My boss loves sending me messages saying “Are you working today?” within 3 minutes of being idle on teams at any point in the day.
Other times if i’m idle he’ll call me just to give me some busy work or try and “catch me” not paying attention or something.
In the office I can be idle on teams for hours at a time and there’s never, ever random spot checks for productivity… and we have no objectives, goals or project management (because he doesn’t think any PM principles are effective.)
A bad boss can really make a job suck. If it was me I’d get a mouse wiggler, apparently there’s a surprisingly many physical ‘mouse movers’ out there nowadays.
Back when my company was using teams I had a script that would press a button that’s not actually on my keyboard (something like F25) every minute, so my teams was always green and it was not noticeable from my point of view
My boss bills customers for his on-site visits (technical) wherein he goes on site, plugs in his laptop, and makes me remotely do all his work remotely. I can’t wait to burn this bridge when the time is right.
Mine tells me to take all appointments and do all errands i’d need to take off on my wfh days.
If i’m idle during those I still get the nasty grams, and 50/50 on any of them he asks if I took the day off because he doesn’t see it in the team calendar or HR’s PTO official system, even though there’s zero expectation for us to take PTO for a doctor’s appointment or other errand that takes a couple of hours at any point.
Guy has taken a day and a half this week to work on his own personal stuff without requesting PTO. I took 1.5 hours on one day and got nastygrams (the “I don’t see your pto in the pto calendar” (again, tells me in person not to put it in… but every time i’m remote and idle for an appointment there’s now a record in writing asking me where I am and why I didn’t take pto.)
Later, when I see the guy in person he totally understands and it’s not a problem… so what the fuck are you messaging me for like this asshole? Why? The fuck is your problem? It’s in my fucking calendar, and i’m not taking actual time off or a half day or something - so why would I put in the team wide calendar that i’m going to a doctor? They don’t need to know!
That implies he is also sitting around watching Teams instead…being productive.
And at the end of the day, unless you’re working at a start-up, your business won’t fail because someone wasn’t nickle-and-dime-ing individual workers on their productivity time.
My boss loves sending me messages saying “Are you working today?” within 3 minutes of being idle on teams at any point in the day.
Other times if i’m idle he’ll call me just to give me some busy work or try and “catch me” not paying attention or something.
In the office I can be idle on teams for hours at a time and there’s never, ever random spot checks for productivity… and we have no objectives, goals or project management (because he doesn’t think any PM principles are effective.)
A bad boss can really make a job suck. If it was me I’d get a mouse wiggler, apparently there’s a surprisingly many physical ‘mouse movers’ out there nowadays.
The saying is true for 95% of jobs. People don’t quit bad jobs, they quit bad bosses.
People don’t quit jobs, they quit managers.
Back when my company was using teams I had a script that would press a button that’s not actually on my keyboard (something like F25) every minute, so my teams was always green and it was not noticeable from my point of view
My boss bills customers for his on-site visits (technical) wherein he goes on site, plugs in his laptop, and makes me remotely do all his work remotely. I can’t wait to burn this bridge when the time is right.
There’s a natural divot on my desk that does it for me.
But I also have my outlook calendar filled with my scheduled hours so my status shows I am always busy (working my schedules hours).
So hasn’t been a problem and it’s been years.
Mine tells me to take all appointments and do all errands i’d need to take off on my wfh days.
If i’m idle during those I still get the nasty grams, and 50/50 on any of them he asks if I took the day off because he doesn’t see it in the team calendar or HR’s PTO official system, even though there’s zero expectation for us to take PTO for a doctor’s appointment or other errand that takes a couple of hours at any point.
Guy has taken a day and a half this week to work on his own personal stuff without requesting PTO. I took 1.5 hours on one day and got nastygrams (the “I don’t see your pto in the pto calendar” (again, tells me in person not to put it in… but every time i’m remote and idle for an appointment there’s now a record in writing asking me where I am and why I didn’t take pto.)
Later, when I see the guy in person he totally understands and it’s not a problem… so what the fuck are you messaging me for like this asshole? Why? The fuck is your problem? It’s in my fucking calendar, and i’m not taking actual time off or a half day or something - so why would I put in the team wide calendar that i’m going to a doctor? They don’t need to know!
Sounds like your boss has a boss and those checkin/nasty grams are how they measure their tasks.
That implies he is also sitting around watching Teams instead…being productive.
And at the end of the day, unless you’re working at a start-up, your business won’t fail because someone wasn’t nickle-and-dime-ing individual workers on their productivity time.