Employee gets asked by boss that his “team’s status” remains always available, so he complies, creating a system that did it for him: ‘And it simulated just enough activity to keep my status green.’

Author image for María Cetra
María Cetra • Writer
Aug 12, 2026 6:00 PM EDT

These micromanaging tactics are getting out of hand.

Do bosses not have anything better to waste their time with? When I hear stories like the one below, where the bosses start to demand their employees' unimportant things, such as their Team's status always showing as available. I start thinking about how unimportant everything you do at work must be if you are focusing on the color that appears below the picture of each employee. Instead of making themselves be seen as people who are on top of everything, it seems as if they don't have anything else to do. When I hear these things, I can only compare how much work each employee does and how little the boss must be doing if they can check that.

Corporate is kind of a lie. We know that you don't need to work 9 to 5 to complete your work tasks. If you didn't stop for breaks or lunch and put effort into it, you may be able to finish everything in 4 or 6 hours. We all know that, and it's fine. But that's why most employees have mastered the act of appearing to be busy, when in reality they are done. That is the case of this user who has made everything so automated that now he doesn't have many things to spend his work time on. It means his extremely efficient, but if his boss knew he wouldn't take it that way. If he showed how quickly he does everything, he would probably be assigned a load more of work to do each day, which isn't really fair, to be honest.

So, the ultimate tactic to avoid getting more work when you do everything quickly is to appear busy. Sometimes that is harder than actually doing the work. With apps like Teams tracking you every second and showing you as "gone" every time you stop pressing the mouse for two minutes, you feel a little overwhelmed with all the pretending to be busy stuff. This employee was able to fix that, but what would you do to appear to be busy when you finished the work for today hours ago? Would you just click around to always be seen as "available"? Would you start a side project? Would you copy the tactics of this user with his invention? Sometimes appearing busy is a full-time job in itself! 

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  • A few years ago I was working remotely as a fancy IT guy and developer at a tech company. Within the first couple of months I'd automated so much of my workload that I legit had almost nothing left to do most days. Everything that could be scripted, monitored, or scheduled... was. One morning my manager messaged me: "We've noticed your Microsoft Teams keeps going to Away every 20 minutes. This shouldn't be happening if you are at your desk working."
    via _keyboard-bastard_
  • A man working on his computer at the office. Representation.
    via Studio Republic

    A man working on his computer at the office. 

    Representation.

  • Fair enough. I replied: "Understood. My Teams will never go Away again." ...and I meant it. Instead of arguing, I spent about 40 minutes writing a PowerShell script that launched a harmless train of processes every few minutes, like mouse clicking, alt+tabbing, and it simulated just enough activity to keep my status green. I set this to repeat every 10 minutes.
    via _keyboard-bastard_
  • I tested it. Available. Five minutes later... Still Available. An hour later... Still Available. I grabbed my backpack, walked out of Starbucks, and spent the rest of the afternoon, and every afternoon thereafter hiking. My Teams status never went Away
    via _keyboard-bastard_
  • My Teams status never went Away again. The next time I heard from my boss he was once again reviewing status times and thanked me for my dedication.
    via _keyboard-bastard_
  • A man working on his computer. Representation.
    via Tyler Franta

    A man working on his computer.

    Representation.

  • lifeisatoss That's great. I told my CEO today that I want the laziest IT people on staff. they get things fixed, make sure everything is monitored with alerts and are just sitting around watching movies and waiting for alarm bells to go off.
    via lifeisatoss
  • malleysc Haha I was literally having a conversation with my team in Teams and Teams showed me as away.... screenshoted it and and we laughed and commented how Teams s ks
    via malleysc
  • haikus-r-us Yeah, I used to write a short report at the end of the day for my boss to review. This was not required or ever requested, I just felt like he should know how things went while he was gone. So I was always as honest as possible. I listed negative events along with positive events. Eventually I was called in for a meeting. I was told that my reports were too negative and my boss questioned my performance as a result. So I never wrote another negative thing on
    via haikus-r-us
  • my reports again. From that point forward I was so positive in my reports, it was as if a rainbow had taken a sh in my brain. I near totally checked out. I spent most of my time after that playing minesweeper. I did just enough work to get by, making sure everything ran well enough. The next meeting, I was praised for my improvement.
    via haikus-r-us
  • Informal_Ad_9610 "thanks for your dedication...to making my metrics look good..." Seriously that sort of brain de d leadership makes my head hurt. I have team players who may not show up for 3 or 4 hours, if they're ahead of schedule. H I, last week I saw social media and realized one of my guys was far enough ahead that he had caught a last minute deal to take the family to Hawaii before school started - I became aware when I saw pics of him at the Pearl Harbor memorial... My thought - that's a
    via Informal_Ad_9610
  • behind or slow on a single project in the 15yrs he's worked for me, and I am ecstatic that he had 6 days with his kids making memories.... and I don't care if he goes to the moon for a week, if he's got his projects done on time, because he's happy with his job so he ain't gonna leave.. Managers who have nothing to do besides diddle themselves and harass their directs are seriously in need of a new career.
    via Informal_Ad_9610
  • sewer_pickles I work from home and use a mouse jiggler because I hate having to log into my computer again whenever I step away. A side benefit is that my Teams status is always green. If you can be reached by your phone during working hours, I don't see an issue. It's just micromanagement to watch for the color of someone's Teams status light. If you have enough time to do that, you need more work
    via sewer_pickles
  • velvedire Y'all's Teams statuses actually work? At one company I always appeared as offline to my supervisor, but no one else. The next company, Teams was only registering activity when it was the active window. I constantly appeared inactive while I'm the office using my computer.
    via velvedire
  • BeastInDarkness Alternative option I've discovered. Start a meeting. Don't invite anyone, just start a meeting in Teams. Then change your status from "On a call" to "Available". You won't go idle when you're in a meeting and so long as you change your status no one will wonder what call you're in. And since no one was sent an invite to your meeting, you don't have to worry about people joining it.
    via BeastInDarkness
  • Apprehensive _Air1705 But like don't you actually have stuff to do? I WFH a couple days a week but aside from jumping off to fold some laundry quick for like 10-15 ocassionally or something like that I have work to do.
    via Apprehensive _Air1705
  • DarkElfBard "We've noticed your Microsoft Teams keeps going to Away every 20 minutes. This shouldn't be happening if you are at your desk working." *Toggle Offline* Problem sloved.
    via DarkElfBard

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teams malicious compliance bosses Professional At Work
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