I work in a public school district and i visit about a dozen different schools. Bosses are making us share our calendars, thinking they’ll be able to track us and catch us doing something wrong. I’m planning to add “started my period” every couple of weeks. Are there other good outlook tricks to fuck with them?
ETA- This is my work calendar, not my personal calendar. I know that seems reasonable but it’s being done as a petty micromanagement tactic. There are about 20 of us in my department who drive from school to school every day working with kids with physical disabilities. They don’t just want to know when we’re in meetings - they want every minute of our day to be accounted for - 8 to 830 school A, 840 to 11 school B, etc. I go to 14 schools. If my kid at school A is absent or if i get a call from school J that i need to stop by to fix a wheelchair, am I supposed to pull over and update my calendar so they can find me? I could spend an hour a day in parking lots editing my calendar. Most days i eat lunch in my car between schools. Last year they made a rule that we can’t carry to-go cups because it looks like we have enough free time to drive thru Starbucks. It’s just to be controlling.
Add your driving to/from schools to the calendar, turn by turn
- 9:21 - Leave parking lot, turn to Capital Blvd and drive 420 ft
- 9:22 - Turn right towards Trawick Rd and drive 2.5 miles
- 9:27 - Turn left, enter parking lot
Make sure to turn on “at time of event” reminders for every single one, then turn your own phone/pc to DND mode so bitch boss’s only way to make them shut up is unshare the calendar
Pretty sure thats not a normal outlook setting. If boss added the calander to his phone maybe. But doubt it.
It might not be default, but I know it works for shared calendars because someone started adding things to my department calendar with the reminder turned on, and I suddenly started getting EVERY SINGLE ONE on my computer.
I didn’t know your could do that! Perfect!
Well I have a pretty good idea where you live :) (I used to live in Brentwood)
“pulled over to put following comments in calendar”
Right? I got a call on a new first grader who showed up at school in a baby stroller. I thought, “huh, should i look for a wheelchair and class chair for him and rush over to get him set up for his first day of school? or sit here and update my calendar for each stop in that process? Visit school A to meet kid. Visit school b to look for wheelchair. Visit school c to find wheelchair. Visit my garage to clean wheelchair. Visit tire shop to air up tires on wheelchair. Visit school A to deliver and fit wheelchair.”
I don’t really follow your reasoning unless your bosses have already shown they’re malicious people. At work, my work calendar is shared with the entire company to see. I like it as it lets people easily schedule meetings with me, know at which of the two locations (or at home) I am. I have a personal calendar which I don’t link to my work calendar at all. I do think that accountability is an important part of healthy work relationships with managers because (with good managers) it comes with autonomy. Why do you think your bosses will use it maliciously?
At work, my work calendar is shared with the entire company to see. I like it as it lets people easily schedule meetings with me, know at which of the two locations (or at home) I am.
“Fun” fact: Outlook and Teams have a Scheduling assistant feature that makes that unnecessary. If a person wants to schedule a meeting with you, they don’t need access to your calendar to check availability. They just add you, pick a day, and it will suggest to them time slots you have open in your calendar for that day. There’s no longer a need to share an Outlook calendar with anyone just so they can know when you’re free to meet.
you sweet summer child. (or management plant)
Found american gen z
Or just a generic bootlicker…
I dont think genz appreciates clown corpo culture
We certainly don’t.
Could you please explain what is naive in my reasoning?
let me put it on my calendar.
You must work in a role where your input is valued and you have a degree of autonomy, your calendar is a collaboration tool to work with other people.
Most jobs aren’t like that, and bosses will use your calendar to micromanage you instead of supporting you
And not using the calendar means giving the boss carte blanche access to bother you any time.
After all, if you don’t have anything scheduled, you aren’t really busy, are you?
They’re lying, shitty people who do petty things so they can pretend to be busy while ignoring any real issues. This isn’t sharing so they can see our meetings. They want us to write 8-930 school A. 945-11 school b, … to fill our whole day. That’s not how it works. I make a list of schools i need to get to and i fit those in between calls for random things that come up.
Thanks for explaining! That sounds very different than what I had in mind (just sharing an outlook calendar of meetings) and I understand your frustration as I’d hate that too. That must really suck. Wish I could help.
