
Forgotten Employee (2002) - bgar
https://sites.google.com/site/forgottenemployee/
======
jcampbell1
And this is why you do "ghost employee" audits. In a past career I used to
work in the Controller's office for one of the Big 3 auto companies. One day,
I was sent some bullshit email that I needed to do about 100 audits including
"ghost employee audit" and check a box on a web form that all were complete.
For shits and giggles, I decided to take it seriously. I altavista'd "ghost
employee audit" and learned it is a reverse recon of the payroll system.

I did the audit by making every manager certify a list of employees. I found
two employees that none claimed. One dude was well known within the plant and
fixed any broken motors. No one had heard of the other guy. I convinced the
payroll clerk to just stop paying the other person. He got pissed, and
eventually tried to get a union rep, but the union decided not to rep him.

It turns out this "ghost employee" had collected over a million dollars in
salary and OT, yet not worked in about a decade.

I asked about an award for the savings, but I was shot down because the union
didn't want to let it out that they didn't rep a guy, and the company didn't
want it known the ghost employee audits weren't actually being done.

In the end, I realized I was rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic, and
switched careers by becoming a programmer. Haven't looked back since.

~~~
wikiburner
If anyone thinks that this sounds farfetched, it really just scratches the
surface of the waste and corruption in Detroit. When I was working for a
contractor installing and fixing servers at various plants and facilities, the
only union workers who actively appeared to be doing their jobs were the union
work rules compliance guys, who hovered over us to see if there was any
possible way to file a grievance over violations of the "work rules". We were
not allowed to "move" a system on our own - even just an inch in order to move
a cable. Plugging in ethernet cables was okay, but if we dared to plug in a
power cord on our own we were fucked. If we needed a system moved a couple of
feet, or plugged in, we were lucky if it took less than a week for a worker to
get around to it.

Just about everyone else seemed like they were on a picnic.

~~~
mncolinlee
I can't speak to anecdotes about Detroit unions, but by no means is this
normal behavior in every industry union.

I worked in a UFCW union retail shop for two years' time during high school
and saw nothing of the sort. To the contrary, everyone worked their arses off
and earned minimum wage while performing every single job role in the facility
except management and bookkeeping. If no customers were nearby, you were
expected to clean, straighten, and develop photos. If business was especially
good, you had no time to straighten shelves and got dinged for the store's
good fortune by management. Turnover was rampant. You had to pay dues and yet
got next to nothing for them.

Like all things, your mileage may vary.

~~~
gaadd33
That sounds like every retail job I've had although none were union.

------
secretdark
This is a slightly different take on this 'forgotten employee' story.

I was made redundant by a large, rather famous web-giant once, only they
managed to screw it up (forgetting that firing employees in Europe, especially
in a large group, is apparently somewhat harder than firing employees in the
US). As a result, their intention of firing 120+ techies in our office in one
day turned into a 4 month long arbitration period (exacerbated by the fact
that we only found out we were all fired via a company-wide webcast, intended
to only be broadcast to the surviving employees. They had actually forgotten
to come tell us we were fired.)

Since we were all still technically employed during this arbitration period,
we were vaguely expected to come to work. Since our managers were all fired as
well, though, no one really bothered checking. Since they'd fired an entire
department - an entire floor of one in a large, beautiful building - the floor
was filled with 100+ geeks, all on a paycheck but with no expected output.
Some simply didn't bother coming in, deciding instead 'to work from home.'
Most, however, did come in - to play the Wii & foosball, work on their own
projects, and idly look for new jobs. A few small startups came out of it. A
few fun open-source projects.

My favourite aspect of it, though, was that my old manager made it his
personal job in the remaining time to ensure that each and every one of the
people he was responsible for had a new job waiting at the end of the 4 month
period. He organised recruiting drives with local startups, got everyone's
CVs, even rented a pub one evening so we could all catch up with a few local
startups.

That large web-giant is hiring again apparently. Not many of my old colleagues
are interested, it seems.

~~~
girvo
That is both depressingly Kafkaesque and heartwarming at the same time. I
could see a lot of cool projects coming out of six period like that. It's
almost a small scale negative income tax experiment :P

------
justtopostthis
For internet historians:

This was originally posted on the Something Awful forums in 2002 by user
Moonshine. Here are links to the original threads.

Part 5:
[http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=332...](http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=332580)
Part 4:
[http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=306...](http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=306921)
Part 3:
[http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=260...](http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=260220)
Parts 2 and 1 are gone.

------
usea
A college friend of mine (with CS degree) was hired as an automated tester
about 6 months ago. The project he was hired for and assigned to was put on
indefinite hold right after he was hired. He's an "asset" on that project, all
of which are frozen. But because he's a new employee, he can only be on one
project at a time, so he has no responsibilities. He has a weekly meeting with
his manager, where he informs her that he's still doing nothing and he'd be
happy to do anything, while she replies that he has nothing to do. Also he is
not allowed to use the internet for non-work-related tasks.

Recently the CTO has begun roaming the halls in his department. The CTO gets
upset upon seeing my friend doing nothing. So he has to look busy all the
time. He spends hours of his day typing nonsense into Word.

I told him he could be doing any number of things to improve his skills (which
are lacking already). He is disillusioned with the corporate world at this
point, his previous two jobs not being much better. Instead he applied and was
accepted to the master's program this fall. My hopes for him are not high, but
I don't know how to encourage him.

~~~
chaostheory
He could have put his skills to work on an open source project as opposed to
just mindlessly typing.

EDIT: Alternatively he could have even created his own internal company
project for work. Whether or not they liked enough to keep is another story
but at the very least it shows he has initiative, creativity, and he can learn
something from his work.

Unless your job has a lot of manual, physical labor; I really find it hard to
see how anyone can get bored and do nothing at work especially if you can
program.

