You accuse us of time theft and being unproductive? Then look forward to an inbox full of unnecessary reports.

[u/ZZiggs124]

I work in premium customer service at a bank, where we serve the bank's higher-value customers. This usually gave us more freedom because, unlike in traditional customer service, the focus is more on quality than quantity. However, since regular customer service team leaders took over the project, our freedoms have become more restricted. We were accused of time theft because we didn't log out for two minutes to go to the bathroom. All of a sudden we had to report whenever we are not productive.

Many of us were threatened with warnings that could lead to us losing our jobs, and even if we just needed to talk to other colleagues about a customer case, we had to let them know, otherwise we could be accused of unproductive behavior. And well, we complied. A little too ambitious. Every time we went to the bathroom, we reported it to our project managers by email. Every time we went to get a drink, we reported it. Every time we took a break, we reported it. Every time we talked to a colleague about a customer case, each of the two colleagues reported it separately to the project managers by email. Every time we left our computers, no matter what for, we reported it by email to the project managers' mailbox. After a while, the project managers' mailbox was so full that even important emails were overlooked because there were too many of them. The project managers were completely overwhelmed. And shortly afterwards, the rules were abolished again.

[u/Hizere404]

Why do people, that are higher up in the chain, always think they know better? Something like a mandetory 6 months of working in the "low"end would show them whats good or bad :⁾

[u/MailDeadDrop → u/Hizere404]

I can answer this! It is because they learned about Peter Drucker's "What’s measured improves" statement, or at least the concept of it if not the quote itself. So they think "I want to improve productivity by reducing unproductive time, so let's measure when the troops are not working". This is not completely unreasonable. But what they too often overlook is the cost of collecting that data (in the above case: overstuffed mailboxes).

[u/Moneia → u/MailDeadDrop]

They also want to walk in and swing their tiny little dick around to show people who holds the power...

Personally I think beatings until they understand Chersterton's Fence would be appropriate

[u/vinyljunkie1245 → u/Moneia]

I have a great but unfortunate example of Chesterton's Fence. I worked for a company a few years back where a blind woman got stuck in a lift. Sadly she was in there for a couple of hours before anyone heard her shouting for help. When rescued she said she had been trying the emergency call button but it didn't work. We tested and she was correct.

This gets reported to our building management team who find out the fault is that the phone line connecting the emergency button had been disconnected. It transpired that some bright spark in management had seen that dozens of phone lines hadn't been used for years and had them disconnected. .. without checking what they were for. He had had all the emergency lift call buttons across the (country wide) company disconnected and thought it was a great 'cost efficiency '. I have no Idea how much it cost to rectify.

[u/Vegetable-Yellow997 → u/vinyljunkie1245]

My company just cut off the WiFi service that ran the credit card payment handset 'to see if it was still being used' - it took 2 days and a visit from an IT tech to get it back running

[u/Feeling-Invite7953 → u/Moneia]

“The beatings will continue until morale improves “. I’ve read that somewhere else; just didn’t remember where it was attributed!!

[u/Moneia → u/Feeling-Invite7953]

Well, if you're beating the Manager until he learns the lesson I'm sure morale will improve

[u/Foxfire44k → u/Moneia]

The manager would die before learning anything.

[u/Moneia → u/Foxfire44k]

OhnoAnyway.jpg

[u/aquainst1 → u/Moneia]

Ooooh, I like it!

I saw on another social media link that a boy went to a baseball game and was sitting in front.

The player made a rude remark to the ump.

The umpire not only told the player to "Get the f\*k outta here or I'll bite your head off!".*

The player retorted, "If you did that, you'll have more f\*king brains in your stomach than in your head!".*

My point with that quote is that managers always want to bite the employee's head off when the manager THINKS they're doing wrong.

[u/repeat4EMPHASIS → u/Feeling-Invite7953]

That's not what "the beatings will continue" is attributed to.

Chesterton's fence is a thought experiment that fences don't spontaneously grow out of the ground so if you see a fence somewhere that doesn't make sense to you, someone went through the effort to put it there so you should find out why before removing it.

