Old school boss demands all IT logs get printed and put on his desk every morning, backpedals after getting buried in paperwork: 'I stacked it all up in a massive teetering pile that was about two feet high'

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Jesse Kessenheimer • Writer and Editor
Apr 16, 2026 7:15 PM EDT

Analog is all the rage right now, but some automated computer processes should stay on screen. 

IT logs are one of them. 

There's one thing that every employee dreads, and that's paperwork. However, this boss had a supreme distrust for any paperwork that wasn't printed on real 8.5"x11" paper, and insisted that his workforce follow his example and print everything out. As if paperwork days could get any worse, this hair-brained printing scheme resulted in a monumental mountain of parchment stacked up on the boss's desk. Was this what you wanted, Boss Man? Like a house of cards, this pile of paperwork was over 3ft high after the first day of this boss's new mandate, and it was equally as precarious. 

Bosses have a utopic vision of how the workplace runs, but it's rarely accurate. 

Although good managers are down in the trenches with the workforce and therefore have a solid grip on their business's day-to-day reality, higher-level bosses lose the plot as they get promoted. It seems the more commas in your salary, the less you truly understand daily workflows. Increasingly detached from daily operations, bosses can make some sweeping, silly decisions that drastically affect the rest of their workers, and no matter how well-intentioned, if their choices are misplaced, it makes for chaos down below. 

This boss was tired of misunderstanding his IT team's logs. With technological advances of the last 30 years flying way over his head, he was baffled by the "secretiveness" of computer logging and insisted that his team print everything out on paper. And I mean, everything. 

If you've ever worked with computers, especially back-end logs, you'll know that printing off every tech command is going to be a colossal waste of paper, but to the crew of snarky IT guys, malicious compliance was the only way to teach their boss that his demands were totally and completely off base. 

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  • Boss sitting at his desk in front of an enormous pile of paperwork.
    via Getty Images (nirat)

    Boss sitting at his desk in front of an enormous pile of paperwork. 

    (Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.)

  • Sure thing boss every single log will be on your desk in physical form

    I work for a medium sized engineering firm and my manager is one of those old school guys who thinks that if something is on a screen it basically doesnt exist.
    via AetherRook_2
  • He has this massive distrust of our digital tracking systems and cloud logs even though we use them for literally everything from Revit file syncing to server up-time monitoring.
    via AetherRook_2
  • Last week we had a minor sync error that caused some work to be lost and he absolutely lost it during the morning meeting.
    via AetherRook_2
  • He shouted that he was tired of "invisible data" and decreed that from now on every single automated system log and error report had to be printed out and placed on his desk every morning for his "personal manual review".
    via AetherRook_2
  • The IT lead tried to explain that the server generates thousands of lines of code every hour but the manager just waved him off and said he wanted to see the paper trail because paper doesnt lie.
    via AetherRook_2
  • I saw the look on the IT guys face and I knew exactly what was coming.
    via AetherRook_2
  • Since I am the one who handles the BIM coordination and the project logs I decided to follow his order to the absolute letter.
    via AetherRook_2
  • I went into the settings for our automated reporting tools and changed the output destination from the internal dashboard to the heavy duty plotter and the industrial laser printer in the main hall.
    via AetherRook_2
  • I also dis_ed the filters that usually strip out the "heartbeat" pings which are basically just the server saying it is still alive every thirty seconds.
    via AetherRook_2
  • I showed up an hour early on Tuesday to collect the harvest. It was beautiful. The laser printer had run through three entire reams of paper and the plotter had spat out about twenty feet of continuous logs because I formatted them to print in a single long strip for easier reading.
    via AetherRook_2
  • I stacked it all up in a massive teetering pile that was about two feet high and walked it into his office.
    via AetherRook_2
  • I had to move his coffee mug and his family photo just to make room for the Tuesday morning report.
    via AetherRook_2
  • Woman carrying an enormous stack of paperwork to her boss's office.
    via Getty Images (nirat)

    (Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.)

  • He looked at the pile and then back at me and I just smiled and told him that these were the raw logs he requested for the last twenty-four hours and that I would have the next batch ready by 9 AM tomorrow.
    via AetherRook_2
  • He spent the entire day in his office and I could hear the ruffling of paper through the thin walls.
    via AetherRook_2
  • Around 3 PM he came out looking like he had aged five years and asked if there was a way to just get a summary.
    via AetherRook_2
  • I told him that per his specific instructions from the meeting we were no longer using summaries because they count as "invisible data" and we had to maintain the full paper trail for accountability.
    via AetherRook_2
  • He didnt say anything and just went back inside. By Thursday morning the pile on his desk was so big he actually had to work from the small round table in the corner of his office because his main desk was completely consumed by logs.
    via AetherRook_2
  • Friday morning he sent out an email officially reinstating the digital dashboard and told us to "use our best judgment" on what needs to be printed.
    via AetherRook_2
  • I still have a few rolls of plotter paper ready just in case he changes his mind again.
    via AetherRook_2
  • ThriceFive Gave him exactly what he asked for! Great malicious compliance. I think old school managers who think the paper systems were replaced for no reason - the paper systems and human tracking just can't keep up with the pace and scope of lots of projects today (but I'll still swear by post-it-note middle-of-the-room task tracking for getting a game ship-ready)
    via ThriceFive
  • NightMgr Put a dot matrix in his office and print them real time.
    via NightMgr
  • SouthHovercraft4150 I'm impressed by him taking more than 1 day to concede defeat.
    via SouthHovercraft4150
  • Tripp Trapp Trinn Old school? Is he like 95 years and still working? The last time we had an "all things on paper" was 30 years ago, and even then he was considered way behind the times. I think we need to replace "old school" with "stupid".
    via Tripp Trapp Trinn

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