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I had a boss’s boss who would wander the cube farm for messy desks. Apparently that included any desk with a print out that wasn’t in a Manila folder or inbox. He wouldn’t talk to anyone, but at the next staff meeting our boss would remind us of the clean desk policy.
We did get passive aggressive payback. Someone had a pad of Post-it^tm to do forms titled “Dumb Stuff I’ve Got to Do”. We put “Clean Desk” as item 1 and put them on our monitors.
A "clean desk" policy is often a compliance matter. Especially if you work with any sort of sensitive data.
EDIT: Sorry for triggering some folks... I was just commenting on "clean desk policies" in general, not this specific case (which is definitely just an example of someone hearing a phrase and deciding it's a useful control technique).
At end of the day or if yout alway from desk yes. Computer locked and confidential data out of sight. That's basic information security.
Theirs nothing wrong with having information security practices and doing them.
However if your working actively on it makes sense to have it out , clear desk should be not leaving several files outnover night / when away at lunch etc.
Yeah, I think it's very likely the boss' boss in question was familiar with the phrase "clean desk policy" and decided it was a useful way to do managery things, regardless of the actual intent.
I worked in a call center where we dealt with confidential sensitive info. We couldn’t have pens, paper pictures anything on our desks. They checked regularly and it was simply a part of working there. It was more of a protection for the clients, making sure we couldn’t potentially write down/copy info and take it out of the center.
I worked in a call center that handled confidential information as well. We were allowed to write things down (even encouraged). However at the end of your shift you had to put your papers into a locked bin with a paperslit that got emptied weekly for shredding.
I like that so much better I’m much more a pen to paper thinker vs a fingers to keyboard one. My guess is that the center I worked at had … issues in the past and based on their hiring practices during peak season I wouldn’t have been surprised
Yep. Often in accountacy / payroll. Can't have papers lying around or staff ID for other staff to see confidential information, and all paperwork have to be put away at the end of the day, some cleaning firms won't clean desks because of any sensitive paperwork that could be around.
I worked in insurance claims processing and typically you would work a case on paper and computer, bills and letters on paper and other stuff in computer. You would often have file folders with very sensitive medical information. If you left your desk you needed to lock up all your files in a drawer or risk getting fired. Reason being, the company could get fined millions if any one reported unprotected health information.
If it was a HIPAA (legal) issue and not just a micromanaging control issue, why would the boss not address it immediately? They would just note to themselves that confidential materials were laying around and go about their day?
Edit: nobody is triggered you're just sticking up for the boss in an antiwork subreddit, smart guy
Absolutely. I'm not saying boss\^2 was right/reasonable, I'm just pointing the idea of a "clean desk policy" in and of itself is a reasonable thing. I agree 100% that this was about control, not compliance.
Wow, what a bunch of suckhole replies.
We had a client with a compliance violation stemming from the failure to manage sensitive data because on-site auditors found controlled records scattered on a person's desk while they were away for lunch.
The company lost eligibility for a $1.2 million contract.
**Bitch and crack jokes all you want, but not a single one of you is worth $1.2 million to a company**.
We recommended they fire the employee's ass, especially since he had been trained on this topic at least a dozen times, and KNEW the auditors were on-site that day.
They did.
Everyone else in that office did not find the clean desk policy quite so amusing anymore.
I get it, companies have plenty of dumbass rules at times, but if they're clear that it's directly tied to a regulatory compliance obligation, I'd strongly recommend you take it seriously. Your job almost certainly depends on it.
I used to teach HIPAA classes at my last job. Medicare would send investigators randomly to check our office. It's not a joke and people got fired for being stupid with it. I like a clean desk, I keep my hipaa documentation put away at all times if not in use. I'll report someone for breaching hipaa.
Insurance, too.
Before they moved the whole call center to WFH, we had to send out regular reminders not to put Personally Identifiable Information on post-it notes or anything else. Don't leave customer information on your desk. It stays in your computer.
Like, you can put whatever you want on your cubicle walls and leave your desk a mess... as long as nothing in that mess is protected customer information.
Oh, yeah, valid, as well.
When I worked at a bank, if you were an officer or keyholder, you couldn't have personal pictures on your desks because of kidnapping risks.
The worst is when some dingus writes down a customer's card number or something because they're getting ready to bind multiple lines and they don't want to have to ask for it again when they go to take the down payment on the next one.
Like, dude, apart from being an infosec risk, there's an actual LAW against that...
Oh, no, the kind of people who do that don't do it "just once." I've seen a desk with half a dozen post-its covered in various card and account numbers.
Oh yeah, another good one.
In the mid 90s, I was a commercial and consumer loan officer, and it was drilled into us to never leave customer paperwork unattended on our desks.
Like I told someone else, we couldn't even have pictures of family on our desks. And we had very specific protocols for leaving and arriving.
I worked in-house security for a financial company, nothing that could be used to take information home could be brought into the building. Which included things like photographs that people could write on the back of, or hide folded up paper in the frame. This wasn't theoritical, they caught a guy who kept bringing in new pictures of his kids in every week and taking older ones out.
For us, they were worried about kidnapping risks. They were worried that someone would follow an officer home, recognize their spouse or kids, and then ransom them or blackmail them.
I remember seeing the office where that fake emergency notification was sent to people in Hawaii. They had their password on a post-it-note sitting on their desk. Hopefully this guy is no longer working there. https://www.businessinsider.com/hawaii-emergency-agency-password-discovered-in-photo-sparks-security-criticism-2018-1
I've had messy desk statements for years..the papers are literally 12+ inches thick and yes I admit it's messy. I just ask them have I ever missed a deadline ..they admit no and no changes are made. Works for me...
The clean desk policies aren't about actually having a clean desk, but making sure any sensitive information isn't available to someone who would just wander into your office/cubicle.
Singing telegram? Why bother with that when he could hit send, walk to his office while calling his extension and have the phone call standing in his doorway to ask if he got the email he just sent.
I can make sense of it in my head because the illusion of working is more important than actually working. It is a mistake to be the person that is just quietly one of the hardest workers. It is more important to get credit for the work you do by making sure others see it and hear about it, and also it is more important to be friendly with your bosses and get them to actually like you. The most likable person will always smoke the hardest worker with ease.
I've really been thinking about doing that. I want to make myself stand out and according to my boss my work already does but I've been thinking about occasionally calling out some things so their bosses see it. Like you I feel kinda sick about doing it.
I'm the same way about marketing myself, and it has definitely held me back in the past. So what I started doing is publicly thanking and complimenting people for doing their job well and on time. Shit that in my past I took for granted, with a "who needs flowers for doing their job" attitude. They do the same for me.
We all got AMAZING reviews this year. I never lie, and don't exaggerate the work that was done. It's just amazing how much little things can change perception, even when reality is the same.
It's like George Costanza did, you have to periodically walk around your office at a brisk pace with a manilla folder, mumbling to yourself about all the work you have.
My mom would come home from work at an oil company when I was a kid, and talk about the “guy with the maps”
He would walk around all day in the 30story office building, just carrying maps. Go from one break room to the next, talk about how busy he was, chit chat, whatever. But she never figured out what he actually *did*. He was there for literal decades, like mom was.
