Employee automates task, making everyone’s jobs easier, boss takes credit for her work: ‘You probably didn’t even know how to turn on your computer when we found you’

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Ben Weiss • Writer and Editor
Jan 1, 2025 8:00 AM EST

Sometimes as an employee, you can be doing everything right, and you still won't get the credit you deserve. In fact, you might not get any credit at all. If you're not the type of person who will confidently claim your own work, then you may very well be at the mercy of your bosses and coworkers, who will freely claim that they are behind your achievements.

Perhaps this is a cynical take, but at the very least, it's a perspective designed to protect you and your accomplishments in the workplace. Here, we have an employee who noticed that she could automate a task that would save everyone on her team an entire day of menial work. However, once she figured out how to successfully pull this off, her boss would not take the opportunity to give her a shout-out for this clever workaround. Instead, he had the audacity to claim that he was behind this boost in productivity.

Keep scrolling below for the full story and for the best reactions from folks in the comments section. For more stories like this, check out this post about a team of employees who were pressured to pitch in $20 each for a holiday gift for their CEO.

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  • 01
    Cheezburger Image 10448585984
    via Unsplash+ (Hans Isaacson)
  • 02
    "You probably didn't even know how to turn on your computer!" Lol so my wife is changing jobs and is in the last 2 days of her notice. period.
    via 123myopia
  • 03
    She is an accountant and was working in a firm that was staffed by a lot of people with very limited computer skills.
    via 123myopia
  • 04
    They have a lot of fancy software and subscriptions but for some reason, nobody knows how to use a lot of the fancy tools they pay good money for.
    via 123myopia
  • 05
    Long story short, there was a task that took one entire workday for a team of 3, where entries from an excel file were manually inputted on an online portal and the output was then recorded in thr last column of that file. They had been doing this for years!
    via 123myopia
  • 06
    My wife basically fiddled with the online portal for 15 minutes and found a bulk upload feature which basically meant you could upload all the data in a specific format and get the output automatically added to the end, eliminating one whole day of work for 3 people.
    via 123myopia
  • 07
    At the end of the year, the department head took all the credit for this. Fast forward a year, he just told my wife in her final days there, "You had it good here. You probably didn't even know how to turn on your computer when we found you. Hahahaha" Man, people are stupid.
    via 123myopia
  • 08
    Buddiechrist 22 hr. ago I'd turn that feature off before leaving, if asked what happened, “I don't know, I can barely turn on the computer." "fixed" it before, let him explain why he can't this time.
    via 123myopia
  • 09
    charrcheese 22 hr. ago I doubt you can turn it off, it's a feature of the tool that everyone is simply ignoring.
    via 123myopia
  • 10
    No joke, my friend has a coworker who prints documents and scans them in order to email them to people. In Word documents, "tables"
    via 123myopia
  • 11
    are mimicked using spaces on each line instead of inserting an actual table. It's ridiculous how little some people know about bare basics.
    via 123myopia
  • 12
    dsdvbguutres 22 hr. ago As brilliant as automating your job is, it's equally dumb to tell your boss about it.
    via 123myopia
  • 13
    thedudeabidesOG 22 hr. ago I'd absolutely give that department head Glassdoor, in person, 1. exit interview, whatever.
    via 123myopia
  • 14
    LaughableIKR. 21 hr. ago. If she had communication she showed her boss how they can save a pile of money and he then took credit for this. Send it to HR and let them know they have an integrity issue.
    via 123myopia
  • 15
    CouldBeBetterOrWorse. 19 hr. ago I was once "leased" to an affiliate company. There were mind-numbing tasks that needed to be performed daily. I managed to find THE vendor contact who
    via 123myopia
  • 16
    could run a report for me daily across a dozen or so plants so I could update our logistics info. I found a similar contact with my other vendors.
    via 123myopia
  • 17
    What had been taking them HOURS was automated and emailed to me daily from the vendors. My 8 hour day became 45 minutes of actual work.
    via 123myopia
  • 18
    I'd told my boss (in- house) that it was taking a little less time than they'd planned--he told me to milk it since I'd been on projects for the prior 3 years. I didn't
    via 123myopia
  • 19
    tell him it was taking an hour to do my job on a bad day. So I worked from home for a year. My garden and house were spotless. Laundry was always done. I played games on my desktop while working from my laptop.
    via 123myopia
  • 20
    I left when those projects came to an end because I had zero interest working for them in person.
    via 123myopia

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