'I may not have questioned the process… If I had gotten a bit of respect': Civil engineer spends 3 hours on redundant paperwork, asks HR about computerizing and gets entire filing department cut

Author image for Elna McHilderson
Elna McHilderson • Managing Editor
Aug 28, 2023 1:00 PM EDT

Welcome to 2023, where everything is paperless. Even if you fill something out with a pen or pencil to paper, it usually gets inserted into some sort of online database. Places that still only use a paper filing method are simply mind boggling. So when this civil engineer was asked to do hours of paperwork for no reason, they had to say something. 

The engineer wrote their rant on Reddit: They work as a civil engineer for a large military construction company and when they were transferred to a new department they were asked to do hours and hours of paperwork. When they questioned this method, they were met with disrespect and straight up bullying from the filing team. So, they did their paperwork and went on with the job. Except, they weren't going to let their mistreatment go without consequences. 

They went to HR and simply asked a passing question about the paperwork not being computerized, and HR was shocked. They had no idea that was even happening and it turns out that entire department actually didn't even need to exist. The employees were just taking advantage of an overlook of the company. Sufficed to say, OP got that department of antiquated karens out of the job. 

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  • 01
    Rectangle - Now, I may not have questioned the process either had I been told to do daily entry and had gotten a bit of respect...
    via Amtec Photos va flickr
  • 02
    Font - pointless paperwork M OC When I was quite a bit younger, I transferred from a position with a federal agency into a civilian position in a military organisation - Civil Engineers - (think a large construction company but with military bosses and some military coworkers).
    via u/Low_Duty8944
  • 03
    Font - At the end of my first month, the civilian timekeeper, who was in her late sixties, handed me a bunch of forms to fill out - records of time spent on tasks, hours of work etc. - which should have been filled daily. Not only that, these forms had long been abandoned by the agency from where I came and, as far as
    via u/Low_Duty8944
  • 04
    Font - I knew, every other agency in the government. When I asked why I had to fill them out - pointing out that other agencies didn't use the forms anymore - I was told, quite snottily, to "just do it" because "we have always done it this way".
    via u/Low_Duty8944
  • 05
    Font - OK, I thought, being new to the organisation, so I spent about three hours filling out the forms by reviewing my personal records etc. I handed them back to the timekeeper who, in turn, made a really biting comment, about " these new young guys wanting to change things" - loud
    via u/Low_Duty8944
  • 06
    Font - enough for the entire office of civilian support staff to hear (many of whom were in her age group) and which got her a few laughs.
    via u/Low_Duty8944
  • 07
    Font - Because the military bosses rotated in/out every two years or so and/or were often deployed, they were very dependent on the civilian staff to keep the place running and knew little about civilian procedures (much less question them) I knew it would be pointless to go to them about the forms and the time wasted every month. So, I asked,
    via u/Low_Duty8944
  • 08
    Font - casually, of the civilian HR group (outside section which handled all civilian issues for the entire establishment) if they had ever thought of using computerised time forms instead of the paper forms the Civil Engineers were using? (As a long time federal
    via u/Low_Duty8944
  • 09
    Font - employee, I knew a direct approach or complaint would cause me some grief.) My contact was shocked to learn these forms were still being used and, worse still, that the timekeeper's entire workload was the distribution, collection and filing of these forms.
    via u/Low_Duty8944
  • 10
    Font - Soon afterwards, had to downsize the civilian workforce and, surprise, surprise, the timekeeper position was the first one put on the chopping block. She was let go soon after the cuts were implemented - but not before she had to arrange for, and supervise the shredding of filing cabinets full of her precious forms. the Engineers
    via u/Low_Duty8944
  • 11
    Font - Now, I may not have questioned the process either had I been told to do daily entry and had gotten a bit of respect...
    via u/Low_Duty8944
  • 12
    Font - JustSomeGuy_56 +1. 22 hr. ago I've had a couple of jobs where management decided to keep a obsolete procedure in place, because eliminating it would also mean eliminating the job held by a long term, loyal employee.
    via u/JustSomeGuy_56
  • 13
    Font - Dansiman 18 hr. ago I work at a community college in the IT department. We have a lot of good tech, including multiple systems that support authorization and routing workflows.
    via u/Dansiman
  • 14
    Font - I'm now salaried, but it wasn't too long ago that I was still hourly and had to fill out a timesheet. It was a pretty nice Excel file that HR released a new version of each fiscal year. It had a separate page for each pay period, with places to fill in your clock in and out times for each day.
    via u/Dansiman
  • 15
    Font - There was even a template page in the front, so you could fill in your default work hours there and it would automatically replicate those hours to the other pages, except on holidays. It would automatically calculate your total hours for each week, based on the
    via u/Dansiman
  • 16
    Font - individual daily punch times you recorded, and if you had more than 40 hours in a week, it would automatically highlight a box where you had to indicate whether the excess was to be paid out as overtime or used as comp time for the following week.
    via u/Dansiman
  • 17
    Font - There was only one thing about it that I disliked. In order to submit the timesheets to payroll, we had to print them out on paper, carry them over to our managers to have them signed, and then the managers would have to send the printouts to payroll,
    via u/Dansiman
  • 18
    Font - where presumably it was somebody's job to type all of the data right back into another computer system. I suspect that the reason we're using such an antiquated system is that entering all of those
    via u/Dansiman
  • 19
    Font - hourly timesheets into the payroll system is a significant chunk of some long-term, loyal employee's work week.
    via u/Dansiman
  • 20
    Font - Low_Duty8944 OPO 21 hr. ago in this case, it wasn't a matterof loyalty, I believe it was because the military management wasn't questioning any procedures which only impacted civilian staff.
    via u/Low_Duty8944
  • 21
    Font - I should have mentioned that thetimekeeper didn't need the job as she bragged frequently about her already drawing on her and her husband's military pensions and her mortgage was long paid off. She kept the job to give herself a reason to get out of the hous3!
    via u/Low_Duty8944
  • 22
    Font - the_ceiling_of_sky 18 hr. ago I started a new position at work a few years back. They had just rolled out a brand new system, so it was all done on the company smartphone. I was told that paper reports no longer needed to be filed because the app would track everything. 6 months later,
    via u/the_ceiling_of_sky
  • 23
    Font - my manager asked me where the reports were. I told her they were obsolete and even showed her the updated page in the handbook. She decided that clearly the handbook must be wrong and told me to print and file the papers as far back as I could and continue to do so moving forward. The only problem
    via u/the_ceiling_of_sky
  • 24
    Font - with that was that the file cabinet for those papers had already been repurposed for other, more important papers. So I got clever and filed them in the handy plastic bin next to the printer. A few weeks later, the option to print the report was removed from my level of access. No one
    via u/the_ceiling_of_sky
  • 25
    Font - asked me about the report again until a restructure gave my position to a new team (I didn't follow because their pay cap was lower than my wage) and they asked me how to print it because the instructions they had been given were outdated. I gave them the updated instructions, and
    via u/the_ceiling_of_sky
  • 26
    Font - their boss later tried to write me up for it. Thankfully, my new boss was actually on top of things and got it all sorted out. The only thing that hasn't been fixed is the fact that the new team doesn't actually do the job right, and a certain government agency may come knocking soon.
    via u/the_ceiling_of_sky

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computerizing malicious compliance civil-engineering paperwork Reddit military-jobs
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