~~~
Wingman4l7
That'd be arguably difficult with the "no internet use for non-work tasks"
restriction. I'd suggest creative writing.

~~~
warcode
If self-improvement is not a "work-task", that is not a company worth working
at.

~~~
mirkules
The problem with working at a company like that is that by the time you
realize you are stuck, you have no relevant practical experience anymore and
it can be rather difficult to get hired at places that are worth working at.

~~~
chaostheory
This is why github exists. IANAL but I'm guessing when you don't use company
resources, do it during off hours, and the open source work you do has no
relevance to your company's industry; publishing that work to github should be
fine.

~~~
BWStearns
For most sane people this is the case. But many companies' boilerplate IP
clauses claim ALL of the IP generated while working at the company. The vast
majority of them won't give a damn but it still exposes you legally if you are
under such a clause and have a side project/contribute to opensource.

~~~
derekp7
There is an elegant way to get out of that. Approach your management (usually
requires director-level approval), and say that you are doing some volunteer
web site work for [insert charity] on the weekends, and they require a signed
release that your employer OK's it. This can also fall under the "requires
approval for moonlighting" clause in many employee handbooks.

Then, assign all copyright to your opensource work to the FSF, which is a 501c
organization.

------
ChuckMcM
It made me sad reading it. I've met folks like the character portrayed, idling
along because they can, never improving anything. Eventually they will get
dismissed, and after being so may find that they are completely dysfunctional
having forgotten the habits needed to get things done, and perhaps developed
habits that work against them. Unemployed, hungry, and often homeless they
turn to drugs or alcohol and slowly circle the drain. There was an interview
with somebody who could have been this character on the CBS evening news when
they were doing a story about the long term unemployed. He hadn't been
employed in over 3 years and had no transferable skills from his old job and
in the past three years had not developed any new skills. So very very sad.

It is one thing to build up enough savings such that you can live off the 4%
annual draw down stipend like MMM advocates, and _then_ wasting your time. It
is something else completely to be depending on someone else to pay you a
salary.

~~~
wahnfrieden
It seems to be an embellishment for the sake of the story. He mentions in the
original thread that he's pursuing a 3rd degree, has spent time writing short
stories and is in the middle of a novel, and spends time in the lower rungs of
professional racing and writing a biography about that.

He also reportedly claims to have made it all up but I couldn't find the
source.

~~~
chaostheory
Yes. I remember the original author admitting that this was really just a
short story for practice.

~~~
johnward
Stop. I want to believe this is real.

edit: Actually working in corporate America I can believe this is real aside
from the nobody knowing you. You can have a manager and they can know you do
nothing but they can't get rid of you.

~~~
chaostheory
I'm sure it's happened in real life before, but I strongly feel that this
particular story was just an exercise in creative writing. Just pay closer
attention to the writing style vs other personal accounts.

~~~
johnward
Oh I know. This story had me hooked. I couldn't stop reading it.

------
regal
This reminds me of my two years working for the U.S. Defense Department as a
contractor. For a few months I worked with one of the highest ranking
individuals in the building, I did a great job and finished much faster than
they expected... and then after that there was no work to do, no matter who I
asked, and all I could do was come in late, leave early, lift weights in the
building gym, and pretend to work. No one really knew what I did.

The only thing that doomed me was when I eventually found myself unable to
keep from falling asleep and snoring in meetings. Tried everything I could
think of... chewing gum, drinking water, screaming inside my head. No use; the
dozing and snoring in plain view of everyone else continued. I think that
clued them off that something was amiss, and I started being told I didn't
need to come to meetings anymore... and was gone a few months after that.

~~~
wahnfrieden
You gave up at that point, or they let you go?

~~~
regal
They very nicely informed our team that they just didn't seem to have enough
work for all the contractors, and I was one of the contractors they just
didn't seem to have enough work for, so I was off the project, one year + 7 or
8 months after I'd stopped doing any real work.

Lucky thing, too... my teammate on our initial assignment there is still on
that same contract, 6 years later... getting annual raises and the odd
promotion here and there.. still doing nothing. He still gets that panicky
look in his eyes and starts rambling on nonsensically when you ask him what
exactly he does there. He was a lot better at pretending to be busy than I
was, and wasn't as gung-ho about wanting to be let go if they couldn't find
anything useful or challenging for him to do than I was.