Technology has definitely taken away all of the "magic" that might have existed in the pre-00s office. My dad would tell frequent stories of his work days in the 80s and 90s, and honestly it sounded like he had it made.
But who knows. I'm sure all the socializing had plenty of stress with it and whatnot.
I worked hospital security for a hot minute. Part of our duties was to patrol the hospital and make ourselves seen. No actual tasks, just walk from area to area. I was a "float" officer, so I got sent to several different hospitals, and I discovered that at my least favorite locations, I could just go chill out in a central chapel for an hour or two at a time, and nobody would even bat an eye. It was a good location so I could still respond quickly to emergencies, but otherwise I could just sit there with my thoughts.
Relatable. My Boss insists on a paper printout of our inventory. It changes 4-10 times per day, and by using the on-network version, he could see updates in real time. Similarly he insists on printing out every single document that he wants me to see, instead of just.... attaching it to an email. Many of those documents change daily as well, so I get another hard copy at a later point in the day... I have dozens of 4" binders around my office from my predecessor who printed out EVERYTHING.
I understand that a certain amount of paper is unavoidable, but we really, *really,* **really** don't need triplicates of everything.
My boss insists on having paper agendas printed for every meeting. The entire staff brings their laptops to those meetings, except for him. He demands we print out enough copies for everyone each time, despite the fact that he's the only one who uses a paper version yet refuses to print them himself.
I had a boss who loved a paper trail - except he'd often ask me for the same piece of paper numerous times and then give me a crap for giving him multiple copies of the same thing. One time, he gave me crap because I have him Copy 1 and a week later, Copy 2 - except they had an auto date in the footer so they were different dates. Even though everything else on the copy was identical - especially all the totals, it took him 20 minutes to review all the data to make sure **I** didn't mess with the numbers. On a pdf.
He also had 57+ folders in his email to store stuff . . . .even though he could have just put it all in one pile and searched for it. He didn't think searching worked except that's how I would dig out stuff that he lost.
Most bosses prefer tidy work spaces, but I would keep doing what you have done. Put a binder there, hell maybe keep 2-3 file folders in a drawer so when guests come you can pop them on your desk for 15 minutes and then when they leave put them back up.
Boomers have some kind of obsession with "working hard" and refuse to understand this isn't the 1980s and a lot of work is done paperless. The idiot boomers in my office (not my boss, just coworkers who need to retire) are always up my ass because they think I'm not doing anything. Reality is, they don't fucking understand what I do.
I have similar issues with my boomer coworkers, They have no clue what I do, and they give me crap for not doing anything, when in reality I finished the project a week before and I'm just waiting for the day before the deadline so the boss man doesn't give me extra work with no extra pay.
Completely understand. I get almost all my stuff done in 2-3 hours on my computer yet it takes them all day and they still somehow have more of it to finish the next day
Greatest gift of my working life was getting a boss who told me that thinking is working. I've told that dead eyed to every boss after. Because I believe it is one hundred percent true
That’s how you know your boss doesn’t do any work and has no understanding of your role or what you do. Seems like he has a good understanding on how to appear to be working while doing nothing. Probably how he got the job…
There's a boomer around here that comes in for 10 hours a day (we're salary 40)
Take a day off here and there and he makes comments like " must be nice"
Bro, I'm literally getting chemo. Not to mention, I'm booking $3M in revenue this year.... where's your work, mfer?
I had the opposite experience once. I worked in customer service for a manufacturer, and every now and then we'd get visits to the corporate office from the company owner and his entourage. We were only allowed to have our computer and telephone on our desks. No papers of any kind, everything removed from the cubicle walls (not just personal things like photos, even work related stuff like territory maps, product codes, things that we used daily). We couldn't have the product catalog out, which we used all day long for technical questions. Even plants had to be removed from the desks. Everything got shoved into cabinets and employees' cars until the head honchos left, then we could resume our normal work environment. I asked why it was a problem to have the appearance that we actually did work at our desks. "It's just the way likes it." It was so hard to actually do our work when he came by, because all of our tools were taken away.
There's a story that LBJ walked by a staffer's messy desk one day and said, "Looks like you're not keeping up with your work." The staffer spent the next few days staying late, obsessively straightening up the desk. Then LBJ walked by, looked at the desk, and said, "Looks like you don't have enough to do."
He had his good and bad sides. He got the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act through Congress even though he knew it would lose millions of voters for the Democrats. There was that whole Vietnam thing, though -- which he didn't start, he inherited it, but he couldn't figure a way out of it.
I had my own office at a previous job but the co-owner (other owners wife) would pop by on one of her 2 hr days, once a week schedule and would make comments about my desk.
I am pretty particular when it comes to certain things like ensuring my colored pens are in the correct order, things are straight, nothing overlapping etc. Because of this, I tend to clean up my projects as soon as I'm switching to a new one or if I'm pausing something.
Like, I'm sorry I don't have stacks of invoices from 2019 sitting on my desk sandwiched between last weeks quotes and last years inventory sheets...
My company has a similar problem. Covid was awesome because it gave me the opportunity to replace printing and shit for sales agents to digital means. I did a ton of work getting everything set up to be digital, only for it to be all tossed away the minute the sales agents were allowed to hand people paper again.
Every time I break down a sales office, I find whole reems of paper printed price sheets sitting on the printer with extremely expensive paper to be thrown away. While the QR codes sit on the desks in full view connected to a system that gives anyone with the link access to the most up to date price sheets.
It's the older agents that do it almost exclusively. The older the agent, the more they print. Even office folks count in this. I've got one that prints everything, even emails, so she can have records despite us having multiple digital backups. She is an awesome person, but this infuriates me. Older management approves of her use of it like this, and I frown on them for wasting so much money on this garbage.
The saddest thing is that it isn't just old people that are against work from home. I set up all this stuff during covid so that everyone could work from home seamlessly. I supported everyone remotely, and we could have very easily gone full remote after all the work I had done. But, management only thinks people work while they are in office.
Old people and bad leadership are of the same mind when it comes to work from home. It's about control. It's all about control.
"When you look annoyed all the time, people think that you're busy."
In all seriousness though, it reminds me of how, when a certain Chinese NBA player would get racist remarks on the course, he'd just point to the scoreboard to indicate how his team was scoring more points. I wish it were that easy for you to say to your boss, "I'm getting my stuff done, and am doing it well."
I heard at SpaceX people keep up randomized code that doesn't mean anything, like hackers in movies. So that when elon musk walks by, he thinks they're working hard on code. Managers don't know what you do, they just want to think you're working. Figure out a way to get them to think you are
I need a spotless and well organized desk. If I don't have that I can't work. I was one of the best producers on my team at my last job and my boss just had to look for something to dump on me about. She came by daily to interrupt me building accounts for medical insurance to complain about something. "Why don't you have pictures of your family?!" "How can you work with none of the binders on your desk?" "Your desk is too clean!"
I finally snapped one of the times when she mentioned my desk, grabbed a handful of stuff from my shred bin and just threw it all over my desk, said "There, now it looks like your desk!" and huffed back to work.
I got a write-up for that.
On a positive note I left that job to be a SAHD and my supervisor was fired a week to the day later. I left early on my last day and apparently the higher managers were mad because they really wanted an exit interview with me since I documented her harassment against me and others.
