Unfortunately, enough, well, for the lack of a more elegant term, MBA leeches, have climbed the corporate ladder high enough to generalize equating the vague term "proactivity" (which tends to involve permanent availability, diligence and so much pseudo-politeness that it starts smelling a lot like ass-kissing) to productivity.
This is particularly annoying when it's augmented by unrealistic expectations, like "you're a programmer... you spend all your time on a computer, can't you check your inbox"?
I used to work in a place where this was common practice, especially among the HR and sales drones. They pissed me off so hard that I cracked up and explained one particularly pushy tie-wearer that I only check my mail every hour or so, when I take a break from, you know, work, and if something is more urgent than that, he can come to my office. He obnoxiously explained me that a lot of his work involves remote communication and he can't just go all the way to my office (which was otherwise on the same floor), so I just went like, ok, prioritize or whatever your newspeak language calls it and leave me the fuck alone.
I stubbornly enforced my "one e-mail checking each hour" until the whole department started doing it. To everyone's surprise, things went a lot more smoothly; instead of hurriedly replying some half-thought obvious crap just to show the boss how attentive you are to your work, you could actually take five minutes and explain the guy what he needed to know. Much fewer details slipped and everyone was eventually happier, save for the self-important rookies who thought Skyping and placing phone calls was the substance of their work.
This is particularly annoying when it's augmented by unrealistic expectations, like "you're a programmer... you spend all your time on a computer, can't you check your inbox"?
I used to work in a place where this was common practice, especially among the HR and sales drones. They pissed me off so hard that I cracked up and explained one particularly pushy tie-wearer that I only check my mail every hour or so, when I take a break from, you know, work, and if something is more urgent than that, he can come to my office. He obnoxiously explained me that a lot of his work involves remote communication and he can't just go all the way to my office (which was otherwise on the same floor), so I just went like, ok, prioritize or whatever your newspeak language calls it and leave me the fuck alone.
I stubbornly enforced my "one e-mail checking each hour" until the whole department started doing it. To everyone's surprise, things went a lot more smoothly; instead of hurriedly replying some half-thought obvious crap just to show the boss how attentive you are to your work, you could actually take five minutes and explain the guy what he needed to know. Much fewer details slipped and everyone was eventually happier, save for the self-important rookies who thought Skyping and placing phone calls was the substance of their work.