Took a year for my productivity levels to bounce back after leaving that
project. Was just really hard to do any work for a while... 2 years of nothing
makes you quite lethargic being used to napping and web-surfing all day. Took
me all day to answer the 1 email or so I'd get in the morning. Most productive
things I did then were read classic literature and hone my chess skills
against the computer. I play a mean game of chess vs. computer these days
because of my time with the DoD.

~~~
GrinningFool
That really is the problem with that kind of situation - I've been there,
though not to that extreme. I'd work maybe an hour or two a day, and folks
thought I was doing great. When something was really broken they'd call me in
and I'd fix it.

The down side is that it really damaged my ability to work productively when I
finally left there. I had to re-learn how to actually work (as opposed to 6
hours of surfing and noodling about).

I got it back, but not before I almost came into trouble at my next job. It
did indeed take close to a year to recover.

------
dirktheman
I was in a similar situation once. I was outsourced to another company to do a
rather specific sysadmin job. After a couple of months they switched systems,
making my job obsolete. For some reason however, I never actually met the IT-
manager. We nodded at each other in the hallway, sure, and he new I was the
outsourced guy, but I’m sure he never knew what I really did. In fact, nobody
knew what I did exactly. Even before the system swap, since it was a very
specific task. Apparently he wasn’t aware that I was hired as a sysadmin for
the previous system only, or maybe they replaced some paperwork, I don’t know.
Fact is that for some reason my contract wasn’t terminated.

After a while, I began coding my own projects. Which was a bit of a challenge,
since IT wouldn’t let me install software. I did have Notepad, and a WAMP-
server on my USB thumb drive. Mind you, I did not have an office of my own, it
was basically an office garden. Co-workers (testing, helpdesk, project
management, not too technical stuff) could watch my screen directly. So I had
to disguise my project websites as a corporate intranet page. Every once in a
while someone would say ‘wow, that looks difficult’ and I would say ‘well, you
know’. Mind you this was just basic HTML and PHP stuff.

The next problem was internet access. They did have internet there, but most
websites were blocked by IT, and they were monitoring internet traffic, too.
So I learned how to set up a proxy server, and figured that if I kept the
amount of traffic down I’d be allright. Besides, I couldn’t have my coworkers
seeing me browse SO all day, right? It’s amazing how resourceful you get when
your resources are limited!

The funny thing is that when you look busy yet can still ‘find the time’ to
help others, people hold you in high regard. They even sent praise about me to
the IT manager, who came down to me once and told me he heard great things
about me, and he passed the praise on to my outsourcing company. After a year
or so I learned a great deal about web development, and finished a couple of
side projects. I started to get some remorse. As funny and unique as the
situation was, it didn’t feel right at all. Eventually I quit (to everyone’s
surprise, because I was doing such a great job!), moving on to more
challenging work, and above all a more ‘fair’ way to make money.

What struck me from those days is that nobody in my department actually knew
what the others were doing. For all I know everybody was coding up their side
projects in the boss’ time. And that was just my department, let alone the
whole company. Large corporations (I’ve worked for several) are just so
inefficient, I think that at least 50% of all employee hours is wasted on
politics and sherades. The number is even higher if you count in useless
meetings.

~~~
Spooky23
I had an even stranger experience. I was working on contract for a huge place
to do some Oracle and systems management work in a small datacenter that was
dedicated to a single purpose (it was a huge enterprise with about 80k sq ft
of datacenter) around 2001. It was a beautiful setup, the wiring was nice,
even the racks were really high end and setup thoughtfully. There were
probably about 40 Sun boxes (e450s, e4500's) some AIX stuff, some windows
stuff, about 3 racks of firewalls, tape robot, the works.

So I started setting up the management tools and noticed after a few days that
nobody really came around much. Then I noticed that nobody was ever logging
into these systems. Ever. It was a ghost datacenter running some WAN
management stuff that nobody knew about -- some consultants set it up and left
-- nobody knew what it was.

In my case, I did my job to the letter, I setup the management tools, got the
servers and databases humming, etc. But the actual equipment was serving no
discernable purpose. Total investment just in hardware and software was
probably $5-6M

~~~
digibri
Though I've never worked for the large local telecom here in town I've had
many friends and coworkers who have. I wish I had a dime for every time I've
heard a story just like this (though smaller in scope). People have set up
file sharing servers, game servers, whole warez team back ends...the works on
hardware that was purchased & set up but never used. This is one of the
primary reasons I've never wanted to work for Big Local Telco...

~~~
UVB-76
> [...] whole warez team back ends

Are you able to elaborate on this? I've always wondered how the warez scene
functioned; residential Internet connections are obviously insufficient,
hacked resources too risky, and warez groups turn their nose up at any form of
legitimate resources (e.g. dedi/colo hosting)

This leaves corporate infrastructure. All it takes is a small IT team with a
big budget, lots of hardware and network resources, and management who neither
know nor care how their resources are being utilized.

It's terribly romantic.

~~~
Spooky23
I know that my past employers networks have been abused for long periods for
game servers and MP3 hosting. Y2K period in particular resulted in lots of
insane investments in IT, with very lax management in most places. Nowadays,
tools and copyright take downs make it difficult to be completely inept.

Hacked resources are used as well. I worked at a place that used an old SGI
Indy as a mail relay. It wasn't really managed, and somebody rooted it to use
as a distribution server for warez and porn. I suspect the admins kept it
running as a source for their own warez and porn needs.

I got involved when a spammer got in and sent millions of emails, flooding our
puny T1 with bounces.

~~~
lostlogin
Has anyone worked anywhere that didn't have a bit of a server that was
dedicated to piracy? I haven't. Even working for a large public healthcare
provider. Slightly worse, there was even a torrent client using their fibre.
The trick was to find an IT illiterate colleague or one who was leaving it
best of all, both these things in one person. Their logins wouldn't e revoked
for months or years. Use their login to set up torrent clients. If you called
IT support and just played dumb you always found someone who would let you
install stuff (I need this program for my section on ankle casting). Keep
calling back until they answer. Once a torrent was running, stay well away
from the computer until no one else is around as grumpy IT guys would hang
round to try and catch you. This was long ago now, I pay for my media now,
with the exception of a few shows from the UK which I can't pay for.

------
sharkweek
Long, amazing read -- I remember it from the SA forums years ago when I was in
high school --

I remember wondering then just how long I'd be able to take a job that paid
relatively well but offered no... accomplishment.