Actually I do have a suggestion. When I’m asked to do something that I think is pointless I go full nice, but rational mode. Keep asking questions as if you’re trying to understand their request. And as you keep asking why this way and not that way they may end up realising how ridiculous they sound and drop it or accept an easier alternative. It may be important to avoid gloating and to propose your preferred solution (available by phone) as a suggestion to help them save face. The way to work with crappy managers is to keep them feeling good about themselves. You can use that to your advantage. It sucks and it may not work but there’s only so much you can do.
- Spam personal fake notes everywhere. “Joey’s little league game”, “Call dentist” and make completely useless ones like “remember the thing” for maximum annoyance.
- Add obscure religious holidays and random countries’ national festivities. “Bhutan Losar day. Get decorations.”
- Put in washed up celebrities’ birthdays “David Hasselhoff’s b-day”.
- Include random bad album release anniversaries. “18 year release anniversary of Kid Rock - Live Trucker”.
- Register inaccurate astrological milestones with random advice. “Leo ascending in Pluto. Good day for new beginnings”.
- Every once in a while add events that are just random characters such as “HERDBhbcdbcnn nnnnnnnn” which you can later claim were added accidentally from your pocket.
Extra bonus points if you can invite him to the “events” and get the calendar to send him push notifications for occasional 5:30 am “wake up early for the thing”. If he accuses you of bad faith for inviting him, tell him it’s the default and you keep forgetting to remove him.
Not only will this annoy him, it will render the system impossible to supervise and you can always claim you ALWAYS organize your personals through your calendar and this “is just how i organize”.
Good luck and give em hell.
Edit: Elaborated and more ideas
This was a fantastic read. OP I hope you do this (and then tell us about it or post screenshots)
Thank you. I consider myself a decent managerial saboteur / supervisional terrorist
Some people might take this further like spamming tech support/ IT with nonsensical tickets that somehow end up being something brought up management which would force them to determine some policy (which they hate doing)
Others might find it amusing to open debates about how certain harmless terminology used in calendar events may cause offense to “people we should be looking after” due to “ideological considerations” “possibly triggering” even if no relevant members of any group are in the team. Some people may being this up in HR.
The key concepts to destroy any organizational effort are “techincally allowed”, “plausible deniability” and “could get someone in a lot of trouble”.
IT here, please don’t drag us into this… unless you’re looking for help. We enjoy malicious compliance just as much as anyone else.
I love these! Thank you! When we take a personal day we now have to invite her to it in our calendar. I think I’ll be taking some extremely personal days.
That’s fuckin insane. Who is this turd
I assume this is a byproduct of politicizing school leadership positions?
Misunderstood your comment. My apologies!! <3
Beautiful! Godspeed, brave soul.
Don’t forget to use tasks too. Spams your bosses task list with random stuff and reminders all the time.
Nice! I didn’t know that!
Remember the thing! 🤣🤣
You are petty and disagreeable to overreaching management, I love you.
Best part is, public school teachers are basically unfireable in most parts of the developed western world for anything short of Child endangerment, so they probably can get away with all of this and more. :D
Ily2
Yeah. Worst I’ll get is probably an email.
- Put in washed up celebrities’ birthdays “David Hasselhoff’s b-day”.
- Include random bad album release anniversaries. “18 year release anniversary of Kid Rock - Live Trucker”.
Make sure they’re correct though, shitty boss is bound to share your love for kid rock and the hoff.
David Hasselhoff’s b-day
July 17, for your convenience
Just have a work calendar for your working hours, don’t put anything personal on it.
Most calendar systems let you maintain multiple calendars, and share them independently, but you still get to see them all at once on your interface.
I only use outlook for meeting invites. For now I’m just making up a fake weekly schedule and copying it to each week.
Your planned menu: all meals.
Including snacks. Notate all deviations, including free samples and “one grape from bunch”.
Have you ever thought of tracking your bowel movements?
Don’t forget to note consistency and whether or not there’s corn.
Be professional, use the Bristol Stool Chart.
I actually have that on the wall in a couple of my schools. I could take a pic and note my ‘score’.
A picture is good but a video really captures the consistency.
Get an annoyatron and put it in the ceiling above their desk.
What is an annoyatron, you may ask? It’s a tiny little device that beeps or chirps. That’s it. But it beeps at random several minute intervals like a dying smoke detector over it’s battery’s lifetime. Which can last over 3 years…
So, like a cricket.
Period every couple of weeks… lmao.
For every hour put “8am block” “9am block” etc and it will completely fill their calendar.
You could use a paper planner and refuse to use the calendar too.
