Micromanager demands workers track all actions, they drown him in endless data: 'The real data was also there, but it was practically unusable'

You'll encounter this often: Some middle manager in your organization decides to start tracking everyone's metrics and efficiencies, completely and obstinately oblivious to the irony that they themselves are doing nothing productive by doing so…

They'll further add to the irony of their entire existence by implementing new procedures for staff to follow that do nothing but add to the inefficiency and make every task more painful and less efficient. 

Common examples of this would be, say, replacing paperwork with tablet-based checklists and forcing workers to complete each of these on-site at each site they visit. However, the software was designed by someone sitting at a desk in the company's head office in the city, and no one stopped to think about the fact that the people actually using it wouldn't be. As it turns out, the workers using it are usually on sites out in the middle of nowhere, except the tablet needs to be connected to a network to function properly, and the touch screen doesn't work in the rain. 

So, workers need to drive away from the site until they get cell reception so that they can fill out the paperwork that was meant to be completed on-site for OSHA and industry-standard purposes. 

Yes, I've witnessed this exact scenario unfold first-hand. But it's a tale as old as time that unfolds in workplaces globally. Bonus points for any situation where the software actually proves that workers are working to efficiencies far above the laid-out expectations… Prompting things to be quickly swept under the rug and never mentioned again. 

These workers banded together to ensure that their micromanaging boss would never be able to sift through all the data they were providing, fulfilling their demands while also getting even.

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