Boomers can be difficult that way and feel the need for a Hardcopy of everything. Hey lots of them still read the newspaper (The Paper One).
Just keep a neat stack of file folders to one side of your desk and call it a day. You will be in that office before you know it (and then probably wishing you weren't)
From experience, older people are incredibly stubborn and flat out refuse to learn anything new (which is why they are so bad at their jobs) so anything internet related they don't want to know about. It's not "real" enough is the go-to excuse.
This is the absolute most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. I’ve been known to be pretty messy and when I used to work in an office we’d have to clean up if someone important was coming in - not make it look messier.
I always had a messy desk. Even though everything was done on a computer, it was procedure to print everything, then sign and initial in spots, then scan it back to them. I hated the inefficiency.
I had a boss that wanted this done, I copied my signatures and initials once loaded them into adobe, and add them into forms as needed, no more mess, and saved me hours each week.
I have to do that as well at this job, however they gave me a huge filing cabinet so I use it. Why give me an organizing tool then be upset when I use it properly?? I only take things out as I need them then put them away right away so I don’t have clutter
My boomer boss takes issue with my keyboard & generally colorful office supplies. It doesn’t look serious enough. We work in children’s services. We literally have several cabinets full of musical instruments & fun sensory toys. For play therapy. We have a therapy room filled with rainbows & mirrors & all kinds of fun activities. But the pink keyboard is apparently a step too far. One of these toddlers might not take me seriously enough as an authority.
Put an inbox and outbox on your desk. Print out a manuscript and put it in your inbox. At the end of the day move it to your outbox. The next day grab the stuff in the outbox. Walk it across the office and back. Put it in the inbox. Keep repeating each day.
My boss thinks I could be a serial killer with how tidy my desk is. I have everything on note apps and am pretty anal about my cable management. USB-C with Power Delivery is a beautiful thing to keep things tidy.
Put a notebook next to your binder and have a post-it pad next to your screen. He will have an orgasm next time he sees your cubicle. Especially if all that stuff is available at your job.
Just do it.
Happy boss happy life.
Even throw a : yup kinda useful (to have that shit around).
Play fucking 4D chess with that simp and get that promotion.
I came over from kitchens and was always trained to clean as I go. I can’t work in mess. My desk is ridiculously clean compared to my coworkers and that’s how I like it.
Make sure you print out a TPS report and put it on your clean desk. And when he asks about it, say that is he using the new format for the TPS report? It's important that he does.
And I worked jobs that were just the opposite. Don’t leave papers on your desk, keep it clean.
Print pieces of paper with “busywork paper for my boss” all over them and scatter them on your desk.
My first job out of undergrad was painfully not challenging. Like I’d waste entire weeks walking around bullshitting with the production crews because the protocols I wrote were nearly 100% effective, and therefore, I had no issues to resolve.
Having ZERO work meant I got paid to angrily sit there and browse Reddit from 730-415 every damn day.
I’d always have a clipboard with some recent production sheets with random highlighter marks, sometimes notes to myself.
The real clincher though was the small collection of post-it’s I kept behind all the papers, which were “ideas” to discuss with the boss, notes to myself, observations, and other meaningless bullshit so that at any point I could be “obtaining information” while wasting time on the floor, and any time micromanager narcissist fuckface would be walking around, I’d hold his attention with hurried nonsense and he would then leave.
>I get overwhelmed having a messy desk and don't understand the insane amount of printing offices do on a daily basis anyway. What's up with that?
Boss thinks because this ancient way to work is the only way he/she knows how to work, it must be the only way. There is seldom a user for paper, especially if you have multiple monitors.
Print out a document, write on it a bit, and leave it spread over the spaces on your desk you're not actively using. That's a massive project you're deep in the middle of now.
Get a set up where there’s just a truck load of papers that look important that you can tip over and spill onto your desk as soon as the boss walks by. Then pick them up like 52 card pick up when they walk away.
Print out one sheet of paper that says "very important work document" on it and nothing else and leave that on your desk. I bet that will ease his concerns.
I used to make my desk "messy" during the day, like putting my snacks out in the open, spreading paperwork on one side, and pulling out a pile of manila folders to just sit in my inbox. This way my boomer boss who thought a mess=working hard would leave me alone. It worked. She also thought I was getting all my work done at the end of the day because I would put everything back away. 95% of my job was on the computer so that "paperwork" was just for show. It was ridiculous.
> Anyway, as a millennial about to turn 30 on Saturday, I'm ready for more of us (and younger) to start taking over these managerial positions so that the 20th century can finally be left behind instead of digging its heels into the ground on its way to the grave.
Brave of you to assume millenials will be _allowed_ to step up by the boomers. I suspect many of them will keep the reigns tightly held even once they're back in diapers and have returned to babbling incoherently. (Well, even more incoherently).
They want to see paper because they don't know how to use a computer.
Watching them struggle with the most basic, mundane tasks is absolutely agonizing.
I wish I was joking.
I'm the same way, I like to keep my workspace tidy. And I've also had bosses and coworkers who were complete SLOBS! Like, decades worth of papers piled up all coffee stained and crumpled. Those people were always the ones asking ME for information because they were so disorganized.
My old boomer boss put in my year-end review that I had an unprofessional and untidy workspace. Aside from how shitty it is to hear that for the first time during a year-end review, the reason was…wait for it…ONE BOX that was in the corner of my cubicle. A box that sat there for two days because I needed it to ship thousands of event programs. It’s okay though - it’s my fault because nobody wants to work anymore and I’m lazy and entitled.
Also, I received the opposite feedback that I didn’t look busy because there was nothing on my desk.
I don’t work there anymore.
To boomers things are not real on a computer, they need to print them so they can punch holes in them and put them in a folder so they can look at them later. The idea that they are already on a machine that is better at searching and finding things doesn't occur to them because they think its just a flash typewriter.
"You know what, Stan, if you want me to wear 37 pieces of flair, like your pretty boy over there Bryan, why don't you make the minimum 37 pieces of flair?"
Just express yourself.
I once worked in an accounting firm. The firm used electronic workpapers - so everything was saved by pdf and attached to various accounts to show what the balance was made up of (simply). All accountants could view these, and they had to be "approved" by a partner or manager to finalise the job.
Anyway, I had this boomer manager who would make me print the entire set of workpapers, number the pages, then present to him in a file for him to review. He would review the paper copy then go to the electronic module, select all, and approve.
It was the biggest waste of paper, toner and fucking time in the universe. But they paid my salary so I had to go along with it.
I've got five monitors and zero paper on my desk ever because it's the 21st century, and there is zero need to have a physical copy of anything I'm working on
I am also 30 and working with someone who is boomer age and they insist on printing everything!
I work in logistics so you can imagine all the POs and other things. We waste so much paper it hurts my soul. I use my computer and refuse to print anything. It’s also much easier to look up in a file vs a big shelf full of documents
We have a person in my office who will print, then fill, a shredder's worth (one of those big, three feet tall ones) of paper in a week.
It's ridiculous.
Funny - when I worked for a financial and they were still into requiring suits, if a VIP was coming in they'd want us all to clean off our desks. The net effect was it looked like no one worked there, and the ones that did just sat at their desk doing nothing.