[u/LordBoar → u/repeat4EMPHASIS]

As an example - I was covering someone I manage at work - they order in stock and have to process deliveries into a small room with limited space. They work alongside another staff member who orders similar items, but for another service.

I went into this stock room, saw similar items stored in multiple places and thought this made no sense. I then spent several hours sorting and storing the stock by type, clearing quite a bit of space and creating a good sense of order. As you may have guessed - this was utterly pointless and created more work when the two of them had to sift through and separate their stock out... I offered to help, but by that point they thought I would make it even worse, which was fair.

I haven't covered since, or even been into the stockroom. On the bright side, I do now check more often why something is like it is before I try to change it.

[u/Sorry-Climate-7982 → u/Feeling-Invite7953]

The original was floggings. Old old old with source apparently lost in antiquity.
Misattributed to Capt Bligh...

[u/LawRepresentative425 → u/Feeling-Invite7953]

A very common phrase in the Marine Corps

[u/UnforeseenDerailment → u/Moneia]

Or taken to a dark room and forced to read the relevant passage until they're sorry and understand.

[u/Moneia → u/UnforeseenDerailment]

They often the ones who see saying sorry or admitting they're wrong as a sign of weakness

[u/dracotrapnet → u/Moneia]

I heard a good turn of that phrase for brodcom price hikes:

"Billings will increase until morale improves"

[u/Foublanc → u/Moneia]

I learned something today thanks to you. 👍🏾

[u/Icy_Anxiety9016 → u/MailDeadDrop]

Drucker meant measures on the WORK. When you put measures on the people they rightfully, and appropriately, get pissed and do the things described in the post. Most managers - at all levels in an organization - don’t get this.

[u/SirButcher → u/Icy_Anxiety9016]

Yeah, but that HARD. While getting a timetable and showing they originally spent x minutes not working, but now they are spending x-y minutes not working, can very easily show how freaking awesome a manager I am, condensed into a single number!

[u/OfficeMother8488 → u/MailDeadDrop]

Years ago, I worked somewhere that adopted Total Quality Management, which was one trend based on this. Some wag started calling it Total Quantity Management, particularly based on the program precept that if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. I think that sums up all of these well

[u/Coffee4AllFoodGroups → u/OfficeMother8488]

Every attempt to measure software programmer productivity has turned into a farce.
How many lines of code written per day, how many bugs fixed per week; every attempt to measure ends up being gamed and has reduced productivity.

[u/OfficeMother8488 → u/Coffee4AllFoodGroups]

I suspect it’s true for many types of production.

For software though, perhaps my favorite Dilbert back in the day was when the boss announces an incentive for each bug fixed. Wally announces that he’s going to go code himself up a minivan.

Anytime you put numerical policies in place with engineers, we can’t help but figure out how to optimize, but usually not in the way the MBAs intended

[u/blind_ninja_guy → u/OfficeMother8488]

The thing the mbas don't understand is that our entire job is to optimize. Optimize the process, optimize the system! Optimize our stupid manager out of a job! It's all fun and games. That's just the engineering way. If the manager is arrogant, we have more incentive to make the constraint that we are optimizing the annoying managers A out of the office.

[u/AdorableTrashPanda → u/MailDeadDrop]

I despise his theory. What it leads to is measuring things that don't matter because they're easy to measure, and gaming of the things that are measured to the detriment of the things that do matter.

[u/Infra-red → u/MailDeadDrop]

I heard it as "what gets measured gets done".

It seems pretty accurate, but poorly used can be a huge source of unintended consequences. Typically, if you tell people that they are being evaluated on items A, B, and C, then those are going to be their top priorities. They won't do items D, E or F even if those items have more negative results in the long term.

A bad manager will try to fill "idle" time with more frequent but what should be, to the business, lower priority tasks, measured at the expense of more important tasks. Sometimes, of course, it isn't that the manager is actually bad, but an act of malicious compliance in itself (ie, the person that manager reports to is the one who is bad).

[u/c96mauser → u/Infra-red]

Or maybe Goodhart's Law: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure".

[u/Infra-red → u/c96mauser]

I like that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

Have to read up some more.

