Staff orchestrate hilarious plan to deal with micromanaging boss' demand to track every task

Businesses often boast of their "employee-friendly" workplace policies in job ads, but the reality is different. Even if the organization actively tries to foster a healthy work environment, one bad apple can ruin everything. In most offices, this bad apple would be a toxic, insensitive or micromanaging boss with unreasonable expectations. For u/mdlapla on Reddit, it was a micromanaging manager who wanted to track how much time employees spent on every single task. Thanks to a closely acquainted team, the employees gave the boss a taste of his own medicine in the most hilarious way. 

Back in 2003 or 2004, when the internet was just booming, the employee worked for a banking client. Their workplace was a basement converted into a warehouse where 30 members of their IT team toiled hard. The employees had three team leaders to whom everyone reported their tasks regularly. "Each team member would tell their team leader whenever a task was finished and how long it took. It worked pretty well because team leaders were chill and the guys were serious and didn't slack much," the employee explained in their post. However, their "micromanager" wanted a more detailed tracking of tasks. 

Speaking to the worker and their team lead, the manager said, "Look, guys, I have a feeling we are not working hard enough. I need to be able to report the exact amount of time we spend on each task to the client. I want you to have some kind of software so people can input the time they spend on each thing." The team leader tried to explain that their current arrangement seemed to work well. "Micromanager says that it's not enough, that people are wasting time and he wants accurate tracking," the employee added. So, cueing in malicious compliance, the tech-savvy team lead developed an app through which employees can input their working time, temporary stops and unassigned times. Before the app's trial run, the team lead asked all 30 employees to input their "exact" tasks in elaborate detail and they complied hilariously.

Every few minutes, the employees logged in to whatever they were doing and why it took so much time. Apart from work-related tasks, the list also included people spending a few minutes to hang their coats properly, having a glass of water due to cough, going to the bathroom, discussing a football match with colleagues, asking maintenance to adjust the heating and even inputting their work status in the new app. One person even wrote, "Joke, morale booster - two minutes," and another quipped, "Lost track of thought, realized I was looking at the poster of a window instead of a window - three minutes." Eventually, bombarded with task updates, the micromanager asked the team lead to uninstall the tracking app.

People were amused by the team lead and the employees' malicious compliance. "You all should have also kept track of how long you spent inputting all of the tasks," joked u/Status-Biscotti. "When I do time sheets for non-billable work, I like to screw around in the descriptions as well. Nobody reads that, but it makes doing the time sheets more bearable," said u/DeepRiverDan267. "They don't understand that a truly great manager sets clear direction and measures of success. Then they aggressively remove any and all obstacles in the way of that clear direction, including themselves," commented u/tim5700.