ULPT: File all your work in a way no one else would understand
Posted by VeganCanary@reddit | UnethicalLifeProTips | View on Reddit | 30 comments
If your work makes no sense to anyone else, then they can’t sack you because of the work it would take to understand your filing system.
Whenever someone asks about your filing system, explain it in a way that makes it sound easy but will confuse them.
Seabuscuit@reddit
An easier way to not get fired is to actually provide value to the business. If you have made your own process unnecessarily convoluted, you’re likely to have people question your methods more rather than less.
ThingYea@reddit
This only applies in a perfect world where higher ups are never morons and there are no stockholders to please every quarter.
Seabuscuit@reddit
So you think intentionally making the business less efficient and preventing redundancies from being put in place is more likely to convince the higher ups (morons or not) from firing you?
ThingYea@reddit
Businesses do not do business with employees in good faith. The vast majority choose to pay you less than you deserve, choose nepotism over good hiring practices, that kind of thing. If they gain leverage over you they will use it. This is a way to gain leverage over them. Big business is about making money, but middle management is about being petty and playing these games.
Seabuscuit@reddit
I think people generally think too highly of their work’s importance.
Yes, businesses and especially middle management use leverage to pay people less, but making things difficult for the business to operate 99% of the time just makes you look like an idiot and provide fodder for them to fire you with cause rather than gain you any leverage.
GrapeKitchen3547@reddit
Yeah, no. That's not how it works in the real world.
Seabuscuit@reddit
I would be much more likely to fire someone who developed a shitty system we need to revamp for anyone else to use than someone who was adding value.
I’m not saying adding value always works, but it definitely works better than intentionally making a business less efficient and preventing cross training / redundancies.
TheFightingQuaker@reddit
People who do shit like this are pathetic. If you need to be fired you will just be fired. They won't think twice about your filing system.
Haggis_HotPocket@reddit
I once built an encrypted and hidden space on my hard drive. All the super important stuff went there.
Chidofu88@reddit
You “file” stuff at your job? 100% replaceable. File knowledge and judgement in that big beautiful brain of yours and you’re still replaceable, but more costly to replace. Just pretend to forget everything you do while still executing the duties of your job, now you’re cooking with mystery. Be mysterious.
Kurzy92@reddit
This is terrible advice if you actually want to advance in your career. Every time someone leaves or gets promoted, guess who gets stuck doing their old job because nobody else can figure out your mess? You.
I've watched people trap themselves this way for years thinking they're irreplaceable when really they just made themselves unpromotable.
Traditional-Goose-60@reddit
Somebody has been watching Tommy Boy!
"Why don't ya just put stuff in a filing cabinet?"
"I dont LIKE filing cabinets because ya hafta OPEN EM!"
JustPlainRude@reddit
You'll eventually leave or get fired and then someone else will get stuck with your mess. Why make that person's job more difficult?
Twitch-x@reddit
Schadenfreude
Twitch-x@reddit
Like Radar O'Reilly filing a map of a minefield under B for Boom.
OoOnarcan@reddit
Can confirm. The trick is to always be more inconvenient to fire than to keep employed. Been holding a job for close to 3 years using this trick
epicurean56@reddit
I had this down to a science until HP decided to sunset the Unix o/s and the company I worked for switched from Oracle to MS SQL Server systems. I took one look at that mess and just decided to retire.
zLampShade@reddit
I do something similar. When one of the attractive girls [Cindy] at my workplace sleeps with the supervisors I insert myself into their lives. Had to go to boys highschool basketball games just to "bump into" my boss and his wife. He got up to get popcorn and he comes back to me talking with his wife. We had just added each other on facebook so "my girlfriend" and I could come to a grillout at their place. Then I invited Cindy as my plus 1 to the bosses grillout. Told her she had to pretend to be my girlfriend and yada yada yada. Now the boss knows I know about his affair. He can't fire me, and he can't fire Cindy. I've never told him I'd tell on him for his affair, but he just assumes I would.
It's unethical because I don't file any paperwork or really do my job.
HausWife88@reddit
Hell yeah man! This is the wY.
Lawlzstomp@reddit
It's a fun thought exercise, but ultimately, companies will fire you no matter what. They will try to replace important employees with undertrained/incompetent employees or AI for less money, even if their business literally relies on that person.
HelloWorldMisericord@reddit
Can confirm Early in my career, I owned the end-to-end workflow for a mission critical data system for everyone from senior execs to analysts. This was a super complicated workflow not because I designed it that way, but just because it was a very complex piece of work.
Got a toxic and incompetent new boss, they knew how critical the system was and that I ran it, but they decided to get rid of me anyway. I heard from work friends the company had a slow motion meltdown as the data stopped getting refreshed and became more and more useless. My new boss eventually got it sort of working but the data was often incorrect, out of date, and untrustworthy.
Eventually the company scrapped the whole system and went back to random Excel workbooks. The boss also got promoted a few years later so there’s corporate America for you #smh
Advantage_Varnsen_13@reddit
A very similar thing happened to me but I transitioned to a role with our parent company so I was (am) still technically around when things blow up. We had a whole meeting to prioritize workflows and transfer responsibility and five years later when something breaks, guess who they call???
It's getting better and I keep reiterating how to move away from this reliance and be more self sufficient but it doesnt really take. Recently when things have started breaking, I fix them but I build in some planned, unplanned obsolescence. I've found that when things break suddenly people get mad, complain, and want it fixed immediately. BUT when things break slowly and in mostly unnoticeable ways people will gradually lose trust in it and eventually stop using it all together and they kind of just keep hoping it will work again because its not obvious how its broken. If/when someone does notice, I'll fix it but communicate that its going to slowly keep happening unless the process behind it changes and someone locally is monitoring for these issues.
After about of year of doing things this way, there has been some progress on real transition planning. I'm along for the ride and just keep saying this is all great but a local resource needs to be responsible and manage any issues.
Dentarthurdent73@reddit
This tip displays a fundamental misunderstanding of how companies and the capitalist economy work.
No-one really cares that much about the actual work being done, they care about keeping employees on the endless treadmill of forced labour and spending on consumption.
If you leave and no-one understands your filing system, no-one will care. The work will just not get done, or on the very small chance it's important enough, someone new will set up their own system. It most certainly will not change the inherent and deliberate power inequality between you and your employer.
Pleasant-Minute6066@reddit
Gertrude robinson ahh strategy
vanchica@reddit
According to Valerie Solanas, this is a great way to bring down capitalism- temp at jobs, fuck up their filing, repeat at next temp job!
Sure_Comfort_7031@reddit
If they can't fire you then they can't promote you.
This is terrible advice.
tropicalturtletwist@reddit
I file everything in a way that makes perfect sense and people still can't figure it out lol
Girion47@reddit
Ive seen people try this, and hearing management conversations, they get almost gleeful when getting rid of the person.
Its like youre daring them to do something in a way that directly challenges their power. They'll get rid of you and the next guy gets to spend their time fixing it and being a rock star, you become a horror story and scapegoat for everyone else.
The truly unethical part of this is the OP sabotaging other people's careers with this "tip"
Seabuscuit@reddit
This is exactly how it almost always goes. You might be safe for a bit, but someone in the company is going to notice that you’re causing more problems than your “secret knowledge” is worth.
adamdoesmusic@reddit
I did that. The company still got rid of me, then collapsed entirely quickly after.