Well fortunately for me, that opportunity came a few years later while working
for one of the large banks! The answer to my earlier question was six months;
I had worked a few years through various positions into operations, only to
fall into a role with little managerial oversight and no responsibility, it
got boring so fast...

~~~
derleth
> a job that paid relatively well but offered no... accomplishment.

Welcome to most jobs, ever, in every historical period and culture, ever since
humans have had jobs distinct from whatever else they did with their lives.

Progress seems to consist of reducing the number of those kinds of jobs and,
eventually, finding other things to do for the people who aren't suited to
anything else.

~~~
niels_olson
any job that can be replaced by a computer or robot, will be. Be the one who
makes that happen, or be the one it happens to.

~~~
nitrogen
There is a third option: be the one who makes sure the second group is still
happy afterward.

~~~
antocv
Smartphones, ipads, web and apps for everyone!

Consume minglings!

~~~
niels_olson
> minglings

please define

------
fsckin
I've heard a few similar stories, here's one about an engineer who was 'too
senior' to lay off when an office closed:

They wound up with nearly zero responsibilities. Same as this story, they were
relocated to a remote office and never assigned a new manager.

Once a month, they received an email from someone on the QA team with updated
i18n strings for the latest software update. Their sole duty was to append the
strings, commit, and verify the build wasn't broken. They replied to QA with a
single word: "Done!", and that was all they did.

In their free time (as I recall) they made mobile games and about three years
in, the company went into Chapter 11 and seeing the writing on the wall, they
turned in their resignation... to whom, I don't know.

------
mathattack
I think many folks are missing that this is art. On the surface it's a story
of someone who games the system. A level beneath it's about someone losing
their ambition as they get sucked in to gaming the system. It could be a
larger political allegory in addition to it's critique of large corporate
machines. It certainly isn't the truth, but by sucking us all in it is
definitely good writing.

------
EnderMB
My first job was at a "non-technical" startup, in a technical capacity.
Despite being essentially a beginner, I was able to build a good product and
web presence for us, and after almost two years we were acquired by a huge
company.

The new parent company separated the technical team and moved them into their
own department in the main business, and left the rest as a separate entity
(which has now been dissolved). As a part of the new team they were invited to
their companies Christmas party. It's tradition for many people to get
hilarious drunk and say things they shouldn't. I had left the company as this
point to take a job elsewhere, but the friends I worked with saw some crazy
things. One story that stood out was about one guy who was drunk, and spoke.
He hung around with the new people and told them about the company.

They then asked him what he did, and he said "oh, nothing really, just this
and that".

He had worked there for twelve years, was promoted in his eighth year to work
under a manager, but after his manager left he was never assigned anywhere
else in the company. During this time, the recession hit, and some
restructuring was done, and he was promoted to manager of his department,
despite him being the only member in the department. His project was long-
finished by then, and he just stuck around, did around an hour of work a day
helping others.

I hear that he doesn't slack off though, and that he spends his time improving
his skills, uses up his training budget to gain new skills (apparently he gets
a lot), and basically does the stuff around the office that no one else wants
to do, like rewriting a ton of their internal systems.

~~~
antitrust
At several workplaces, I have known people in similar situations. However,
these people were among the most important parts of the workplace.

They were valued for both having a lot of background knowledge in their area,
and having an ability for judgment about detailed problems that could only be
called "wisdom."

Management kept them around like wise elders because once or twice a week
there'd be some task that others could do, but not as well or as thoroughly
(use of judgment, again) as these people. Thus problems got transferred to
them.

The counterpart to these people are Suzannes, named after the first one I met.
You can have an office full of highly technical people, but Suzanne -- who
usually doesn't get paid much, and is some kind of administrative staff -- is
the person everyone asks questions of nearly constantly because she knows all
the ins and outs of the business. Every office has a Suzanne, and often the
place won't function if he or she is out sick for a day.

~~~
Amadou
Sounds like those people are holders of institutional memory. The bigger
companies get, the more they forget about the value of institutional memory -
treating everybody like a cog in a wheel. Individual managers know the value
of such people, but company policy doesn't recognize them because they aren't
beans that can be easily counted.

~~~
antitrust
> institutional memory.

Yes, exactly. Thank you for this phrase. There's also a certain amount of
institutional bonding (to coin another phrase) involved with these people, in
that they're sort of "mother hens" who take care of everyone.

Definitely not cogs, but I'm not sure anyone is who actually belongs in a
particular office. Cogs are (generally) apathetic, at least in their machine
counterpart. In a team scenario, "apathetic" usually translates to some kind
of burden being shifted to the group.

~~~
lostlogin
This sort of knowledge is so so handy. When some bright spark shortcuts the
normal process the havoc that occurs is baffling to everyone except the old
hand who cares and understands. Just being around and observing events can
make an employee pretty damn useful quite fast. I'm not sure if every business
has as many moving parts as the one I'm in, but it can't be unusual. With
dozens of bits of software that supposedly work together, the bugs are
sometimes fascinating. Kodak, I'm looking at you. Why do you refuse to archive
any information on patients who's first name starts with BRE?!

------
kabdib
When Atari fell apart in 1984, we discovered an office in New York City with
about 20 "employees" who did nothing but collect paychecks. We figured it was
an organized crime thing; I don't know whether there were actual people, or
just an empty office.

------
austenallred
Honestly reading this makes me a little bit sick to my stomach. Do you know
what most people would give for that amount of spare time? I could build so
much, learn so much, do so much... or would I just sit there and play snake?