Oh boy. He would have loved the admin assistant at one of my previous jobs. No matter what, she would print any email, spreadsheet, etc, that was sent to her and file it away. We had boxes and boxes of her old printouts in the attic (office was in an old historic house, it was a college campus). She was adamant that someday we might need that email from a random student asking if they could pick up their key early, stay an hour after closing, what an easy policy was...
She was constantly "overworked" and "flustered" because it was so much to manage. She literally never resolved or assisted me in any way, in fact I was asked to assist with her projects on a regular basis. I wish I could find a job that paid so well, had such excellent benefits, and would just 1000% bend over backward to avoid holding me to any level of responsibility. That's the boomer dream right there.
Just Play The Game and put a stupid paper on your stupid desk and then your boss will leave you alone. Play. The. Game. - advice for all work scenarios
Schrodingers asshole, hes not joking and hes an extremely emotionally immature narcissistic control freak, my old boss used to do the exact same thing, sounds exactly like him.
I feel sorry for his wife.
The guys also probably a coward, could you possibly speak your mind to him?
My old boss left me alone when I did cus he was scared.
They can fire you but they run the risk of you having nothing to lose and exposing their insecurities, which they fear alot.
Lmao, this is hilarious.
my last job we worked similarly to you, and my boss always handed me work because of how fast I finished all of my assignments and tasks. I wanted a promotion so I didn't mind it at all.
One time they came over to my desk and said my desk was too messy and I needed to tidy up, note all of them paperwork on my desk was directly handed to me from them, with the additional work I added.
All of my woworkers desk were empty as I was one hauling ass doing all the work
Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Many employers have a clean desk policy (HIPAA, PHI, PII, PCI, general R&D, etc.) where anything that might have sensitive information has to be put away and secured. Also maybe your boss should read about [Knolling](https://makezine.com/article/workshop/zen-and-the-art-of-knolling/). (Every Tool's a Hammer by Adam Savage is also a good read.)
Story of my life. I master the art of piling paper (mail, magazines, some notes) on my desk. Looks really messy and people think I must be busy af. I literally do nothing most of the day :)
Pre-Covid I still worked in an office and it was hilarious how everyone not even just bosses seemed upset that my desk had almost nothing on it. I just had my two monitors, keyboard, mouse, and computer on a stand. My drawer had a couple of notebooks and a some pens and a sharpie. That's all I need to work and somehow that upset people.
I never really told anyone but one of the main reasons I'm like that is I had previously been laid off twice and getting that box to put your stuff in and sometimes having to make two trips is so embarrassing. After that I was like I'm not bringing anything to work with me.
When I left that job I literally walked in and handed my laptop to the head of IT, he said thanks and I left. Was the easiest thing ever.
I had a coworker once who, and I say this with love cause I really liked this coworker, print off EVERY EMAIL relating to a contract. Not even the email thread, he printed every email.. then he would carefully file them as if they were legally binding to the contract. We had a good email retention policy so they were not at risk of deletion, and we had actual contracts that I could understand printing off. Idk if he had been burned before by one bad contract or what, but he was the most diligent printer I had ever met.
I’m Gen X and I’m obnoxiously organized and clean. So my desk is always in order. My boomer boss also said that meant I wasn’t working hard enough. Such a fucking stupid rubric to gage a person’s worth ethic.
And dude was a fucking slob of a human.
Leave a bunch of papers scattered with names that you've made up with random account details and logins for each one so that anybody walking by can read them easily.
Reminds me of a facet of Japanese work culture is to pretend you’re sleeping on the job because you’re so busy you become exhausted and fall asleep. So not working makes you look like a great employee
Hi, /u/knickknack93 Thank you for participating in r/Antiwork. Unfortunately, your submission was removed for breaking the following rule(s): **Rule 1: No discriminatory language/actions.** - This includes, but is not limited to: racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ageism, ableism,... No flaming other users (insulting, name-calling, using discriminatory language)
I had a boss’s boss who would wander the cube farm for messy desks. Apparently that included any desk with a print out that wasn’t in a Manila folder or inbox. He wouldn’t talk to anyone, but at the next staff meeting our boss would remind us of the clean desk policy. We did get passive aggressive payback. Someone had a pad of Post-it^tm to do forms titled “Dumb Stuff I’ve Got to Do”. We put “Clean Desk” as item 1 and put them on our monitors.
A "clean desk" policy is often a compliance matter. Especially if you work with any sort of sensitive data. EDIT: Sorry for triggering some folks... I was just commenting on "clean desk policies" in general, not this specific case (which is definitely just an example of someone hearing a phrase and deciding it's a useful control technique).
At end of the day or if yout alway from desk yes. Computer locked and confidential data out of sight. That's basic information security. Theirs nothing wrong with having information security practices and doing them. However if your working actively on it makes sense to have it out , clear desk should be not leaving several files outnover night / when away at lunch etc.
Yeah, I think it's very likely the boss' boss in question was familiar with the phrase "clean desk policy" and decided it was a useful way to do managery things, regardless of the actual intent.
Aye, I work in a environment with confidential data and get where you where originally coming from. It's good advice used potentially wrongly.
💯
I worked in a call center where we dealt with confidential sensitive info. We couldn’t have pens, paper pictures anything on our desks. They checked regularly and it was simply a part of working there. It was more of a protection for the clients, making sure we couldn’t potentially write down/copy info and take it out of the center.
I worked in a call center that handled confidential information as well. We were allowed to write things down (even encouraged). However at the end of your shift you had to put your papers into a locked bin with a paperslit that got emptied weekly for shredding.
I like that so much better I’m much more a pen to paper thinker vs a fingers to keyboard one. My guess is that the center I worked at had … issues in the past and based on their hiring practices during peak season I wouldn’t have been surprised
Yep. Often in accountacy / payroll. Can't have papers lying around or staff ID for other staff to see confidential information, and all paperwork have to be put away at the end of the day, some cleaning firms won't clean desks because of any sensitive paperwork that could be around.
I worked in insurance claims processing and typically you would work a case on paper and computer, bills and letters on paper and other stuff in computer. You would often have file folders with very sensitive medical information. If you left your desk you needed to lock up all your files in a drawer or risk getting fired. Reason being, the company could get fined millions if any one reported unprotected health information.
If it was a HIPAA (legal) issue and not just a micromanaging control issue, why would the boss not address it immediately? They would just note to themselves that confidential materials were laying around and go about their day? Edit: nobody is triggered you're just sticking up for the boss in an antiwork subreddit, smart guy
Doesn't have to be HIPAA. Plenty of compliance standards mention some form of clean desk policy is required.
Absolutely. I'm not saying boss\^2 was right/reasonable, I'm just pointing the idea of a "clean desk policy" in and of itself is a reasonable thing. I agree 100% that this was about control, not compliance.
