This reminds me of malicious compliance at my work. There was a dude who was always early to work, but that actually allowed the company to be more productive since he was a manufacturing operator whose machinery took around 20-30 minutes of preparation and warmup time, and by the time he was ready, rest of the personnel that works down the line was ready to work too and didn't have to wait around. He sometimes clocked out few minutes early and got written up.

After that, he was always at work at exactly 6:00, not 5:30. The company sure saved those 5 minutes

At my company, at the first position I held, I was an FTE at a help desk. Management thought it was a good idea to mix it up and put people in change of units that were outside the expertise of those holding positions. Some shitty lady from finance, with an MBA, became our boss. She had this sort of mentality about time.

Previously, I'd stay until the job was done and not think anything of the time I was losing. I liked my job and helping people. She decided one day, when I left about 15-minutes to make a doctor appointment across town, that I had done something wrong and needed to work my entire 7.5-hour shift. She wanted us to note everything we did and document it for her review.

She fucked up. To comply, I wrote a program to track when I locked and unlocked my computer and log it with date time and show the running total of the time worked per day. I stopped staying late. I stopped returning from lunch early if I knew we were busy. People stood at the counter waiting while I finished incidental things at the end of my shift to prevent any late departures. I made sure to never leave early, but I never stayed late or took walkups near my 7.5-hour day.

Malicious compliance is my favorite kind of compliance!

Its not even real. I see people engage with fake posts here, and fake Ai channels on YouTube. Its like some people cant see what is fake, or they are bots designed to upvote fake things.

Good morning Sharon,

I apologize for leaving three minutes early yesterday. In my day-to-day, I tend to focus on completing my tasks efficiently and effectively. Labor is the force that turns the gears in our company, and productivity is the grease that makes our labor fruitful. While I spent 7 hours and 57 minutes yesterday ensuring high productivity, unfortunately, I found it difficult to keep track of every minute that passed during my highly effective contributions.

To my great fortune, you prioritize monitoring clocks. That is your great value-add to this company: you observe the segments of each hour, and provide a human-generated report that cross-references the passively generated output from a clock with identified employees and include a general description of start-stop milestones. Yes, we already have software that features this exact function, and one could argue that you most likely leverage these generated reports to send your findings and summaries to employees who made the same observations during their interactions with the software. But that's an impressive and unique quality of yours! Where others see plagiarism and redundancy, you've strived to prove that persistence and insistence can justify your attendance at this company.

Others may ask, "What value does that bring?" Or, "How does she still work here?" But they lack the imagination to see your amazing potential! Because you're known for your expert timekeeping and ability to synthesize truths about value-loss based on arbitrary observations, you must also be able to identify value overages from other such arbitrary observations during your daily efforts to observe the passage of time!

While you're obviously busy generating evidence of your value to this company, I ask for your assistance within your area of expertise:

"Find a way to cover this from one of the days that I accidentally took a short lunch or left late, you useless fuck."

Much appreciated,
TheFartographer

• unionize
• direct action

totally balanced reaction

Ryan, you time stealing motherfucker. If you did this every day, for 1 year, barring any days off, holidays etc. Based on a 5 day work week, you'd have stolen 13 hours from your place of employment in the year. 13 hours, Ryan! If you're paid, say $25/hr you just stole $325 pre-tax dollars from this poor company. How do you feel about yourself, Ryan? My goodness. Won't you think about the company, Ryan... now they have to consider skipping raises the following year because of your selfishness. Jesus Christ.

Oh Sharon. If you are going to count the minutes early I leave, I’m going to count the minutes late I leave, and I promise you I will cash them in at the least opportune moment.

Take a dump that's three minutes longer and think of Sharon during.

(...) we need to make sure we're being fair to the rest of the team (...)

Let everyone go early then, fucker

Story time: I once had an employer who had me defend myself personally because he saw my Skype go online a few minutes after the official start of work. That same boss was known to sleep half of the day in his own office.

A few months later I was fired and sued their asses. I got a nice compensation out of the settlement.

Well, I generally come in at least fifteen minutes late, ah, I use the side door - that way Lumbergh can't see me, and, uh, after that I just sorta space out for about an hour. Yeah, I just stare at my desk; but it looks like I'm working. I do that for probably another hour after lunch, too. I'd say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work.

I had a similar experience. I'd clock in from the mobile app while walking into the office, this way I could more efficiently make my morning rounds by starting from the entrance instead of going to the onsite terminal.

They pulled me in, showed me security footage alongside the time clock timestamp showing me clock in a full what, 15 seconds before I enter the building? Said I was stealing time and wrote me up. Put it "on the record". And required I use the physical terminal to clock in unless make an oncall visit to the datacenter.

My daily routine changed from finishing the daily rounds efficiently in under 10 minutes to clocking in, going to the break room, getting a coffee, sitting down at my desk for half an hour catching up on work email and whatnot, then finally getting to the morning rounds, but I'd be extra thorough with the checks, so it'd take about half an hour instead of 10 minutes. Gotta be extra careful right?

For context that was the time I worked IT and morning rounds was checking each device in the building that wasn't employee equipment, so the TVs with their signage, clock in terminals, printers, etc. I'd come in at the rear entrance and could hit each checklist item without backtracking before finishing up at my office.

Hey Sharon, how about you shut the fuck up?

This is easy don't clock out until next day, then complain the next day why everyone clocked out far too early.

Sharon, your name is Sharon right?

You see, Sharon, scientists have recently developed a microscope so granular in its detection capabilities that one can basically image singular atoms.

Now Sharon, if we were to use this machine on me, you would still not be able to see the level of give-a-fuck about you, your email, or your three fucking minutes that I have.

So, Sharon, do us all a favor, fold yourself in half 6 times and fuck off.

"We are a team!"

Oh fuck off with this fake ass BS, you clearly don't care about "the team".

Holy shit, i would be so fucking lazy and difficult for the next week probably 2 if someone sent me an email like this.

My pettiness knows no bounds when it comes to power hungry twats like this one.

Hey Sharon I noticed you clocked out a few zeptoseconds before the end of your workday. Let's try to be a little more accurate, hey?

And the worst part is if you stayed 3 minutes too long they would chew you out like you just stole the crown jewels. It's not about accuracy or doing your job, it's about control of your life down to the minute. They would do down to the second if they could.

That's how you know she's a good manager

OMFG - quit now. Like today. Fuck these people.

Shit boss alert!

Unfortunately the economy is even shittier or I'd say just leave and go someplace where you'll be appreciated.

Oh, oh no. I'm having severe flashbacks to working in a call center. Quick someone tell me the company pays me to turn around the customer within a reasonable time, and that I should be balancing my call metrics, having a near perfect FCR, NPS and hold time doesn't excuse me having an AHT 40% higher than my colleague who is getting coached around dropping every call that seems more than middling complex.

I feel like Ryan isn't getting the full experience unless Sharon has 2 levels of middle management over her in that office alone, all 3 levels trying desperately to justify their existence.

Funnily enough, if you actually follow "work to the job, not the clock" you get more work done, and you generally go home early.

You're also less likely to quit, and more likely to develop and share good practice.

You can buy my effort or you can buy my time.