~~~
callmeed
_> what most people would give for that amount of spare time?_

No, they wouldn't. You could do so much, but we live in a world where people
spend 7 hours a month on Facebook and a game called Candy Crush makes over
$600,000 per day.

~~~
rphlx
While way more than $600,000/day of developer time goes into making thousands
of lame, derivative cell phone games that less than 100 people will ever play.
Fueled by the mostly-irrational hope of creating That One Big Hit.

------
BellsOnSunday
I had a job for about a couple of years that gave me enough spare time to read
Proust's 1.2m word epic _In_ _Search_ _of_ _Lost_ _Time_. There was some work
to be done but it never took me more than an hour or two, and then my boss was
quite happy for me to drift off to the Belle Epoque. I couldn't really get
into reading it at home because, as the father of young kids, I was too busy
most of the time and you really need to concentrate on P's page-long
sentences. I alternated between leisurely, engrossed reading and teaching
myself web development skills...happy days!

At the same Not that I consider reading Proust a waste of time,

~~~
hkon
Thanks for mentioning this, involuntary memory themed book sounds awesome. How
long did it take you to read through in calendar time, not active reading
time?

~~~
BellsOnSunday
A bit more than a year. There are some extended longeurs, especially _Sodom_
_and_ _Gomorrah_ , during which I was getting a bit fed up with it so once or
twice I gave myself a few weeks off. It is a magnificent novel though, worth
sticking with it.

------
drewying
We have a guy kinda like this at our current company. He is a co-founder of
the company. When our angel investors came in there was some drama and
disagreements. End result he was demoted and stripped of all his
responsibilities.

They can't fire him since he helped found the company and has some
protections. But he refuses to do anything they ask him. Now both sides have
given up. Guy won't even come into the office most of the time.

I don't know if it's a position I ever want to be in.

~~~
na85
That company is going nowhere and you need to leave.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
The co-founder is just not an employee. They're more like an owner that
demands a payment without commensurate input in to the company.

Not sure that makes the company so bad you have to leave; it's an historic
glitch. Can you expand on your reasoning.

------
Finster
Guys. If you ever think you might be stuck in a meeting as described in part
2, you can set up a rule on ifttt.com to call you if you send them a text
message. That way, you can pull the same trick with a single phone.

~~~
fsckin
Or just navigate to settings and start a ringtone playing. Sell it with a
tinge of embarrassment and they wouldn't know any better.

~~~
Finster
Nah, that's a rookie mistake. You don't want to be the guy caught doing that
when a real call comes in.

~~~
broken_symlink
So what if a real call comes in? Just fake it, and be like hold on, I have
another call coming in, "hang up" the fake call, and answer the real one.

~~~
greyboy
Because phones don't "ring" when on a call - you get a beep in the phone
speaker. At least with every landline and mobile phone I've ever seen in the
past few decades.

I guess there is a subset of people who may still be fooled.

------
ggreer
In case anyone's curious, this story was posted to HN a few years ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1320310](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1320310)

It's interesting how similar the comments are.

~~~
unimpressive
What's interesting is that the comments on this one are _better_.

------
steven2012
Not exactly the same, but I felt like a forgotten employee at Yahoo when I was
there. I had enough work for maybe 1 day a week. The rest of the time was
spent doing nothing.

Unlike this guy, though, I quit after 9 months (and started looking for a job
after 6) because I was worried that my technical skills were being eroded.
Unlike this guy, my career is way more important to me than collecting a free
paycheck, and I'd rather be earning my keep than sitting around screwing the
system.

~~~
seldo
As a former Yahoo, I can certainly think of a number of former colleagues
whose function was unclear and possibly nonexistent but continued to be paid
for years.

------
smurph
I worked with a guy like this who didn't realize he was doing nothing useful.
He thought that printing updated spreadsheets and reading random documentation
was worth his likely 6 figure salary. It was no secret though, all of the
younger employees knew about him. I think the managers avoided dealing with
him because they were afraid that he would wind up assigned to their team and
bringing their productivity down. He would get really upset whenever we got an
email about a new VP or Director being promoted, because he though he was in
line for that sort of thing. Eventually he convinced his manager, a remote guy
who didn't really know who he was, to promote him to a senior engineering
position. I left soon after that.

------
Uchikoma
This happened to a colleague of mine, he was the sales director of the company
(ISP in the mid 90s) we worked for, and after 3 take overs in a row - and 3
times changing of mouse pads, business cards and email addresses in a short
time - he had no responsibilities left, had no boss but was on the payroll. He
quit after some months of being bored.

~~~
zanny
> He quit after some months of being bored.

Talk about a lack of imagination! Just think of all the dinky hacking projects
you could do with a guaranteed paycheck and no responsibilities. I'd probably
spend 12 hours a day writing qml.

~~~
dripton
The startup I worked for got bought by a big company, then two years later
they decided to shut us down. But they wanted a fraction of us to stick around
for 3 months and keep the servers running while they transitioned to the new
system. And they offered us large severance checks to stick around until the
end. (Basically, barely work for 3 months then get another 3 months bonus
pay.)

It was painfully boring. I wrote a lot of hobby code. Learned a couple of
programming languages. Read a few good books. Helped people with their
resumes. Had some nice long lunches. Volunteered to fix everything that broke
during business hours so that I could feel like I'd at least done something
useful.