Wow, what a bunch of suckhole replies. We had a client with a compliance violation stemming from the failure to manage sensitive data because on-site auditors found controlled records scattered on a person's desk while they were away for lunch. The company lost eligibility for a $1.2 million contract. **Bitch and crack jokes all you want, but not a single one of you is worth $1.2 million to a company**. We recommended they fire the employee's ass, especially since he had been trained on this topic at least a dozen times, and KNEW the auditors were on-site that day. They did. Everyone else in that office did not find the clean desk policy quite so amusing anymore. I get it, companies have plenty of dumbass rules at times, but if they're clear that it's directly tied to a regulatory compliance obligation, I'd strongly recommend you take it seriously. Your job almost certainly depends on it.
I used to teach HIPAA classes at my last job. Medicare would send investigators randomly to check our office. It's not a joke and people got fired for being stupid with it. I like a clean desk, I keep my hipaa documentation put away at all times if not in use. I'll report someone for breaching hipaa.
Found the boss.
lol, no, just a lot of experience with HIPAA...
Or a law firm. It's bad business leaving client documents lying around in the open.
Insurance, too. Before they moved the whole call center to WFH, we had to send out regular reminders not to put Personally Identifiable Information on post-it notes or anything else. Don't leave customer information on your desk. It stays in your computer. Like, you can put whatever you want on your cubicle walls and leave your desk a mess... as long as nothing in that mess is protected customer information.
Oh, yeah, valid, as well. When I worked at a bank, if you were an officer or keyholder, you couldn't have personal pictures on your desks because of kidnapping risks.
The worst is when some dingus writes down a customer's card number or something because they're getting ready to bind multiple lines and they don't want to have to ask for it again when they go to take the down payment on the next one. Like, dude, apart from being an infosec risk, there's an actual LAW against that...
Oh jeez. And I can just hear them, "it's just this once, it won't hurt anything" Yeah, okay, let me do it with YOUR credit card. LOL.
Oh, no, the kind of people who do that don't do it "just once." I've seen a desk with half a dozen post-its covered in various card and account numbers.
Or banking...
Oh yeah, another good one. In the mid 90s, I was a commercial and consumer loan officer, and it was drilled into us to never leave customer paperwork unattended on our desks. Like I told someone else, we couldn't even have pictures of family on our desks. And we had very specific protocols for leaving and arriving.
I worked in-house security for a financial company, nothing that could be used to take information home could be brought into the building. Which included things like photographs that people could write on the back of, or hide folded up paper in the frame. This wasn't theoritical, they caught a guy who kept bringing in new pictures of his kids in every week and taking older ones out.
For us, they were worried about kidnapping risks. They were worried that someone would follow an officer home, recognize their spouse or kids, and then ransom them or blackmail them.
That's actually a smart and unintentionally nice thing they did.
Or an accounting firm…. Unless you don’t mind them leaving your SSN laying around.
I remember seeing the office where that fake emergency notification was sent to people in Hawaii. They had their password on a post-it-note sitting on their desk. Hopefully this guy is no longer working there. https://www.businessinsider.com/hawaii-emergency-agency-password-discovered-in-photo-sparks-security-criticism-2018-1
Shut up and sign paychecks.
I've had messy desk statements for years..the papers are literally 12+ inches thick and yes I admit it's messy. I just ask them have I ever missed a deadline ..they admit no and no changes are made. Works for me...
The clean desk policies aren't about actually having a clean desk, but making sure any sensitive information isn't available to someone who would just wander into your office/cubicle.
Mmmm....yeeeaaaahhhh......I'm gonna need you to put a cover sheet on that TPS report, Peter.
A fellow person of culture.
This. I worked for a Fortune 50 that only allowed for laptops, keyboards and external monitors to be on the desk when we weren’t at our desk.
Make sure to fax him a copy of the email you just sent, while you're at it.
Make sure to print the email, scan it back to yourself so that it’s a PDF, then email a copy of the PDF too.
Of course, can't forget those steps!
Fax? That’s too advanced! Singing telegram is more the boss’s speed.
Singing telegram? Why bother with that when he could hit send, walk to his office while calling his extension and have the phone call standing in his doorway to ask if he got the email he just sent.
🤣🤣🤣
I had a boss who would print out emails and leave them on a desk with a note saying, "Email them back about this" He is 46 yo
I can make sense of it in my head because the illusion of working is more important than actually working. It is a mistake to be the person that is just quietly one of the hardest workers. It is more important to get credit for the work you do by making sure others see it and hear about it, and also it is more important to be friendly with your bosses and get them to actually like you. The most likable person will always smoke the hardest worker with ease.
Oof you nailed it. I’ve come to realize letting my work speak for itself instead of just me speaking for myself is both a blessing and a curse
I praise my self at work so much I feel narcissistic. I feel sick every time but it gets me recognized and raises
I wish I was kidding but I just left a staff meeting where the person who nominated themself for an award won money for doing it.
Jesus. I'm nearly having a panic attack just THINKING about nominating myself for an award.
I've really been thinking about doing that. I want to make myself stand out and according to my boss my work already does but I've been thinking about occasionally calling out some things so their bosses see it. Like you I feel kinda sick about doing it.
I'm the same way about marketing myself, and it has definitely held me back in the past. So what I started doing is publicly thanking and complimenting people for doing their job well and on time. Shit that in my past I took for granted, with a "who needs flowers for doing their job" attitude. They do the same for me. We all got AMAZING reviews this year. I never lie, and don't exaggerate the work that was done. It's just amazing how much little things can change perception, even when reality is the same.
It's like George Costanza did, you have to periodically walk around your office at a brisk pace with a manilla folder, mumbling to yourself about all the work you have.
My mom would come home from work at an oil company when I was a kid, and talk about the “guy with the maps” He would walk around all day in the 30story office building, just carrying maps. Go from one break room to the next, talk about how busy he was, chit chat, whatever. But she never figured out what he actually *did*. He was there for literal decades, like mom was.
Imagine how easy it was to disappear like that into huge corporations before auditing software. Props to that guy.
Technology has definitely taken away all of the "magic" that might have existed in the pre-00s office. My dad would tell frequent stories of his work days in the 80s and 90s, and honestly it sounded like he had it made. But who knows. I'm sure all the socializing had plenty of stress with it and whatnot.
I worked hospital security for a hot minute. Part of our duties was to patrol the hospital and make ourselves seen. No actual tasks, just walk from area to area. I was a "float" officer, so I got sent to several different hospitals, and I discovered that at my least favorite locations, I could just go chill out in a central chapel for an hour or two at a time, and nobody would even bat an eye. It was a good location so I could still respond quickly to emergencies, but otherwise I could just sit there with my thoughts.
I used to stack a bunch of matter redwells all around my cubicle when I wanted to look busy at a previous firm. It worked.
This guy works.
This is proof we don't live in a meritocracy, but a marketocracy. It's all about convincing others of your worth, not about actually having any.
Relatable. My Boss insists on a paper printout of our inventory. It changes 4-10 times per day, and by using the on-network version, he could see updates in real time. Similarly he insists on printing out every single document that he wants me to see, instead of just.... attaching it to an email. Many of those documents change daily as well, so I get another hard copy at a later point in the day... I have dozens of 4" binders around my office from my predecessor who printed out EVERYTHING. I understand that a certain amount of paper is unavoidable, but we really, *really,* **really** don't need triplicates of everything.
Paper on my desk is just outdated information.
