Rant: I used to actually work the full 8 hours, now I automate my whole shift from a Panera booth
Six months ago I was the guy physically clocking into the office in Akron, sitting at my desk from 8 to 5, answering 30 tickets a day by hand and feeling dead by Wednesday. Now I roll into a Panera two blocks from my apartment, buy a $6 coffee I never drink, and let three Python scripts fire off the same responses I used to type out one by one. My old routine was copy, paste, tweak, send, repeat until my wrists ached, and I somehow thought that made me a hard worker. The switch happened when a coworker got laid off and I realized nobody upstairs could actually see what any of us did all day. I spent a weekend building the scripts, tested them for maybe two weeks, and now my whole queue clears by 10:30 in the morning while I sit there eating a bagel. I still answer the phone and join the daily standup so nobody gets suspicious, but the actual work part of work is gone. It feels great and also kind of gross, honestly. Has anyone else pulled this off without getting caught, and how long did it last before a boss noticed something was off?
Used to roll my eyes at guys who did this, figured they were just lazy. Then I watched a whole team get cut and realized the busywork never saved anybody's job anyway.