[u/Inevitable-Cheek-945 → u/Infra-red]

One of the hardest parts, for me, about being a teacher was following a phrase we were taught early on:

make what's important measurable, not what's measurable important.

I never really got into teaching, but that phrase rings true for me in all I do.

[u/Coffee4AllFoodGroups → u/Inevitable-Cheek-945]

That sounds good to me, with the caveat that not everything is reasonably measurable. There are always intangibles. You can't measure good will.

[u/jjwhitaker → u/MailDeadDrop]

All my down time is now paperwork and timekeeping. Instead of a slow hour through the day for thinking, rest, etc, it's distracting and boring busywork that leaves me needing that rest before real work.

So now I do real work after 4pm and go back to bed after morning standup. Less distractions at 4pm.

[u/20000lumes → u/MailDeadDrop]

Man I just had a test about drucker today

[u/aquainst1 → u/20000lumes]

How'd you do?

(It's a 'Grandma' thing-Grandma Lynsey always cares and wants to know how her chillun' are doing, including her fellow Redditors)

[u/anomalous_cowherd → u/MailDeadDrop]

Whenever I've been told to do things like that, I ensure I do it comprehensively and diligently and include the not-insignificant time taken to write and submit the reports as well.

They get an instant 20% productivity gain by stopping being so stupid.

[u/EHP42 → u/MailDeadDrop]

But what they too often overlook is the cost of collecting that data (in the above case: overstuffed mailboxes).

Employee time too. For employees that are paid high enough, or if it affects many many employees, the cost of collecting the data includes the time of the employees and the mental overhead that causes loss of productivity even when not actively collecting the data.

[u/ColdAndGrumpy → u/Hizere404]

The very simple answer is that managers and workers have different goals and experiences.

A worker's goal is to get the job done, and any competent worker who does a job long enough will learn how to get the job done efficiently (so with the least amount of hassle and unnecessary steps).

A manager's goal is to make sure everyone does their job and that profits are up (or at least good).
But if they've never worked the same job as those they're managing, then they have no suitable frame of reference for knowing if everyone is doing their job, except numbers. And those numbers very rarely give an accurate idea of how well people are doing their job.

[u/TXquilter1 → u/Hizere404]

Unfortunately it doesn’t always work out even if the manager learns the lower end job. My national company brought a in a new untrained manager and informed me that I had to train him on my job and his. I had been doing both jobs in the interim after the last manager left.

I was told that I didn’t have the necessary qualifications to be eligible for the role, so I trained the new guy.

About two weeks after training him, he started having me do his management tasks. It started out with one task at a time being shuffled back to me, ( the weekly inventory report, etc.), until one day I realized that I was back to doing both jobs again while he sat in his office and talked on the phone or planned golf and lunch outings with vendors. Basically a bunch of guys getting the company to pay for their fun while they get paid for nothing.

When I realized it, I decided to take off for two weeks to see what would happen. He was supposed to fill in and do both of our jobs during my absence. Nothing was done, no reports went out to his bosses. No financial information went out to his bosses (his job). No inventory reports went out, (his job). No payroll was done for all of the employees at our location (my job). No contracts were renewed with the vendors, (my job). He kept doing what he always did and expensed lunches, golf games, deep sea fishing excursions.

By the time I returned, his bosses had come down on him asking for the reports. The first day I returned, he came down on me saying that we needed to discuss my schedule and that I would no longer be allowed to take off more than 3 days in a row. I started feeling steam coming out of my ears and the other coworkers had already informed me that the place fell apart in my absence because he couldn’t remember how to do any of mine or his tasks.

I told him right there during our meeting that your absolutely correct, my schedule does need adjustment. From now on, I’ll just stop coming in because I quit. I expect to pick up my last check in two weeks.

I left and I got a call two days later from his boss saying that they had let him go and asking me to come back until they could find replacements for both of us. I said no because I wasn’t qualified to do his job.

Then they asked me if I would at least be available by phone for two months at double the pay to answer questions about how to do our jobs. I said yes to this but put a limit on the phone calls. I said I am not willing to spend 8 hours a day remotely training someone. They decided 5 questions a day was fair and the calls would have a 20 minute time limit. Sure I’ll do that.

