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Comment by Sohcahtoa82 | Hacker News Reader

At a previous job, software testers had to write reports every Mon/Wed/Fri on what they did and e-mail them to their supervisor.

One of them got pretty tired of writing the same shit, and was like 99% sure the supervisor wasn't reading the reports, so started adding "I don't think anybody is reading these. This is a waste of my time." right above his e-mail signature.

It took over 3 months before it got noticed. Supervisor wasn't pleased, but had to admit he was right. He still required reports, but only on Fridays.

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I did the exact same thing years ago, except, after about two or three daily reports I took the immature route. I started inserting lines like, "10:45am, took a shit", "11:03am, scratched my balls", "11:04am, farted; smells like Robertos", and so on. The main difference in my situation was my supervisor noticed immediately. However, the daily reports stopped anyway. The rumor I heard was that my supervisor took my immature reports to his boss in hopes of getting his blessing to fire me, however, his boss actually turned it around on him, saying the daily reports requirement was counter-productive, and "treat people like children and they'll act like children".

Hackers will always win.

based

We used to receive so many automatically generated emails and I really doubted that anyone was reading them but every time I asked if I could disable them people would swear that they were essential. I got so sick of them that I commented out the line in the script that sent them with a note that I would pay $20 if someone found that line. Nobody ever noticed that the emails stopped and I left years later without paying.

One of the first things I do at every job is setup outlook rules to auto forward all those Atlassian, slack, etc auto generated emails to respective folders. I never look at them, it's never a problem. It's amazing the huge effect that reducing the information overload has on one's day to day sanity.

I have to admit that I extended the filters to include email sent to selected distribution groups and from one or two specific colleagues. Also any email that was cc'ed to me from certain other colleagues - the ones who cc loads of people. Got more done that way.

(In a large educational establishment, not IT).

If I could filter them out on Slack. It is a boon for the over-communicators.

I’ve wished so often I could block Slackbot

“so-and-so archived channel #topicfrom3yearsago”

stfu Slackbot

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