I wish I'd produced something more useful during those slack 3 months, but I
was afraid that if I did, the big company would claim ownership of it.

~~~
Wingman4l7
They could only do that if you didn't take pains to hide it from them.

------
CountHackulus
When I was in university I had a similar experience for one of my coop jobs. I
got hired to do testing, mostly print testing, and managed to automate my full
day's work into about 2 hours with diff and grep. Then the company acquired
another very large company, and my entire team got either laid off or
reshuffled. My entire row of cubicles was empty. My manager had no clue what
to do with me, so had me make a "web event portal" where he could track the
latest events in certain places. It was a nice 2 weeks where I learned SQL and
JSP, but I was still low on work.

I ended up writing a rasterizer from scratch, then writing a text mode demo,
and also using my used paper (print testing remember?) to make progressively
more complex origami. That was the one coop job I wasn't sad about leaving, on
my last day I just handed the person who used to be my manager my pass and
walked out.

~~~
dirktheman
Origami, excellent! It never seizes to amaze me how creativity gets to the
surface, no matter what people do. Origami, fiction writing, making pixel art
in MS paint, that kind of stuff. Awesome!

------
iliis
I'm surprised nobody mentioned the Bastard Operator from Hell yet. It's a
similiar story if somewhat more violent and on the technical side. Recommended
reading for every sysadmin.

[http://bofh.ntk.net/BOFH/index.php](http://bofh.ntk.net/BOFH/index.php)

------
coolnow
I opened this expecting to skim and come to the comments, but i'm absolutely
enthralled. I just got up to get a cold drink and i'm going to savour this
properly. Thank you so much for posting this!

------
Killah911
I'm having a hard time believing the post. It's way too entertaining. I feel
like I just watched an episode of The Office. Sure there are inefficiencies in
corporations, but coupled with this type of storytelling and walking in on a
VP in such a compromising position, it just seems scripted.

Not to mention, I was in a similar position for a couple of months. But given
that I'm generally a hard worker (much like the guy in the post), I almost
went crazy for not doing anything productive and ended up writing code for
much needed tools at the company. And I don't think I could put up with not
doing anything for that long. So, something smells fishy about this story...

~~~
rantanplan
Too familiar to me to consider it as fictional. As for your "almost went crazy
for not doing anything productive" \- give it time it'll come to you ;)

------
NoodleIncident
I was _convinced_ that the globes were hiding drugs and that the "seeds" were
something else... but it was just globes.

Engrossing read.

------
davidjgraph
So, we do know this is fiction, yes? He was about to lose his job and happened
to catch a VP having a five knuckle shuffle that same night. Interesting read,
but untrue.

~~~
jmcgough
Yeah, this was posted on SA years ago as fiction.

------
zik
I'd love to know what Moonshine's doing now and how long he managed to keep up
the subterfuge.

~~~
Sven7
High up in government. Possibly the pentagon.

------
Schwolop
I don't know where the hell that came from, but I just laughed my arse off for
a good quarter hour over here!

~~~
yogo
It was very entertaining. I thought halfway in it was pure fiction--I could
see this turning into a fun movie.

------
datalus
The story has internet fiction written all over it. Definitely one of the
better examples of it, still a good read 11 years on :)

------
kstop
In a previous workplace, there were multiple redundant management tiers on the
technical side, and lots of managers were well-known for never really doing
anything apart from attending meetings and finding creative ways to get out of
doing performance evaluations. Which usually involved buttering up one of
their employees and fobbing the work off on them. Some of them had only a
couple of reports. I know of at least one who had none.

Then came the "solution." A program whereby managers had to spend 90 minutes a
week on the floor talking to their employees. Work was actually supposed to
stop while this happened. This got inserted into everybody's objectives.

I found this particularly galling because I'd locked horns with a couple of
the worst offenders in some of the few meetings I'd managed to dodge, and
because, managing a team of 15 devs, I already made 1-on-1 time available to
them weekly and easily spent 90 mins a day with them doing actual work. (You
just can't manage technical folk without some involvement and understanding of
their daily challenges. There's a respect issue otherwise, on both sides.)

The program came and went. Nobody failed the objective, though after the first
week the usual suspects just hid in their office or spent their 90 minutes
playing with their phones. And when the next budget crunch came, management
layers only increased (because they were all high performers going by their
performance review) while people who did actual work got laid off.

Of all the stuff I saw in that corp, that one annoyed me the most (and it
wasn't even the most serious - 7-figure vanity projects were a real problem).

------
Dogamondo
Enthralling read. That was 11 years ago. I wonder if he stuck around to see
the 2008 recession and somehow miraculously made it through. If not he would
have had a huge redundancy pay out given his tenure.

------
reledi
Isn't there a story about a guy who was in a similar situation at Apple or
Microsoft and built a well-known piece of software during that time?

~~~
bkor
It is referenced here every so often:
[http://www.pacifict.com/Story/](http://www.pacifict.com/Story/)

~~~
lostlogin
Thank you. I had not read that before and its great.

------
nicolethenerd
Not quite the 'forgotten employee' story, but when I started a new job a few
years ago, the company ordered me a Macbook Pro (or so they claimed...) While
I was waiting for it, they gave me an old Linux box to work on, but I didn't
really set up a full dev environment because it was temporary and the laptop
would be here "any day now". Weeks passed, we checked in with support
repeatedly, no sign of the laptop... but it would still be here "in a few
days" or "next week", so I continued to put off customizing the Linux box and
just installing things slowly, as I needed them.

Finally, 6 weeks after I started, we hired a new dev. Support immediately
handed him a Macbook Pro that they apparently just had lying around (that is,
the one they ordered for me 2 months earlier). My manager thankfully made sure
it went to me, and the new dev received his own machine two days later.

~~~
icefox
Don't leave us hanging like that, did you finally fully configure linux on
your new laptop? :D

~~~
nicolethenerd
Haha, no. I'm really a Mac person at heart, and I used OS X happily until the
laptop was stolen out of my office two years later :-( - this time, the
company replaced the laptop (with another Mac, of course) within days.