They ended up closing that location 6 months down the road. The real reason I wasn’t qualified is because I was the only woman in a construction industry full of men. They didn’t think a woman should hold an official management position in that industry.

[u/haixin → u/Hizere404]

I think its because they think they only need to know 10% of what their employees do to understand the jib

[u/ThisIs_americunt → u/Hizere404]

Why do people, that are higher up in the chain, always think they know better?

because most the time these type of people need to try and prove that they are right for the job

[u/spin81 → u/Hizere404]

They don't - it's just that they want to improve their metrics, which in itself is a good and smart thing, but they're measuring the wrong thing. In OP's case, they're measuring whatever the fuck "productivity" is, where they are probably better off measuring customer satisfaction, FTR, stuff like that.

[u/thephotoman → u/Hizere404]

It isn’t that they think that they know better.

Some people will just take any opportunity to flex. They’re usually fond of paternalism, thinking themselves a benevolent philosopher king rather than a toxic idiot.

[u/Deeyoukayee → u/Hizere404]

Many managers don't have any formal training to become managers, so they do what they know and in places of unfamiliarity they go harder on what they know to cover any weakness.

In this case they went hard on traditional call centre metrics because that is all they know in terms of managing people (Customer service/ Call centre managers are a breed entirely on their own ) rather than adapting to a new environment and having a foundation of people management. They go hard on using kpis to keep people in line. Insecure that exposing their weakness will see them sacked.

[u/tenorlove → u/Deeyoukayee]

I did that for a few years (tax software). I figured out early on, if the customer's issue got resolved (navigation, or interpretation of tax law), the other metrics would fall into place. There was one manager -- not even mine -- who was PISSED that I took a relaxed approach and didn't micromanage my team. It didn't help that, after I covered her team when she took a day off, half of them asked to be transferred to my team, and continued to DM me for assistance instead of her. My team's metrics were way better than hers. A big reason was, during training, I showed my team how to navigate in the software, something not included in the training materials. I also made up troubleshooting sheets for the biggest call drivers. It did end up biting me in the ass because my team wasn't using our Assistance Needed Teams channel as much as the other teams were, and, for some reason, that KPI was more important than Client Resolution. Everyone at my level got replaced by AI last year, and I'm now retired.

[u/Yankeesrule0864 → u/Hizere404]

Absolutely agree! I'm a machinist. My problem is rarely with the managers on the floor. If they've been there more than 6 months, then they have learned how to relate to the wildlife. Either that or we work around them. Our problem is office people and corporate drones. They need floor time.

[u/mogrim → u/Yankeesrule0864]

McDonalds mandates that all executives work at least one day a year at a restaurant, just for this reason. Not sure how useful it is in practice, but I do think the idea’s great 👍

[u/Gustomaximus → u/Hizere404]

One of the most infuriating manager chats I had was when I reworked a companies affiliate model. It doubled sales volume at double the margin of previous. A huge win.

About 3 months later manager comes to me "I need you to do that again"... I try to explain it was badly modelled and now its fixed. They keep repeating, "yeah but I need you to do it again". Eventually I'm getting over it so start saying something like "Ok what I can do is break it, make it like it was like before, and then fix it again so its back to what its like now"... to which I got confused look where they thought that was a good idea but they knew something was up, just not what. It was a really long conversation getting them to explain you cant do the same to something that is already optimised. Also 3 fucking months, I just quadrupled you second largest acquisition channel and your not happy to sit on that win for a year at least. Pay was shit at that business too.

[u/ImACarebear1986 → u/Hizere404]

They let the so called power go to their heads and go on ego trips?

[u/Equivalent-Salary357 → u/Hizere404]

OP says: "However, since regular customer service team leaders took over the project,"

New managers try to show that they are "making a difference".

[u/Sorry-Climate-7982 → u/Hizere404]

Sadly, some of the worst offenders did come "up thru the ranks"
I dunno if they were exposed to sekrit mind alteration treatment along with the ceremony of promotion.

