, which I was able to slowly improve over time, they normally left me alone as I kept us shuffling along.

But I could never get them to budge on the DSL.

We were super limited because of it and it began affecting the guys at our out of state projects.

After a particularly brutal and demoralizing meeting, where I tried to explain that we just don’t have enough bandwidth to support what we’re trying to do, the president honed in on me as the source of all their problems. ‘What the hell do you do all day down in that server room while the rest of us carry you?’

He was about to find out!

His solution was to put me on a performance plan where I needed to report to him what I do every hour of the day.

They love thick contracts, so he’s getting thick reports!

I started harvesting every report I could squeeze out of Microsoft.

I CC’ing him everything from our email and web services, to updates and security reports. I included a short summary with explanation of what was happening during each report, kept extensive notes on troubleshooting, error and print logs, spam, you name it. I documented every computer, cell phone, and mouse pad we had, and wrote trouble tickets for anything I put my hands on.

Eventually, he had enough.

He lasted two days, but I continued emailing him until he came down and yelled at me for wasting his any my time with is all these stupid reports.

He left me alone a for more than a year after that, but I never did get us off the damn DSL line.

Clearly, the president didn’t understand OP’s job, so he found out exactly what he did all day. Mission accomplished.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

This is a funny suggestion, but I agree that it’d be a bad idea.

One person can really relate to this situation.

Yes, this would’ve been worse.

It really is hard to find a good contractor.

I don’t think he’ll ever be asked what he does again.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.