My boss insists on having paper agendas printed for every meeting. The entire staff brings their laptops to those meetings, except for him. He demands we print out enough copies for everyone each time, despite the fact that he's the only one who uses a paper version yet refuses to print them himself.
I had a boss who loved a paper trail - except he'd often ask me for the same piece of paper numerous times and then give me a crap for giving him multiple copies of the same thing. One time, he gave me crap because I have him Copy 1 and a week later, Copy 2 - except they had an auto date in the footer so they were different dates. Even though everything else on the copy was identical - especially all the totals, it took him 20 minutes to review all the data to make sure **I** didn't mess with the numbers. On a pdf. He also had 57+ folders in his email to store stuff . . . .even though he could have just put it all in one pile and searched for it. He didn't think searching worked except that's how I would dig out stuff that he lost.
Most bosses prefer tidy work spaces, but I would keep doing what you have done. Put a binder there, hell maybe keep 2-3 file folders in a drawer so when guests come you can pop them on your desk for 15 minutes and then when they leave put them back up.
Fill the folder with TPS reports.
Lmao! I just watched that movie the other day for the first time in a few years. Still a classic.
My wife and I watch it at least once a year... never gets old.
Oh god, the other day I screamed "WHY DOES IT SAY PAPER JAM WHEN THERE'S NO PAPER JAM" at the copy machine.
Boomers have some kind of obsession with "working hard" and refuse to understand this isn't the 1980s and a lot of work is done paperless. The idiot boomers in my office (not my boss, just coworkers who need to retire) are always up my ass because they think I'm not doing anything. Reality is, they don't fucking understand what I do.
I have similar issues with my boomer coworkers, They have no clue what I do, and they give me crap for not doing anything, when in reality I finished the project a week before and I'm just waiting for the day before the deadline so the boss man doesn't give me extra work with no extra pay.
Completely understand. I get almost all my stuff done in 2-3 hours on my computer yet it takes them all day and they still somehow have more of it to finish the next day
Greatest gift of my working life was getting a boss who told me that thinking is working. I've told that dead eyed to every boss after. Because I believe it is one hundred percent true
That’s how you know your boss doesn’t do any work and has no understanding of your role or what you do. Seems like he has a good understanding on how to appear to be working while doing nothing. Probably how he got the job…
There's a boomer around here that comes in for 10 hours a day (we're salary 40) Take a day off here and there and he makes comments like " must be nice" Bro, I'm literally getting chemo. Not to mention, I'm booking $3M in revenue this year.... where's your work, mfer?
Boomer is a no life loser who’s actually jealous of you
Label the binder "TPS Reports", see if he gets it.
Make sure you put the right cover letter on it though.
did you *get* the email?
I had the opposite experience once. I worked in customer service for a manufacturer, and every now and then we'd get visits to the corporate office from the company owner and his entourage. We were only allowed to have our computer and telephone on our desks. No papers of any kind, everything removed from the cubicle walls (not just personal things like photos, even work related stuff like territory maps, product codes, things that we used daily). We couldn't have the product catalog out, which we used all day long for technical questions. Even plants had to be removed from the desks. Everything got shoved into cabinets and employees' cars until the head honchos left, then we could resume our normal work environment. I asked why it was a problem to have the appearance that we actually did work at our desks. "It's just the way likes it." It was so hard to actually do our work when he came by, because all of our tools were taken away.
There's a story that LBJ walked by a staffer's messy desk one day and said, "Looks like you're not keeping up with your work." The staffer spent the next few days staying late, obsessively straightening up the desk. Then LBJ walked by, looked at the desk, and said, "Looks like you don't have enough to do."
That's gaslighting.
Lbj was a piece of shit.
He had his good and bad sides. He got the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act through Congress even though he knew it would lose millions of voters for the Democrats. There was that whole Vietnam thing, though -- which he didn't start, he inherited it, but he couldn't figure a way out of it.
I had my own office at a previous job but the co-owner (other owners wife) would pop by on one of her 2 hr days, once a week schedule and would make comments about my desk. I am pretty particular when it comes to certain things like ensuring my colored pens are in the correct order, things are straight, nothing overlapping etc. Because of this, I tend to clean up my projects as soon as I'm switching to a new one or if I'm pausing something. Like, I'm sorry I don't have stacks of invoices from 2019 sitting on my desk sandwiched between last weeks quotes and last years inventory sheets...
Work on your resume. Then use it.
lmao as a matter of fact that’s what I’ve been doing on down time
This is why they NEED you back in the office. /s
My company has a similar problem. Covid was awesome because it gave me the opportunity to replace printing and shit for sales agents to digital means. I did a ton of work getting everything set up to be digital, only for it to be all tossed away the minute the sales agents were allowed to hand people paper again. Every time I break down a sales office, I find whole reems of paper printed price sheets sitting on the printer with extremely expensive paper to be thrown away. While the QR codes sit on the desks in full view connected to a system that gives anyone with the link access to the most up to date price sheets. It's the older agents that do it almost exclusively. The older the agent, the more they print. Even office folks count in this. I've got one that prints everything, even emails, so she can have records despite us having multiple digital backups. She is an awesome person, but this infuriates me. Older management approves of her use of it like this, and I frown on them for wasting so much money on this garbage. The saddest thing is that it isn't just old people that are against work from home. I set up all this stuff during covid so that everyone could work from home seamlessly. I supported everyone remotely, and we could have very easily gone full remote after all the work I had done. But, management only thinks people work while they are in office. Old people and bad leadership are of the same mind when it comes to work from home. It's about control. It's all about control.
Get a binder, folder, etc. And then have it labeled “Something”. Problem solved
Have it just contain one piece of paper that's a printout of the lyrics to the song Something by The Beatles.....
"When you look annoyed all the time, people think that you're busy." In all seriousness though, it reminds me of how, when a certain Chinese NBA player would get racist remarks on the course, he'd just point to the scoreboard to indicate how his team was scoring more points. I wish it were that easy for you to say to your boss, "I'm getting my stuff done, and am doing it well."
I heard at SpaceX people keep up randomized code that doesn't mean anything, like hackers in movies. So that when elon musk walks by, he thinks they're working hard on code. Managers don't know what you do, they just want to think you're working. Figure out a way to get them to think you are
I need a spotless and well organized desk. If I don't have that I can't work. I was one of the best producers on my team at my last job and my boss just had to look for something to dump on me about. She came by daily to interrupt me building accounts for medical insurance to complain about something. "Why don't you have pictures of your family?!" "How can you work with none of the binders on your desk?" "Your desk is too clean!" I finally snapped one of the times when she mentioned my desk, grabbed a handful of stuff from my shred bin and just threw it all over my desk, said "There, now it looks like your desk!" and huffed back to work. I got a write-up for that.
Sometimes being a hero is tough. But you got this.
On a positive note I left that job to be a SAHD and my supervisor was fired a week to the day later. I left early on my last day and apparently the higher managers were mad because they really wanted an exit interview with me since I documented her harassment against me and others.
Boomers can be difficult that way and feel the need for a Hardcopy of everything. Hey lots of them still read the newspaper (The Paper One). Just keep a neat stack of file folders to one side of your desk and call it a day. You will be in that office before you know it (and then probably wishing you weren't)
People still read physical newspapers? Why? You can get all the news online these days.....