------
allannienhuis
That was a great waste of time. Now back to the rest of my HN feed...

------
warmwaffles
I read this a long time ago and I found it amusing then and I found it amusing
now. Truth or lie, it is still a fun story.

------
bjhoops1
This was incredibly engrossing and amusing. It was interest timing to see
this, since today is actually my last day working as a contractor/consultant
at a large financial company doing a job that repeatedly left me with days or
weeks on end with no real work to do. What made it more painful was that this
place blocked Gmail, Facebook, etc. so I was pretty much relegated to reading
HN articles and screwing around on Twitter.

Somewhat amusingly, they blocked POST requests to Twitter, but not GET
requests, so I could _view_ tweets, but couldn't post any. Fortunately, I was
able to use Buffer to get around this. :)

Happy ending - after 10 months in the corporate jungle, I am now going to work
remotely for a startup! Very excited to be part of the startup scene instead
of peering in from the outside.

------
hosh
You know, I've seen many comments that lamented how this guy is wasting time.
Yet this is what someone looks forward to when setting up enough passive
income to cover living expenses.

In 4HWW, Tim Ferris talked about his emotional breakdown when he realized he
had set things up so he had nothing to do.

It's something to think about, examining just what is the motive and
underlying emotional current behind the lamentations of "wasting" time.

Besides which: the guy had also a period of his life where he worked his ass
off and was obviously coasting on the goodwill and reputation generated from
there. People respected him and seemed to think he was very busy, because in
the past, they've seen him work the 70 hours a week.

------
KeepTalking
I have seen employees at a large high tech firm do something similar.

Basically the person "X" was told don't bother applying for time off if its
less than 10 days. Well "X" has done travels around the world without ever
taking any vacation time off.

------
chaostheory
This was first posted on HN about 3 years ago.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1320310](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1320310)

I agree with the old comments. It's probably just a nice fictional short story

------
wahnfrieden
The images are gone, but there's one left in the original forums posting:
[http://i.imgur.com/9ioHLCt.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/9ioHLCt.jpg) of the VP.

------
antitrust
From the previous thread:

The book "Whatever" by Michel Houellebecq describes this situation very well,
and is very funny.

Some quotations from it:

[http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/56842-extension-du-
doma...](http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/56842-extension-du-domaine-de-
la-lutte)

And a great interview:

[http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6040/the-art-of-
fic...](http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6040/the-art-of-fiction-
no-206-michel-houellebecq)

~~~
evacuationdrill
After reading the long quote about rules, I bought it on Amazon. It sounds
awesome, thanks for the recommendation. Link below for anyone else.

[http://www.amazon.com/Whatever-Michel-
Houellebecq/dp/1846687...](http://www.amazon.com/Whatever-Michel-
Houellebecq/dp/1846687845)

------
peterjancelis
In my first job I was 'on the bench' literally ALL the time, from October 2008
to when I quit mid 2009. It was a strategy consulting job (at one of the
famous 3) and I was assigned on a bank bailout project that kept being
delayed.

It is hugely depressing as you are doing nothing productive yet you can never
plan to have the next x months available to do a project on your own.

What most bugged me down was the BS busywork, which kept coming as the office
was small enough for people to know I was on the ever delayed project. If I
could do it again I would just go skiing fulltime and tell them to fire me or
staff me, but I was an extremely ambitious 22 year old and stuck in a role
that is generally considered at least a 2 year commitment.

I finally quit 9 months in, with my "mentoring partner" reassuring me the
project really would start in 2 weeks. Literally 20 minutes before he had said
that there had been an email from HR that it was delayed again. The idiot just
didn't care. When I asked him to explain how the company had not wasted my
time over the past 9 months and why I should trust their promises going
forward, he went all office politics on me saying that this was an evaluation
only I could make. That was the last insult to my intelligence that I
tolerated from that company.

I'm still extremely angry over it, as I was doing everything right. I had a
ton of savings in index funds already and had it all planned out to work hard
and retire extremely early. When I quit I was so depressed that I did not even
fight for the extra 3 months of severance, which I'd have gotten if I had let
them fire me officially. I also didn't stay another 3 months so I could take
unemployment benefits. The bit of money in the company pension plan was also
lost as it had a 12 month vesting schedule. Basically, here was a guy who had
been top of class all his life and with a savvy personal finance plan, so
broken from 9 months of soul destroying nothingness that he quit without any
backup what so ever.

It took me 3 years to get over it. Literally, for 2 years and 4 months I sat
at home reading stuff. It was only when I was almost 26 and completely broke
that I applied for a startup incubator, got in, and got back on track
somewhat. Now that that company failed, the rational thing would be to apply
for a rails developer job. I found some rails shops that I like, but I just
can't get myself to press "send" on the application email. I don't think I
will ever trust anyone enough to work for them fulltime.

If you're still reading this at this point, take away one lesson: Do not hire
ambitious, talented people if you don't know FOR SURE you can give them
meaningful work. Better to remain friends with a talented person who is now
working for somebody else than to employ him and turn him into an enemy for
life. (Because yes, I will have my revenge and it will be fucking brutal.
Legal, but oh so brutal.)

