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Micromanagers are annoying to work for, but sometimes you can find a way to put their poor techniques to work for you.

What would you do if your manager always thought that he needed to go against your recommendations and tell you exactly what to do at every turn?

That is what happened to the young programmer in this story, until he figured out just how to get what he wanted. He started volunteering for work he didn’t want to do, knowing that his manager would deny those requests, allowing him to work on the projects he actually needed to focus on.

While he shouldn’t have to do this, I love how he was able to make it work. Read through the full story to see what you think.

Blocking the Choosing Beggar coworker with a Micromanager

I am a software engineer by trade. Not willing to be more specific than that, in fear of swift retribution from petty bureaucrats at the middle management.

These people all sound awful.

There are some genuinely good guys at my job. Sadly, they’re a minority on the verge of extinction. I work mainly with awful people.

There is Bossman the bigot, openly racist and proud of it. There is Brutus the backstabber, a backtalking human replicant who not only hides knives into other people’s backs, but steals credit wherever he can.

Also featuring Lord Varys – the master of unloading the burden of his “great” ideas onto unsuspecting workmates, rewarding them richly with blame when his grand plans inevitably go south.

And here is the worst of the bunch.

With a host of lesser minions they have turned the office into an awful place. However, this story is not about them. Tonight’s top billing:

The micromanager, whom we shall refer to as Marc with a C.

The constant pain in the butt, who henceforth is to be known as Francis C. Begbie.

Please do not work around the systems that are in place.

Begbie is the guy that worms his way past the defenses of formal issue-tracking and schedules approved by our superiors.

He slithers to your desk when the bosses aren’t looking, dons his most pleasant semblance of a smile, and asks if you could implement just one small feature for him, I’m sure it won’t take long, could you do it just this once, please?

It is a mistake to help people like this.

When I started my job, I was a nice guy. I thought it’s a decent thing to help your coworker when he’s in need. I was young and eager, and so was our company.

We had a ton of coding to do, too few guys to do it. More often than not, I had too much on my plate already, but I still took some Begbie’s requests on it, since I was a nice guy.

If you give him an inch, he will try to take a mile.

Begbie was not. After implementing any kind of gadget or widget for him, I would invariably find him hissing at my cubicle, having shed his smile somewhere along the way. “It’s too complicated to use!”, “Why is the output so messy?”, “Why can’t you make X so that it does Y instead of Z??” or something as charming.

After a while I started stalling with his requests, being still too nice to say outright “no” like I should have right from the start. I could have. He was my equal and should have had no power over me. When I finally did say no, Begbie had gotten a taste of bossing me around.

Good, he is doing things properly now.

Begbie upped his ante. He started to carry his requests to my nearest superior, Marc. Which, I guess, would be the more correct way of doing things, if done right.

The superior reviews requests and assigns them to his underlings, taking care not to overburden his charges, keeping things balanced, equal and nice. Everybody’s happy.

He is good at sneaking around processes.

However, Begbie did it the Begbie way: instead of participating in the bi-weekly workload planning sessions in which all the coders were supposed to be present, he started having quick one-on-one meetings with Marc in which he hypnotized my boss with his mesmerizing CB gaze or some other snaky tactics. In the following bi-weekly session, the result transpired:

Marc: Hey, you got much to do?

The boss should already know the workload.

Me: Well, yeah, I got the issues A, B, and C you just assigned to me in project 1. And bugs D and E to fix in project 2, plus the documentation for client F.

Marc: I heard from Begbie that he needs you to do feature X. Can you do that?

If Begbie knows what it takes, he can do it himself.

Me: Actually, I don’t think I have enough time to do even A, B and C.

Marc: Begbie said X should take a couple of hours at max.

Hey, if that is what the boss wants, that is what he gets.

Me: From what I understand, it will take more like three days to…

Marc: Ok, that’s settled then. We will assign feature X to you. Meeting adjourned.

A bad boss can really ruin a good job.

Now, the excerpt above might sound like bad managering, but I assure you, it was exactly that. For a first few months in this job I assumed that this is a normal way for a manager to handle things.