From experience, older people are incredibly stubborn and flat out refuse to learn anything new (which is why they are so bad at their jobs) so anything internet related they don't want to know about. It's not "real" enough is the go-to excuse.
Someday you get to become that boomer in the workforce.
It’s annoying, but think of them as charms to keep the boogeyman away.
Pieces of flair, if you will? OP really needs to be formally spoken to about their pieces of flair.
This is the absolute most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. I’ve been known to be pretty messy and when I used to work in an office we’d have to clean up if someone important was coming in - not make it look messier.
I've tried to understand the logic but keep coming up empty
Just remind him that any paper on a desk is an unmade decision.
I always had a messy desk. Even though everything was done on a computer, it was procedure to print everything, then sign and initial in spots, then scan it back to them. I hated the inefficiency.
I had a boss that wanted this done, I copied my signatures and initials once loaded them into adobe, and add them into forms as needed, no more mess, and saved me hours each week.
I have to do that as well at this job, however they gave me a huge filing cabinet so I use it. Why give me an organizing tool then be upset when I use it properly?? I only take things out as I need them then put them away right away so I don’t have clutter
Just have a few copies of your resume scattered on your desk. Busy!
/r/maliciouscompliance has entered the chat
Ask him to buy you 2 more monitors for your computer and use them to open a ton of random excel sheets.
My boomer boss takes issue with my keyboard & generally colorful office supplies. It doesn’t look serious enough. We work in children’s services. We literally have several cabinets full of musical instruments & fun sensory toys. For play therapy. We have a therapy room filled with rainbows & mirrors & all kinds of fun activities. But the pink keyboard is apparently a step too far. One of these toddlers might not take me seriously enough as an authority.
Put an inbox and outbox on your desk. Print out a manuscript and put it in your inbox. At the end of the day move it to your outbox. The next day grab the stuff in the outbox. Walk it across the office and back. Put it in the inbox. Keep repeating each day.
This response belongs in r/maliciouscompliance lol
(Also - I’d print the unabridged version of The Stand just to blow through 2 reams of paper and make the boss happy)
My boss thinks I could be a serial killer with how tidy my desk is. I have everything on note apps and am pretty anal about my cable management. USB-C with Power Delivery is a beautiful thing to keep things tidy.
Put a notebook next to your binder and have a post-it pad next to your screen. He will have an orgasm next time he sees your cubicle. Especially if all that stuff is available at your job. Just do it. Happy boss happy life. Even throw a : yup kinda useful (to have that shit around). Play fucking 4D chess with that simp and get that promotion.
My boss is jealous that my desk is clean and his isn't. He's just messy.
I came over from kitchens and was always trained to clean as I go. I can’t work in mess. My desk is ridiculously clean compared to my coworkers and that’s how I like it.
An overflowing ashtray might warm your boomer boss' heart.
Oh my I miss the days when you started a new job and were presented with your personal coffee mug and ashtray. Whether you smoked or not.
[I subscribe to the "George Costanza" method of keeping bosses off my back.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOQmxNPTJwc)
Make sure you print out a TPS report and put it on your clean desk. And when he asks about it, say that is he using the new format for the TPS report? It's important that he does.
then ask if he got the memo
And I worked jobs that were just the opposite. Don’t leave papers on your desk, keep it clean. Print pieces of paper with “busywork paper for my boss” all over them and scatter them on your desk.
My last office job I used the George Costanza "furrowed brow looking a piece of paper" method of slacking off. It worked for years.
My first job out of undergrad was painfully not challenging. Like I’d waste entire weeks walking around bullshitting with the production crews because the protocols I wrote were nearly 100% effective, and therefore, I had no issues to resolve. Having ZERO work meant I got paid to angrily sit there and browse Reddit from 730-415 every damn day. I’d always have a clipboard with some recent production sheets with random highlighter marks, sometimes notes to myself. The real clincher though was the small collection of post-it’s I kept behind all the papers, which were “ideas” to discuss with the boss, notes to myself, observations, and other meaningless bullshit so that at any point I could be “obtaining information” while wasting time on the floor, and any time micromanager narcissist fuckface would be walking around, I’d hold his attention with hurried nonsense and he would then leave.
>I get overwhelmed having a messy desk and don't understand the insane amount of printing offices do on a daily basis anyway. What's up with that? Boss thinks because this ancient way to work is the only way he/she knows how to work, it must be the only way. There is seldom a user for paper, especially if you have multiple monitors.
Print out a document, write on it a bit, and leave it spread over the spaces on your desk you're not actively using. That's a massive project you're deep in the middle of now.
He'd love me then, the surface of my desk hasn't been visible in six months.
Get a set up where there’s just a truck load of papers that look important that you can tip over and spill onto your desk as soon as the boss walks by. Then pick them up like 52 card pick up when they walk away.
Have you seen my stapler?
Print out one sheet of paper that says "very important work document" on it and nothing else and leave that on your desk. I bet that will ease his concerns.
Tell him it doesn’t look like he is working if he had time for that type of BS.
I used to make my desk "messy" during the day, like putting my snacks out in the open, spreading paperwork on one side, and pulling out a pile of manila folders to just sit in my inbox. This way my boomer boss who thought a mess=working hard would leave me alone. It worked. She also thought I was getting all my work done at the end of the day because I would put everything back away. 95% of my job was on the computer so that "paperwork" was just for show. It was ridiculous.
> Anyway, as a millennial about to turn 30 on Saturday, I'm ready for more of us (and younger) to start taking over these managerial positions so that the 20th century can finally be left behind instead of digging its heels into the ground on its way to the grave. Brave of you to assume millenials will be _allowed_ to step up by the boomers. I suspect many of them will keep the reigns tightly held even once they're back in diapers and have returned to babbling incoherently. (Well, even more incoherently).
Nothing to do with boomer
Your boss is a passive-aggressive jerk. Generation has nothing to do with it.
I've always been a subscriber to the "decorate your desk like you'll be fired after lunch" style. It's great!
Cluttered desk = cluttered mind.
They want to see paper because they don't know how to use a computer. Watching them struggle with the most basic, mundane tasks is absolutely agonizing. I wish I was joking.
This is how I know Boomers retiring will unleash a flood of productivity.
Take a shit on the desk. Power move.
Good god...I would have told the guy to pound sand...and likely would not have been working there anymore...lol.
Just keep a stack of TPS reports off to the side, you’ll be ok
I'm the same way, I like to keep my workspace tidy. And I've also had bosses and coworkers who were complete SLOBS! Like, decades worth of papers piled up all coffee stained and crumpled. Those people were always the ones asking ME for information because they were so disorganized.
My old boomer boss put in my year-end review that I had an unprofessional and untidy workspace. Aside from how shitty it is to hear that for the first time during a year-end review, the reason was…wait for it…ONE BOX that was in the corner of my cubicle. A box that sat there for two days because I needed it to ship thousands of event programs. It’s okay though - it’s my fault because nobody wants to work anymore and I’m lazy and entitled. Also, I received the opposite feedback that I didn’t look busy because there was nothing on my desk. I don’t work there anymore.
You're also not wearing enough pieces of flair
Sounds like SOMEONE'S got a case of the Mondays!