~~~
azm1
Did you get paid during the time ? What went through your head that you
managed to keep being there for such long time and not to search for different
job ? Also from your story it looks like it left quite a stain and still is
not washed. I think its good to look at things as you are(or were) in the
leading position(of your life) and where did you made bad decisions. Not to
put all the 'bad' stuff you regret on someone else,whether it is company or
individual. How else you gonna fix it ? At the end you decided to go there,
stay there, get upset and leave. It was tough but the people around you just
did what they were asked to. Once you take 100 procent of responsibility on
yourself and your decisions even if you are employed you will feel way more
free and satisfied and from this state of mind you can for example think of
your startup/idea and get fully independent on the physical plane as well. And
not thinking of some revenge still being in past..

~~~
peterjancelis
I didn't look for another job as leaving that role before the 2 years are up
is generally seen as a failure. Basically I committed myself to that company
for 2 years and there was zero reciprocity.

Yes, people around me just did what they were asked to. They were staffed on
projects that actually got started after all.

I agree with you on owning up 100% to the choices I made. It was a stupendous
error on my part to enter in that 2 year commitment without breakup fees
specified in the contract. Of course such a company doesn't negotiate such
terms with college graduates, so I should not have taken that job at all.

With regards to revenge, I believe in tit for tat. That's the rational way to
play iterative games.

~~~
ScottBurson
> With regards to revenge, I believe in tit for tat. That's the rational way
> to play iterative games.

Bullshit. You're not expressing a rational plan to advance your self-interest.
You're expressing an emotional fantasy. You really should let go of it, but if
you must hold on to it, at least don't lie to yourself about what it is.

Besides, they paid you. Resigning after collecting a salary for 9 months ought
to have been revenge enough.

Also, if you sat around for over _2 years_ after quitting, what they did to
you is not the cause of your problems.

~~~
peterjancelis
"Besides, they paid you. Resigning after collecting a salary for 9 months
ought to have been revenge enough."

This is what I would have thought as well, until it actually happened.

------
agilebyte
"Upper management written all over him".

------
thomasfromcdnjs
Post-modern short story, loved it too!

------
HackyGeeky
!!! This person can change his life ! He could learn something from scratch &
become a master at it given the spare time he has.

I think he lacks the motivation and doesn't have a good friend circle..

Sad to see that someone with so much potential is now slowly withering away..

Not too late ! Rather - never too late.

~~~
piqufoh
It is a little late - the article was published in 2002.

------
jgeerts
Is this real? This sounds a lot like fiction, all these things happening, the
shady deliverer, the globes, the dog/hjob thing, crawling out of the window
when feeling haunted, finding his boss jking off and giving him his freepass.

Anyway, this guy has to become an author.

------
gaahrdner
Here's a similar story, except this guy did it for 11 years.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/1agon8...](http://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/1agon8/this_is_unbelievable/)

------
unimpressive
I was trying to find this a few weeks ago. I often wonder what I would do with
so much time and free money...

EDIT: >I placed a sign on the wall next to the bumper, seen below.

Does anybody have a backup of the picture?

------
kilroy123
I couldn't help but get sucked in to his story.

Still, a bit sad, he didn't do something better with his time. Eventually,
this guy had to have gotten fired. Wonder what this guy does now.

------
meisterbrendan
that was equal parts hilarious and depressing. I dislike how completely
CONTENT the author seems to be in DELIBERATELY wasting his life away. Come on
man--you can do better!

------
phryk
I've been thinking about switching jobs for a long time; I guess 'workplace
safety inspector' is now on the list of jobs I'd potentially apply for. :F

------
ivanbrussik
frigging brilliant - longest fiction ive read in about a decade

------
chillzilla
This guy and Kafka...

------
C1D
All I could think about is having the ability to work on side projects full
time with pay.

------
tsax
This had me laughing, crying, fearful, among a whole host of emotions.
Amazing. Bravo.

------
karlgrz
I enjoyed every word of this, real or not. Great story!

------
nathana
:%s/Something Awful/Hacker News/g

------
ryantcarter
This is epic, is there any more I can read?

------
xmpir
nice read! I cannot understand, why the guy is happy with doing nothing...

------
alagappanr
An amazing read. Loved it.

------
mydpy
This is awesome.

------
iamtyce
This is amazing.

------
mh_yam
So good.

------
elleferrer
loved it.

------
Dr_chaos
This is weird,

I read this on reddit last night under /r/askreddit or something, it was a
comment buried half the page down 2 comments up. I stayed up WAY past my bed
time to read it, amusing story.

THEN i find out it is the top spot here :| what am i going to read this
morning !!!!!:(

~~~
josephpmay
I'm in an identical situation as you.

------
qoo
網絡潮文共賞

------
jesalg
EPIC

------
cafard
"The Director of People Services - AKA, Human Resources Nazi. I was a Warsaw
Jew, face to face with Himmler."

I guess I shouldn't be astonished that people can write such stuff, but I
think I'm allowed to be disgusted.

------
dano414
I sometimes think these stories are made up by Harvard MBA types? I was
honestly, too lazy to verify the source. I have seen guys like this--15-20
years ago, but thought times have changed? The one thing that always always
irked me about programmers--game testers, etc; is the undeserved Hugh egos
that went along with their bag of random "talents"\--some of you. Those days
are long gone--I thought? I honestly believe anyone who dosen't have to break
a sweat at work is lucky.

That said, I still think these stories are going to be much nore common. I
hope true BS sniffers farret out the honest bloggers, from some lackey with a
degree in psychology.

I'm not sure why this story irrated me. I know I need to follow with "I could
be that guy?". But I work differently. If I don't like a company--I smile,
while I destroy the entity. Just being truthful.