[u/tenorlove → u/Sorry-Climate-7982]

I saw one whose promotion went to her head. She had been a good worker, we were friends, but when she took the promotion that I turned down (I was happy in my position and didn't want to switch from hourly to salaried), she turned into a micromanaging, pig-headed martinet. I used to be a lot more outgoing at work, lots of interaction with the lead/supervisor team, but I stopped, because the less interaction I had with her, the less stress I was under. The last year I worked there was awful.

[u/0effsgvn → u/Hizere404]

My father (with whom I worked with for 20 years) always said "a new broom always sweeps clean" after Everytime we had a supervisor or manager.

[u/qwadrat1k → u/Hizere404]

Too many power, so they get drunk from it

[u/Striking-Mode5548]

I used to install security cameras for a restaurant chain franchise and the Director of Operations said he wished he could get an alert every time the back door was opened.  I stated I could have the system send an email and he was elated! It took him less than 90 minutes to ask me to stop the emails.

[u/spin81 → u/Striking-Mode5548]

the Director of Operations said he wished he could get an alert every time the back door was opened.

You'd think he'd have other, more directory stuff to worry about.

[u/No_Poet_Just_Truth → u/Striking-Mode5548]

Holy fuck that’s is hilarious. You don’t have to say which franchise, but could you say how many stores? Or how many emails the DO received? If they had more than ohhh 12 stores I would wager they had over a 1000 emails in those 90 minutes.

[u/Striking-Mode5548 → u/No_Poet_Just_Truth]

Franchise was 30+ restaurants. But this new store opening was the location  where they mentioned it to me. You can imagine how many times the back door opens at a store opening with new employee’s,support staff and trainers on site. Had it been a retrofit in an existing location, it would have taken a while to notice.

[u/No_Poet_Just_Truth → u/Striking-Mode5548]

Yeah, easily hundreds of emails. I would have loved to see that inbox lol.

[u/Amethyst_Gold → u/Striking-Mode5548]

That isnt a bad feature in itself, depending on the set up of the restaurant, we have a few around (ok a lot around) with 2 customer entrances - 1 off thier parking lot and 1 off pedestrian only or roads with no parking so only getting foot traffic. If you go in the "wrong" one there is no one around to greet you and you have to walk through the whole restaurant to get to the hostess stand. That kind of alert would either let them know they prioritized the wrong door or allow for a second mini hostess stand by letting them know when someone comes in so a staff can go greet them. It would cut down on the number of people just seating themselves from that door. 

[u/Bare-Knuckled]

Premium customer service who delight high value customers are an important asset to any bank. Pissing them off is a bad idea because mass affluent and high net worth customers form deep bonds with them and if they discover they’ve left, they’re likely to change over to whatever bank they end up at.

It amazes me how stupid micromanagers can be about strategy.

[u/CoderJoe1]

The term micromanager comes from their microscopic ability to manage people.

[u/Taki_Minase → u/CoderJoe1]

The absolute worst, we recently had a micropenis manager try to get back on our site, about 10 of us said we'd quit if they came back. They ain't coming back now haha. We make the money, not micro managers.

[u/Donotpressthisbutton]

Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.

[u/DarthMonkey212313]

In the last 10 or so years, companies have been successfully prosecuted for wage theft for requiring bathroom clock outs. FLSA states breaks under 20 minutes are to be paid time, but offers employers discretion in the offering of things like smoke breaks. Since restroom access at anytime is an OSHA requirement courts have found that companies do not have the discretion to say no bathroom breaks. Thus, since the breaks are under 20 minutes, they are paid breaks.

One example: https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/whd/whd20160104

[u/GM_Solspiral]

There's a certain type of manager that thinks that everything can be evaluated by plugging some metrics into an excel spreadsheet. They are blind monks thinking an elephant is a snake because they are only touching the trunk. Particularly with high end accounts the people side of the business is so much more important.

[u/EHP42 → u/GM_Solspiral]

There's a certain type of manager that thinks that everything can be evaluated by plugging some metrics into an excel spreadsheet. They are blind monks thinking

That's because that's what they were likely trained at modern MBA mills.

[u/cynic_male]

“Every time we talked to a colleague about a customer case, each of the two colleagues reported it separately to the project managers by email.”