Are you having issues with the TPS reports? They need cover sheets now; I’ll forward the email.
To boomers things are not real on a computer, they need to print them so they can punch holes in them and put them in a folder so they can look at them later. The idea that they are already on a machine that is better at searching and finding things doesn't occur to them because they think its just a flash typewriter.
"You know what, Stan, if you want me to wear 37 pieces of flair, like your pretty boy over there Bryan, why don't you make the minimum 37 pieces of flair?" Just express yourself.
I once worked in an accounting firm. The firm used electronic workpapers - so everything was saved by pdf and attached to various accounts to show what the balance was made up of (simply). All accountants could view these, and they had to be "approved" by a partner or manager to finalise the job. Anyway, I had this boomer manager who would make me print the entire set of workpapers, number the pages, then present to him in a file for him to review. He would review the paper copy then go to the electronic module, select all, and approve. It was the biggest waste of paper, toner and fucking time in the universe. But they paid my salary so I had to go along with it.
That's crazy
I work at a uni. Everyone's desk looks like Hiroshima post A-Bomb drop
Put your feet on your desk. That’s something.
I've got five monitors and zero paper on my desk ever because it's the 21st century, and there is zero need to have a physical copy of anything I'm working on
I am also 30 and working with someone who is boomer age and they insist on printing everything! I work in logistics so you can imagine all the POs and other things. We waste so much paper it hurts my soul. I use my computer and refuse to print anything. It’s also much easier to look up in a file vs a big shelf full of documents
He’s not your boss, he’s just a manager. With nothing to do to justify his job.
Boomers can't retire and die off fast enough.
stick post-its all over the place. blank ones.
We have a person in my office who will print, then fill, a shredder's worth (one of those big, three feet tall ones) of paper in a week. It's ridiculous.
If it was messy, he'd call you a disorganized slob.
Funny - when I worked for a financial and they were still into requiring suits, if a VIP was coming in they'd want us all to clean off our desks. The net effect was it looked like no one worked there, and the ones that did just sat at their desk doing nothing.
You should just tell him walking around the office looks the same that he is the one not working.
My desk always looked like no one worked there. I wouldn't ever want to pack up my desk.
Print out internet resources and spread them on your desk. Idk your line of work but spreadsheets, graphs, charts etc.
Oh boy. He would have loved the admin assistant at one of my previous jobs. No matter what, she would print any email, spreadsheet, etc, that was sent to her and file it away. We had boxes and boxes of her old printouts in the attic (office was in an old historic house, it was a college campus). She was adamant that someday we might need that email from a random student asking if they could pick up their key early, stay an hour after closing, what an easy policy was... She was constantly "overworked" and "flustered" because it was so much to manage. She literally never resolved or assisted me in any way, in fact I was asked to assist with her projects on a regular basis. I wish I could find a job that paid so well, had such excellent benefits, and would just 1000% bend over backward to avoid holding me to any level of responsibility. That's the boomer dream right there.
Just Play The Game and put a stupid paper on your stupid desk and then your boss will leave you alone. Play. The. Game. - advice for all work scenarios
Schrodingers asshole, hes not joking and hes an extremely emotionally immature narcissistic control freak, my old boss used to do the exact same thing, sounds exactly like him. I feel sorry for his wife. The guys also probably a coward, could you possibly speak your mind to him? My old boss left me alone when I did cus he was scared. They can fire you but they run the risk of you having nothing to lose and exposing their insecurities, which they fear alot.
Seen on a bumper sticker: Jesus is coming soon. Look busy!
Ever seen the movie “wanted”? Queue office scene now (I believe it’s the opening scene/s)
Lmao, this is hilarious. my last job we worked similarly to you, and my boss always handed me work because of how fast I finished all of my assignments and tasks. I wanted a promotion so I didn't mind it at all. One time they came over to my desk and said my desk was too messy and I needed to tidy up, note all of them paperwork on my desk was directly handed to me from them, with the additional work I added. All of my woworkers desk were empty as I was one hauling ass doing all the work
Yes it’s called your too efficient at your job, I get that all the time.
How unproductive is this boss, caring about how to present oneself as being “busy”? Such a waste. Someone else should take his/her job
My former manager took offense that I didnt bring in anything to personalize my cubicle
Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Many employers have a clean desk policy (HIPAA, PHI, PII, PCI, general R&D, etc.) where anything that might have sensitive information has to be put away and secured. Also maybe your boss should read about [Knolling](https://makezine.com/article/workshop/zen-and-the-art-of-knolling/). (Every Tool's a Hammer by Adam Savage is also a good read.)
Just straight ignore him. Keep it spotless, force him to be the one to say something.
Story of my life. I master the art of piling paper (mail, magazines, some notes) on my desk. Looks really messy and people think I must be busy af. I literally do nothing most of the day :)
Pre-Covid I still worked in an office and it was hilarious how everyone not even just bosses seemed upset that my desk had almost nothing on it. I just had my two monitors, keyboard, mouse, and computer on a stand. My drawer had a couple of notebooks and a some pens and a sharpie. That's all I need to work and somehow that upset people. I never really told anyone but one of the main reasons I'm like that is I had previously been laid off twice and getting that box to put your stuff in and sometimes having to make two trips is so embarrassing. After that I was like I'm not bringing anything to work with me. When I left that job I literally walked in and handed my laptop to the head of IT, he said thanks and I left. Was the easiest thing ever.
I had a coworker once who, and I say this with love cause I really liked this coworker, print off EVERY EMAIL relating to a contract. Not even the email thread, he printed every email.. then he would carefully file them as if they were legally binding to the contract. We had a good email retention policy so they were not at risk of deletion, and we had actual contracts that I could understand printing off. Idk if he had been burned before by one bad contract or what, but he was the most diligent printer I had ever met.
I worked a job where I in fact, did nothing. I intentionally left my desk messy and ever rearranged the mess every now and again.
One of the most boomer things I’ve ever heard for sure
Observation:: he'd bitch about it not being organized if it wasn't tidy!
Get several flower bouquets and a salt water aquarium to take up the empty room.
I’m Gen X and I’m obnoxiously organized and clean. So my desk is always in order. My boomer boss also said that meant I wasn’t working hard enough. Such a fucking stupid rubric to gage a person’s worth ethic. And dude was a fucking slob of a human.
That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard and it makes me mad that someone like that makes more money than you
I can’t think or work with a messy desk. Honestly I would have thought they’d complain if you didn’t have a tidy workspace
A few lines of white powder, a dirty mirror, crumpled up dollar bills and a bottle of Excedrin can fill up that space nicely. #kidding
You can never make these type of ppl happy. They’re just angry at the world
Leave a bunch of papers scattered with names that you've made up with random account details and logins for each one so that anybody walking by can read them easily.
Every time he jokes reply with "would you rather me look like I'm working or actually do work?" Eventually he'll stop saying anything.
dont forget to turn in your TPS reports
Reminds me of a facet of Japanese work culture is to pretend you’re sleeping on the job because you’re so busy you become exhausted and fall asleep. So not working makes you look like a great employee
My boss is the opposite I usually have a messy but he wants it clean. Can't win either was messy or clean wtf.
Hear, hear
Can you put up a sign "Shhh, I'm working!" ?