Employee Fully Automated Their Job For 5 Years And Got Away With It

Years and years ago, I had a shitty data entry / cold calling job.

Everything about it was terrible, from the monotony to the endless phone messages I had to leave. So I figured out how to make it suck a little less and I set up a system that would dial for me. If someone picked up, I’d zip to the computer and talk to them.

If no one did, an automatic recording would play to leave a message.

It worked until the gig ended and I did probably 1/8th the “work” “required”. It was *chef kiss*.

So I have a deep, innate sense of respect for people who figure out how to “deal” with the stupid parts of their jobs. Shouldn’t your employers encourage this? (Yes.)

u/Cynicusme posted on the anti-work subreddit recently and shared a story about his job ending. Here’s what he or she wrote:

My 5-year getting paid for doing nothing is over. I’m heartbroken.

I got a night-shift job doing data entry back in 2015. I quit and needed something fast at night while I look for something better during the day.

OP explains the position and the job — basically, inputting data for an order. Not crazy.

It was a data entry position, meaning I get an email containing the details of an order and proceeding to input the information into our system.

Right after my training I knew this is something Autohotkey can do, I don’t know to code that well, so I went to a freelancer website to hire a guy to develop the code, it cost me a two-month salary….

There you go: a hotkey! Brilliant. This person hired someone to write code that would just do the work for them.

So all our hero had to do was say how many orders he or she wanted to process hourly.

I just had to input how many orders I want to process per hour, since day 1 I was working from home because the company did not want to pay for transport or cleaning during the graveyard shift.

And just sat back and let the work rolllllll in. So awesome.

For the first 2 years, I would check if there was something the code cannot do (usually took me less than 5 minutes) and then I would let the computer running and watch movies, go to bed, sometimes I’d even go out. Then I added those functions to the code as well.

OP was offered promotions, which he/she rejected — obviously. Eventually OP got a real job that was better paid but kept the data entry gig because, you know, why not?

I was doing such a remarkable job I was offered promotions a few times, new positions during the daytime that I’d reject stating I’m a very introverted person that enjoys this type of position.

Eventually, I got another job, better paid, but there was no reason for me to quit where I was working. For my data entry job, I could spend months without having anybody reach out to me.

OP was careful about how many orders were processed every night.

Sometimes some co-workers will try to match my order entry quota, which would make me open the code, and change an 8 to 9 to increase my production and keep myself on top. I’d change the numbers regularly “just in case” but nobody even noticed.

Look at all this success! OP got raises, accolades! What a ride!

I even got 2 salary raises at some point for never missing a day, and being the top producer in my 3 people department, to which I corresponded by changing the 9 and switching it to an 11 or 10 on some days.

Four years later, the company had developed a software to replace the position. OP got severance and the office equipment.

My end.

It took them 4 years to develop new software that will replace my data entry position. Since clients were granted access to our new system. A few weeks ago I got my severance check, I was told I could keep the laptop and office equipment and that I’m welcome to apply for any position I want.

Amazing. What a ride. What a glorious ride.

I never talked about that with anybody IRL, not even my family, even my wife wasn’t sure what my job was about with that other company.

Now that it is over. There you go, my darkest work secret.

I did try to schedule a demonstration of “my code”, I think that was back in 2017. The regional manager told me they’re very busy dealing with the important stuff, just to keep doing the good work I was doing…. which I fucking did until the day I was let go.

Reddit naturally had a lot of praise:

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“Getting Paid For Doing Nothing”—Employee Fully Automated Their Job For 5 Years And Got Away With It