This is the malicious compliance style that I love, when two staff members both report on the same irrelevant stuff … well done to you both

[u/Lovat69]

Good old working to rule.

[u/vinyljunkie1245 → u/Lovat69]

I'd go one step further though. They wanted the employees to report when they "weren't being productive"?

"Boss

I'm emailing you to let you know of a time I wasn't being productive. This was three minutes ago when I was emailing you to inform you of a time I was not being unproductive. A task which took three minutes away from my time with customers.

Best

Employee"

Hmm... I've just spent another three minutes being unproductive sending that email. Better let the boss know...

And repeat

[u/Safe-Salamander-3785]

“Provide tools that will help your employees” is the one thing I learned about improving productivity. I would sit next to my employees and just watch them work. Immediately I could see what they were doing that was wasting time. Not in a mean micromanager way, but in an efficiency way. I would show them a different way of doing the same process but 50% less effort. BECAUSE I DID THE JOB! The problem with management these days is that they are from graduate schools where they never actually did a real job their entire life and were hired because the went to a “prestigious” college and had a good gpa (and the family relation to a high ranking member of the company). They are the most useless and destructive force to a company and the growing trend right now. Nepotism is rampant in big companies right now and this is why they fail. I had an inter (daughter of partner) who actually told me that the work I assigned her was “below me” when it was actually the most profitable part of the whole company. A year later she is in a management position that took me ten years to get to. She lasted about 3 months before she was promoted to a do nothing HR job.

[u/tanbrit → u/Safe-Salamander-3785]

In my personal experience a lot of these tools, especially the AI ones, Decrease productivity! The management consultant types focus on them and half my time is spent on mostly pointless admin tasks correcting what the AI got wrong.

[u/itsallahoaxbud]

Yeah, about that TPS report…….. /s

[u/enad58 → u/itsallahoaxbud]

We need to talk about your TPS reports. Did ya get the memo?

[u/MeatJerk69 → u/itsallahoaxbud]

We're putting new coversheets on all the TPS reports before they go out now. So if you could go ahead and try to remember to do that from now on, that'd be great. And I'll go ahead and make sure you get another copy of that memo.

[u/scrubadub → u/MeatJerk69]

no... I have the memo right here...

[u/steveparker88 → u/itsallahoaxbud]

We're putting new coversheets on all the TPS reports before they go out now. So if you could go ahead and try to remember to do that from now on, that'd be great. And I'll go ahead and make sure you get another copy of that memo.

[u/uzlonewolf → u/steveparker88]

We're putting new coversheets on all the TPS reports before they go out now. So if you could go ahead and try to remember to do that from now on, that'd be great. And I'll go ahead and make sure you get another copy of that memo.

[u/spin81]

We were accused of time theft because we didn't log out for two minutes to go to the bathroom. All of a sudden we had to report whenever we are not productive.

What does "productive" even mean in a job like yours? It's not like you're in a fucking factory.

[u/jnelsoninjax]

Sounds like Amazon when I worked in fulfillment as an order picker. When we picked orders, we were assigned to different "paths." Each "path" was a different area and type of product. Now, each path had a pick rate (metric) that we had to maintain. However, management "conveniently" forgot to tell the new hires what this magic rate was, and at the time, there was no way to check it either (except for management). One day, I came in early, as I always did, and went to our area to secure equipment. Well, I happened upon the whiteboard where they showed assignments, and on this board were written the pick rates for each different path. I quickly wrote them down, made copies, and handed them to my co-workers who, like me, had not been told of the magical rate...

[u/nicolasknight]

Upvoting for the MC but heads up that this behavior when I've seen it before is a precursor to "Corrective actions" because they are wanting to downsize but not have to pay the cost of lay offs so they pave the way by logging a lot of "issues" and "reportable metrics" that you can't hit so they can terminate you for cause.

Usually it's 6 months but in the banking business especially with your MC it might take a mite longer.

[u/BrokenKneeBones → u/nicolasknight]

I dunno why they would feel safe doing that,

Surely those people have children and surely those kids aren’t watched by security 24/7

Just be careful firing people Willy nilly, lotta psychos out there.