You see, I was fresh to the working world and naïve. But as time passed, it was becoming more and more apparent that Marc took glee in lording over his subjects and stamping out their initiative.

Especially mine, as I didn’t push back like Brutus the Backstabber or guile my way out of unpleasant tasks like Lord Varys.

The guy is never going to be satisfied.

My prophecy came true and coding Begbie his beloved X took three days. Three days I could have spent on fixing actual problems that, I dunno, clients actually paid for.

This didn’t stop my favorite coworker from complaining about the lack of usability, the lack of documentation, the lack of options, the lack of X not being Unix, GNU and Google combined.

How many hours of work can be dedicated to this guy’s ‘simple’ requests?

These were addressed in the next bi-weekly. Every time I implemented something Begbie had asked for, he craved improvements and additions.

For those improvements and additions, he craved more improvements and additions. I should commend my coworker, for he had invented the perpetual motion machine.

As long as they are paying him, I suppose.

I was starting to fall behind with my workload. But every time when I pretty justifiably opposed Begbie’s specials in the bi-weeklies, Marc torpedoed my protests and served me on a silver plate whatever the slithering jerk friend of his could muster. And he did it with that ever-so-slight smug grin on his face.

So, weeks passed and I toiled.

He finally found a way to get caught up.

By a miracle of undefined sorts, there came a day I had less work than usually on my backlog. I don’t know if I felt like being a proactive company man, or if I just wanted to rob Marc the satisfaction of getting to dictate my actions for once.

Heck, maybe I was just happy that I had dreamt of Lord Varys slipping on a banana peel and cracking his skull on the sidewalk or something. I can’t remember.

But anyway, I had gotten yet another request from Begbie, and this time decided to fulfill it of my own volition.

He is all too happy to help.

Come the bi-weekly:

Marc: Hey, you got much to do?

Me: Well, not that much right now. But I talked with Begbie and he asked me if I could implement this feature Z thing for him. I thought maybe I could do it next?

Wait. What?

Marc: Yes. Well. Ah. Err, I would say… I would say it’s better that we stick to the assigned schedule.

Me: You mean?

Marc: Let’s not pick any additional requests from outside the planned agenda. After all, we don’t want to fall behind with the schedule. Meeting adjourned.

Now he knows how to manipulate his boss. This could be fun.

I ambled back to my cubicle, feeling kind of flabbergasted. I felt kind of angry, too. That controlling jerk had once again vetoed my opinions just to veto my opinions… until a light bulb lit above my head. Maintenance had finally fixed the lighting over my cubicle, I noticed.

But I also noticed that I could play Marc’s zeal for micromanaging against Begbie’s passion for unending tasking.

Could it really be that simple?

The next time Begbie needed something from me, I was sure to present the request to Marc, suggesting I could start working on it right away.

Not surprisingly, Marc told me to wait until the bi-weekly meeting. In the meeting I volunteered to start working on Begbie’s latest ASAP. Net result: Marc explicitly forbade me from doing anything of sorts.

How long could this last?

I’ve been keeping this up for several weeks now. The system works beautifully. I keep shielding myself from Begbie with Marc’s impenetrable wall of micromanaging.

Whilst Marc thinks he’s still getting one over me by denying my requests, Begbie’s in a dead end.

He will have to find someone else to do his bidding.

I’ve seen less and less of him in the last few days. I would love to say that he’s come to realize what a jerk he was, but I don’t believe in miracles anymore.

However, I do think he’s in the process of finding someone else to leech on, which puts a slight, cautious smile on my lips every morning.

It is always nice when you find a way to manipulate your manager, especially when the manager is so awful.

Read on to see what the people in the comments have to say about this fun story.

I want to hear the rest of the story.

This commenter must do something similar.

It is a great story.

They haven’t figured it out yet.

If you enjoyed this post, check out this story about an employee who decided to push back against time micromanagement.

This applies perfectly here.

Finding a way to get your manager to do what you want doesn’t have to be impossible. When you know your boss is a micromanager, you just feed him things to manage.

It worked out really well for this guy, fortunately. He just needs to make sure that his boss and coworker don’t figure out what he is doing.