Hotel night auditor automates 8-hour shift into 1 click, spends shift eating free food and watching TV shows: 'The GM did say he didn't care how I did my job, just do it... so I did'

Author image for Remy Millisky
Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Dec 31, 2025 11:00 AM EST

This person created their own dream job after being denied a raise! 

What would your dream job entail? Maybe working a few hours before your secretary brings you lunch, then heading out at 3 PM to do pilates, all while being paid like 6 figures. Perhaps your dream job involves a lot of watching other people work while you look serious and hard-working while you're actually watching your favorite streamer all day and second-screening with your phone. Many of us crave those rare jobs where you're paid a lot of money for doing very little, but they aren't easy to come by. 

If you work odd hours or have highly specific skills, you may just have an easier time finding your unicorn job. This person appears to have both things: they know their way around software development, and they're willing to work overnight hours that most of us would never want. After all, if you work over night, you have to sleep most of the day, which really limits your social life. 

This hotel auditor's job sounds incredible, though. They got to eat free meals, and play games or watch TV the entire shift, all because they managed to automate their job down to just one click. I mean, if you can get away with that, you totally should! Who cares how long your job takes so long as you're actually delivering the results your bosses expect? 

Much of our jobs are just aiming to make our own bosses look good to their bosses. If you can do that, you've already won half of your battles. I'm really jealous that this person gets to make literally any food they want in their hotel kitchen! It's an incredible perk, with the funniest ending, because guess what? Because this worker was using free software on repeat, thanks to their insightful computing skills, the company had trouble replacing them. The whole story is a juicy read, as you can check out down below. You can see if this would be your dream job… or if having a gig where you do basically no work for 40 hours per week would be a deal-breaker for you. 

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  • 01
    Man wears earphones while playing air guitar with feet up on desk, behind him is hotel interior
    via Getty Images For Unsplash+

