He was working hard, but accused of hardly working.
A toxic boss was shamed online after calling out an employee for ghosting because they appeared to be offline, despite completing a major task for that day.
The awkward exchange came to light via a viral Instagram post by Ben Askins, a UK career expert who reads anonymous submissions from employees about their allegedly monstrous managers.
According to the latest submission, a boss named George had reportedly reamed out his work-from-home employee Josh because his status on Microsoft Teams — a workplace messaging app — showed that he was not actively working.
“Why does your Teams (status) keep showing that you are away? Please explain,” demanded George, per a screenshot of their online exchange.
Josh replied that he had “no idea” why it showed him as idle as he’d been “cracking on everything.”
Not satisfied, his boss responded, “It’s been like that all day, though.”
At this point, Josh became frustrated over what he deemed to be an unfair accusation. “Honestly have no clue, but you know I am working, I just sent you the presentation for tomorrow and we were on a call together an hour ago?” fumed the bedraggled employee.
However, the needling manager remained unconvinced and asked Josh if he was “lying,” to which his confused underling responded, “lying about being on a call with you?”
“Don’t try and be clever. Are you lying about doing the work?” the now-furious George shot back.
Left with little recourse, Josh reiterated his earlier explanation, spluttering, “How can I be lying when I literally just sent you the presentation that you briefed us on this morning? Been focusing on that so maybe my Teams went idle as I wasn’t talking to anyone else.”
George concluded the conversation by saying, “Make sure it doesn’t go idle again. It is important.”
Askins explained in the caption that the moral of the exchange was to “judge your employees’ performance by their OUTPUT, not by their Teams Status.”
“This is such a weird way to manage,” he explained. “I know there’s a perception that people who work from home are not doing work but the easiest way to find out is just say, ‘What have you done today?’”
Askins added, “It’s a very easy conversation. If they haven’t done anything, then of course, you’d have that chat.”
Meanwhile, Instagram viewers also accused George of micromanaging and prioritizing a minor cosmetic issue over actual productivity.
“Micromanaging and intimidation is a big red flag. Bye bye work,” said one, while another wrote, “When your Teams/Slack status is more of a metric of work done than actual work done.”
Others pointed out that Josh’s alleged “ghosting” is actually a function of the messaging app. “If you don’t touch the Teams application, it auto sets to ‘away’ even tho you’re still using your computer lol this has been a thing,” explained one commenter.
“Teams and people going idle is one of my biggest complaints about technology,” said another. “Teams is the problem, not the user. It is such a poorly designed program that doesn’t properly report when people are active or not.”
Some skeptics believed that the issue was not about the actual work but about “control.” “Working from home took out all the control the management of most the company had on Y’all,” theorized one. “It’s about how long they can keep you on the case they assigned you in the beginning.”
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