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Manager insisted we log every single minute of 'non-billable' time, so I did exactly that until payroll blew up
I work at a mid-sized consulting firm where billable hours are tracked like they're made of gold. A couple months ago our new operations manager sent out a memo saying that any time not directly tied to a client project had to be logged in 15-minute increments under the new 'overhead' category. She said it was to 'increase visibility' and 'cut down on waste.' Most people just rounded or ignored it after the first week, but she started auditing timesheets and calling people out in team meetings if the overhead bucket looked light.
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An employee logs his hours on his laptop
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Nobody likes to feel like they're being watched, even at work. We want to feel like our supervisors trust that we're using our time effectively without having to be asked to. We're adults, after all, not children who need looking after. But sometimes managers don't treat you that way, even if you deserve it. That's the situation this employee found themselves in when their manager asked them to track their hours. It's a reasonable request on one level, but doubling down and making sure that all the info was micromanaged to an insane degree... that's another thing entirely.
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A group of employees sit around a table
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I decided to play it straight. Every time I got up for coffee, used the bathroom, answered a quick Slack from another team, waited for a slow VPN, or even read an internal email that wasn't client-related, I stopped my timer and logged the exact minutes. Same thing for mandatory all-hands meetings, the weekly 30-minute 'sync' that was basically just her reading the same slide deck, and the ten-minute walk to the printer when it jammed. I even started noting the two minutes it took to restart my laptop after forced Windows updates.
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A group of employees look over a coworker's screen
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Sometimes, some good old malicious compliance is just what the doctor ordered. It can be petty, for sure, but it can feel really good to pull off. When people aren't open to learning the lesson in any other way, it's a useful tool. It can highlight the absurdity of someone's request by just giving them exactly what they asked for. That's what was happening here, in this story about an employee who tracked their hours to such a degree that it bucked the system. Keep scrolling to hear what they had to say about it.
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After three weeks my overhead total was sitting at 18.75 hours for a 40-hour week. My actual billable time dropped below the 75% threshold the firm likes to brag about in recruiting. When payroll ran, my manager got flagged because my utilization report looked like I was barely working. She pulled me into a 45-minute meeting (which I logged as overhead) demanding to know why my numbers were so bad. I showed her the spreadsheet with every line item and timestamps. She told me to 'use common sense' going forward. I asked if that meant the policy was being updated and she said no, just to be reasonable.
Next timesheet I kept the same level of detail but added a note at the bottom citing the original memo. HR ended up getting involved because three other people on my team started doing the same thing after seeing mine. Last I heard the policy is still on the books but nobody's been asked to produce the granular logs in weeks. My manager now avoids eye contact in the hallway.
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