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

  • 02
    I used to work in hotels in a ski town in Colorado. Very expensive "but the quality of life", very common saying there. I had started at a new hotel and was making $10 an hour living with my brother in a 2 bedroom place that was 700 sq ft. Rent was half our income. When the slow season approached, I was told I would have to move to Night Audit (11pm to 7am) or risk being let go. The problem was I lived 3 miles from the hotel and took the
    via u/Jewpracabra
  • 03
    bus to get there, since I couldn't afford a car. The bus did not run at night or early morning so I would be walking 6 miles a day in several inches to a foot or more in snow. So I asked for a raise. They said they'd get back to me but need an answer and I need the job so, okay, I'll work Night Audit.
    via u/Jewpracabra
  • 04
    I start the next week as an Auditor and while I'm being trained I learn that I'm also losing a day. The other Auditor works 3 days and I'll be working 4 days, not 5. That's $320 a month hit to my income before taxes. So I'll need to be making $12.50 an hour to keep making the same thing with the cut hours. But I decide I'm going to ask for $14.
    via u/Jewpracabra
  • 05
    I complete training and meet with my the GM. He asks how I'm liking it and I start off with my concerns. I tell him I wasn't told I'd lose a day and with having to walk 6 miles a day in the snow, I was going to need a raise to $14 an hour. He let out an audible sigh and tells me he can easily hire someone for this position for $10 an hour and to take it or leave it. I knew it would be very
    via u/Jewpracabra
  • 06
    hard to find a job in the winter when everything closes up so I stayed. As I walked out of his office he says "I don't care how you do your job, just do it" Okay, I will. You see this job was easy. It was 7 hours of me doing absolutely nothing and 1 hour of actual work. Which gave me plenty of time to find shortcuts. The software we used allowed us to import scripts that you downloaded from the developers
    via u/Jewpracabra
  • 07
    site. One such script was a way to make my job literally one click. The problem was it was $500 a year license for it. Obviously I wouldn't propose to my GM a way to eliminate my job. But there was a free trial on every script for 7 days. I remember at the time you get around paywalls on news websites by going into the web console and simply removing the paywall from the source code. I decided to see if this was something I could do with this
    via u/Jewpracabra
  • 08
    script. And what do you know, I downloaded it and opened the script in a text editor and the only thing making this script a trial was a line that said: LicenseExp and had the date set 7 days out from when I downloaded it. I changed the computers date to 8 days from now and tried to run the script in our software and got a notification that said the free trial had ended. So I changed it back and set the expiration date to 2050. This took my manual job
    via u/Jewpracabra
  • 09
    of 1 hour and made it 3-5 minutes. All I had to do was specify a date range and it check off what reports I wanted done and printed and click start. That was it. I always manually reviewed everything just in case. But that wasn't it. We had a kitchen where we made breakfast and dinner for the guests. Evening shift got free dinner, and morning shift got free breakfast. I didn't get anything. They
    via u/Jewpracabra
  • 10
    eventually decided to have the Auditors set up breakfast so the kitchen crew didn't have to come in as early. I asked if we got free breakfast and was told no. Despite setting up everything to make their jobs easier. I should also note that we had to clean any dishes left from dinner that the kitchen didn't get to despite not even getting any dinner. But I had the kitchen all to myself for 6 hours. So I started making myself dinner around 1am. Whatever I
    via u/Jewpracabra
  • 11
    wanted. The only limits were the ingredients in the kitchen and since I was responsible for dishes from other shifts, I never left a any evidence behind. I no longer had to buy food to bring to work. I later realized that I could put dirty dishes back in the return bin since it was covered and the breakfast crew never checked to see if any dirty dishes were in it and the very few times they did check, they assumed dinner forgot to check before leaving. I
    via u/Jewpracabra
  • 12
    always cleaned up the dishes I used making myself food out of fairness though. So now my job no longer requires me to do dishes, I get free food, and all I have to do is remember the date and click a button to do my actual job. What am I to do with all this time? I watched so many shows. I played online games on my laptop. I started learning Spanish. The GM did say he didn't care how I did my job, just do it, and so I did. I did
    via u/Jewpracabra
  • 13
    eventually decide to move away for a much better job far away and had to give up the comfy life. I trained my replacement the way I was doing things. Including the script and did not teach him the manual way. Before I left though, I decided to change the trial date to one week out. Two days after my last day, the Front Desk Manager texts me and tells me that the other Auditor was just fired for making racist remarks to a guest and that guest recorded
    via u/Jewpracabra
  • 14
    him so he was fired once the GM got in. He asked if I could come back until they got someone else and said they'd pay me $15 an hour. Unfortunately, I was leaving in 2 days, so there was no way. I got a call from the GM at about 5am the day of the expiration and he asked about this free trial thing and why wasn't the new guy trained how to do the Audit properly, who was apparently working 7 days a week since no one else knew the Audit except
    via u/Jewpracabra
  • 15
    the new guy and of course me. I reminded him that he told me he didn't care how I did my job, just do it, so I did exactly that. I could tell he wanted to yell but he held back. He then demanded I come back and fix it or he'll have to take legal action. I told him I was already at my new place 2,000 miles away but I would happily do it for airfare, a free room, free meals while I'm there, and $10,000. That was when he lost it and I hung up. He texted me after
    via u/Jewpracabra
  • 16
    saying he was contacting the lawyers and that I fucked up and prepare to face the consequences. That was 5 years ago and I haven't heard anything from him since. I did eventually go back to that town a few months ago to see my mom and ran in to the Front Desk Manager from that place, who is a really nice guy. He told me the GM was caught fucking the Head Housekeeper in his office by his wife one day.
    via u/Jewpracabra
  • 17
    Later divorced him. The 19 year old girl working the front desk in the mornings later filed sexual harassment charges against him and he resigned after that. The AGM jumped ship after that. The GM was also a coach for a baseball team and hit a kid with a metal bat, breaking his arm and got his shit rocked by the dad.
    via u/Jewpracabra
  • 18
    Not sure what happened to him after that. The Front Desk Manager now runs the place as GM and he's made sure that he, the AGM, and the FDM are all trained to do the audit.
    via u/Jewpracabra
  • 19
    Man in headphones puts feet up on desk while playing air guitar and smiling, behind him is chalkboard full of writing
    via Vitaly Gariev

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

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workplace-stories malicious compliance night shift hotel employee
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