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a memory: subverting timesheets
A discussion at work this afternoon reminded me of this episode from a previous company.
Word from On High had come down that all employees would fill out timesheets (reasonable), but that all timesheets would show 8 hours per day, 5 days per week billed to our assigned projects no matter what. (Except vacations and holidays, which were to be reported correctly.) We were mostly engineers who pronounced that Utterly Stupid, but we were not able to prevail. Truth didn't matter; we were required to do this. To this day I do not know why.
But it gets worse. There was an electronic form to fill out, but then we had to print the page out, sign it, and turn it in. No, a digital signature was not acceptable. Rumor had it that the unlucky administrative assistant who ended up with all this paper then hand-entered the hours in a different time-tracking system. I kid you not.
But it gets worse. The electronic form had the world's worst user interface. There were no keyboard shortcuts (not even tab), and there was a lot of fiddling to do in order to be able to record this boilerplate text. It was making my wrist hurt. Every single week. And it was quite possible that that data wasn't even being used except to produce the paper copy.
So I rebelled, quietly. I printed out one week's timesheet. I made a stack of photocopies and hand-corrected the dates to give myself a good supply. In an effort to show just how much contempt I had for this system, I signed the original before the photocopying. And then, each Friday, I dutifully handed in my timesheet without further complaint.
I got away with this for two months and then someone noticed. I was told that I must bring the database up to date immediately and that henceforth I was to follow the rules. Because, I was told, if I didn't record fresh hours each week, it would be obvious that the timesheets I was handing in were bogus. !!!
The prospect of bringing the database up to date bode ill for my wrist. (Yes, I had asked for UI changes way back in the beginning. I was not the only one asking. We didn't get them.) Fortunately, my group had acquired a keyboard-macro package for other reasons. So I wrote a macro for "fill out timesheet" and commenced to use it every week. I did this openly. It even printed the form for me. Apparently it was not ok to use pre-fab photocopies to report the information I had been told to report (regardless of truth), but it was ok to use a macro to do so.
It gets better. I mentioned my solution to the head of another group, whose eyes lit up. He asked about the keyboard-macro package and I told him what it was. We had ordered the package to assist with the UI of a desktop-publishing application; he had no such excuse. But he didn't care about that; when he requisitioned the software for his group, as the reason he gave "for filling out timesheets". He got the software.
Later, on the eve of the company's demise for other reasons, many of us found other responses. My favorite was reporting job-hunting time as "system administration: networking".
Word from On High had come down that all employees would fill out timesheets (reasonable), but that all timesheets would show 8 hours per day, 5 days per week billed to our assigned projects no matter what. (Except vacations and holidays, which were to be reported correctly.) We were mostly engineers who pronounced that Utterly Stupid, but we were not able to prevail. Truth didn't matter; we were required to do this. To this day I do not know why.
But it gets worse. There was an electronic form to fill out, but then we had to print the page out, sign it, and turn it in. No, a digital signature was not acceptable. Rumor had it that the unlucky administrative assistant who ended up with all this paper then hand-entered the hours in a different time-tracking system. I kid you not.
But it gets worse. The electronic form had the world's worst user interface. There were no keyboard shortcuts (not even tab), and there was a lot of fiddling to do in order to be able to record this boilerplate text. It was making my wrist hurt. Every single week. And it was quite possible that that data wasn't even being used except to produce the paper copy.
So I rebelled, quietly. I printed out one week's timesheet. I made a stack of photocopies and hand-corrected the dates to give myself a good supply. In an effort to show just how much contempt I had for this system, I signed the original before the photocopying. And then, each Friday, I dutifully handed in my timesheet without further complaint.
I got away with this for two months and then someone noticed. I was told that I must bring the database up to date immediately and that henceforth I was to follow the rules. Because, I was told, if I didn't record fresh hours each week, it would be obvious that the timesheets I was handing in were bogus. !!!
The prospect of bringing the database up to date bode ill for my wrist. (Yes, I had asked for UI changes way back in the beginning. I was not the only one asking. We didn't get them.) Fortunately, my group had acquired a keyboard-macro package for other reasons. So I wrote a macro for "fill out timesheet" and commenced to use it every week. I did this openly. It even printed the form for me. Apparently it was not ok to use pre-fab photocopies to report the information I had been told to report (regardless of truth), but it was ok to use a macro to do so.
It gets better. I mentioned my solution to the head of another group, whose eyes lit up. He asked about the keyboard-macro package and I told him what it was. We had ordered the package to assist with the UI of a desktop-publishing application; he had no such excuse. But he didn't care about that; when he requisitioned the software for his group, as the reason he gave "for filling out timesheets". He got the software.
Later, on the eve of the company's demise for other reasons, many of us found other responses. My favorite was reporting job-hunting time as "system administration: networking".
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That's too funny!
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Are you using the new cover sheets for your TPS reports? ;)
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I'm sorry, but I missed something here. (Cover sheets? TPS?)
I believe you have my stapler.