I like this. Just one little further tweak: every hour block should be a time zone conversion to a completely useless time.
For example the hour long block at 8:00am would be:
0:00-0:59 Ugandan timeFor even more bonus points, account for Uganda not observing DST.
I love this!! Everything in my calendar is now going to occur in a different time zone !
This is great. And, i don’t know if you can color code events in Outlook, but if you can… color code anarchy.
I use a separate calendar for real stuff. Just making up stuff to put in this one and copying it each week.
Excellent!
Your school district has crappy leadership. Look for a better district. Put those job interviews on your calendar.
We hired a new superintendent a few years ago. Since then they’ve been chasing away the old people and hiring their friends, who suck. They’re all just trying to get higher paying jobs to bump up their ‘five high years’ before retiring.
Sooo many awesome suggestions here for you, OP!
One thing I don’t think I’ve seen yet, is that you should create your calendar events as barebones as possible and then edit them to add each additional detail. This will notify everyone else attached of the updates to your event, every time you update any of them.
What I don’t understand about this thread:
Each Gmail has its own calendar attached to it. My Phone’s calendar app supports multiple independent calendars displayed at the same time.
Why not use your work email to make a work calendar and a personal email to make a personal calendar? You can see both but your boss only sees the work one. That doesn’t seem unreasonable to me?
It is my work calendar. The issue is that they want every minute of our work day scheduled. I edited the post to explain.
Yeah I’m just confused. How would they know whether or not you’re sharing your personal calendar with them?
The only one here so far not likely to immediately get you in trouble is the one about setting calendar reminders. By default, everyone with access to the event gets the alert with the event reminder.
Also, just being stupidly stringent with your time logging. 10:03-10:17 Gas, 8.9gal, $XX.XX to start pushing for (increased) mileage compensation.
Log every minute you go over time. It’s a wonderful way to make managers twitchy.
Also, there are certain things you could reasonably expect them to want logged with this that legally they are not allowed to ask for. Not “Took a big fat steamer”, what are you, 12? But “Bathroom” 1:10-1:15, and dare them to challenge it on the record. If they do, take it up the chain “I felt pressured to include this information in my time logs and now I’m being judged for it”. That should raise alarm bells with anyone up above them.
Most of all, chill out. Just keep your shit in order and keep moving on. No reason to jeapordize your employment for pettiness.
Yeah. I really need to learn how to let things go and stop being petty, but I just can’t stand her stupid lying face! “Share your calendar so we can find you if there’s an emergency.” Well, you could call me or you could use the multi million dollar emergency alert system that i sign into at every building.
If you’re not in the clock, then there is no emergency you could respond to.
I don’t understand this “work ethics” of US americans to be available 24/7. Just don’t and you don’t habe to complain vor be petty.
I really need to learn how to let things go and stop being petty
I mean… no, you don’t. As long as you can manage possible repercussions… I say be petty. As petty as you can be while consequence free. Go nuts with it and enjoy it. Share key events with trusted loved ones and they may offer useful strategic suggestions.
Also, managers’ entire jobs consist in lying, manipulating, coercing, dehumanizing, snitching, and gathering info/planning around the former. A good manager is a usually a bad human being (either happily or though fear/incentives), and a good human being is usually a bad manager.
Source: I’m a manager and I deliberately try to be as bad as possible at my job due to ethical convictions. :)
Just be overly nice…laced with some sarcasme. Being nice will get them infuriated because they want to be the asshole.
I’ll try, but i didn’t think i can do it. Maybe I’ll practice throwing out, “Bless your heart…”
Comes with the years. My virtue is patience and malicious complience.
- “What a lovely meeting”
- “What a lovely conversation”
- “What a lovely idea”
- “What a lovely thing to say”
- “Terrific”
- “It’s always so nice to see you”
It works. Ask how they’re doing. Ask what they did last weekend. Compliment their clothing or whatever. Smile at them like you’re happy to see them. They don’t know what to do half the time and it’s hilarious.
Don’t add anything new to your calendar, just add them and they can see it’s useless for the purpose they want. When they complain, mention the checkin system and that you need to be called. Or just a generic “School Visits” event that isn’t specific to each location.
Make sure you have other evidence you’re actually working. Make sure people see you at each location so you have witnesses if your boss complains.
this must be a new thing. my old boss just posted on LinkedIn about keeping calendars visible for seemly no reason