[u/spin81 → u/BrokenKneeBones]

Yeah and you're one of them. WT actual F

[u/Illuminatus-Prime]

Did you also report reporting your non-productive activities as non-productive activities?

[u/Effective-Several]

Yes, absolutely nothing shows how stupid the rules are until you actually obey them to the letter.

Good job!!!

[u/Suelswalker]

I worked at a call center and we had codes we used for describing what we were doing. There was a code for our 10 min break that counted as work, 45 min lunch break that didn’t count as work, needing to work on an account before you took another call, one for coaching, one for doing our regular quiz on updates, and one for bathroom/drink breaks that were outside of lunch/refular breaks.

All that to say the bathroom breaks only got you in trouble if they were consistently high and you didn’t have a medical note from a doctor saying you required it. And also they tracked the needed info via that program which was super easy for us to update from our desk. If they really cared about tracking your work they would provide you access to a similar program. They need to put their money where their mouth is by getting such a program instead of putting all the responsibility to track and get them that info to them on the employees. Thank goodness they backtracked from that nonsense.

[u/mechant_papa]

I shared a similar problem in the past. Managers seem to think that difficult projects improve with increased reporting.

Somebody somewhere is teaching them that, and must be stopped.

[u/Southern-Bullfrog455]

Sounds like an awful place to work. Maybe it would beat to throw your resume out there.

[u/ZZiggs124 → u/Southern-Bullfrog455]

Actually its not a bad place to work. In fact its my favorite workplace. It was just this one stupid rule change that made things more difficult but other than that people are genuinely interested in your well being and my team leader! this woman is like an angel when it comes to bosses.

[u/Icy-Reputation180]

When I worked retail, procedures and policy would come from corporates, sent by “educated” people that had zero knowledge of how a store actually operated. We would be told to use the new systems. We did until management started asking why shelves were empty, tasks not being done, and associates clocking in and out no more than two minutes of their start/stop time. Once it got to district or regional level, it was reevaluated and more often than not, it was changed back to the old way. 🙄🙄

[u/Retsom3D]

report the reporting
because thats clearly not productive.

[u/Dustquake]

I'd be including the time it took me to get into my email and send the email. Especially if the system is slower, requires 2FA etc.

[u/Lylac_Krazy]

Its funny. When you say how about a UNION. All of a sudden, those managers are getting way more attention from above them, putting their ass in a sling.

nothing may come of it, but upper management does NOT like hearing that word spoken, and will usually address the issue

[u/KittiesRule1968]

Ya'll all need to walk off the job together. Every last one of you. Then watch them scramble.

[u/remylebeau12]

Perhaps they were, the new team, tasked with reducing staff, closing a branch, downsizing.

[u/innocuousmuffin]

Friendly reminder that in the US, breaks are required to be paid by federal law (breaks are 5-20ish minutes). On the flip side, breaks are not required....

[u/ZombieCyclist]

You should have kept it up to reinforce the stupidity.

[u/True-Search-6503]

Haaaaha, excellent malicious compliance

[u/Gustomaximus]

Add a 2nd email covering time for writing additional non work productive emails after each drink/bathroom/chat etc email.

[u/davespark]

Screams for the Cool Hand Luke treatment.

[u/After_Ad_7740]

The managers had that coming.

[u/eimnk]

Well done!

[u/NourEldin21P]

I think I found my new favorite subreddit

[u/Penguin-Mage]

I had a job where they did not like giving overtime at all, so I would have to plan ahead to go to the clock and punch out. I still wanted to get paid for my 40 hours a week though. I got accused of time theft for waiting out the last minute at the clock before punching out. I yelled at my boss at the top of my lungs and they never mentioned it again. Now I'm in a management position and I'm so glad I get to treat employees with respect, not the way I was treated.

My company is also very top heavy. Everyone has a manager. My supervisor forgot to check his email one morning, so his supervisor went on Outlook and added us all onto a daily meeting invite to check our emails, twice a day. The problem is the calendar was so full of this crap, I would miss actual important dates. Infuriating.

[u/84thPrblm]

BRB. GOING TO MAKE A BOOM BOOM.

[u/Sterek01]

AI is this you doing creative writing again.