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30 Times People Hacked Hard Tasks By Coming Up With Clever Shortcuts Shared By People On Reddit
"I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it," Bill Gates once said. I mean, he has to be onto something; after all, he's an American business magnate with a net worth of over $119 billion. But let's admit, it doesn't always work like this. Though in times when it does work, the solutions people manage to come up with are often absolutely genius.
There's a popular thread on Reddit started by the user Slimer425 where people share their best stories of folks coming up with the most clever shortcuts to avoid hard work. "There is a well-known saying that goes 'Always give the hardest job to the laziest person because they will find the easiest way to do it'—what is the best real-life example to this you have seen?" the user wrote in their post. This Reddit thread currently has almost 90k upvotes and over 13k people sharing their stories. With that being said, Bored Panda invites you to read through the most interesting stories of people working smarter, not harder.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
There's a story that I've heard a few dozen times about a toothpaste company that had accidentally sent out cases of their product that had a few empty single boxes of toothpaste. The company had endeavored, not only to rectify their mistake, but to ensure they did not repeat it. They hired an engineering company that designed a scale, and alarm shutdown system. If an empty carton was passed down the production line, klaxons would be triggered, and a full stop would initiate until the offending box was recovered, and an all clear had been entered into the computer system, before production could resume. The company paid through the nose, but was ultimately pleased with their failsafe, and the engineers patted eachother on the back. A few months pass, and the engineers returned for quality control. The toothpaste company reported zero margin of error for weeks. Turns out, one of the minimum wage hairnet types on the assembly line didn't appreciate the sound of klaxons, or working with computers. So, he or she had aimed a large fan at the production line, before the scale, that blew the lighter, empty cartons off of the conveyor belt. Problem solved.
80 Van 5 years ago (edited)
I think the moral of the story isn’t that the engineers were overengineering or focusing on the complex. I think the lesson here is that there is always a better way of doing things, so listen to everyone’s ideas, not just those that have a degree. You might get the best solution from the engineers, or you might get it from the warehouse worker. But you will never know unless you invite everyone to contribute.
Grumble O'Pug 5 years ago
This is they typical LEAN philosophy in business. It's pretty commonplace and not hard to look up.
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Eglė Bukauskaitė 5 years ago
The engineering company was the winner here -they sold the pproduct and had 0 costs of maintenance. BRAVO, OVERENGINEERING FTW!
M O'Connell 5 years ago
The engineer in me gets a warm fuzzy feeling inside for this excellent solution.
RELATED:
#2
Got hired for the day to print 30 packets with 100 pages each. Why would it take a day? I asked ‘Our printer doesn’t collate the pages so it will take you the day to sort the pages into the 30 packets” they said. Right. It was a standard office Xerox printer. It took me all of 30 seconds to find and click the ‘collate’ button. Clicked the ‘staple’ button while at it. All got printed by itself into nice stapled packets and I got paid to browse internet for the day. They thought I was a genius for ‘fixing’ their printer and gave me glowing recommendations to the temp agency that led to more jobs.
Sofiia Melnikova 5 years ago
"Will you please listen? I'm not a messiah!" "HE IS THE MESSIAH!"
HappyPig1723 5 years ago
Wow. I would have probably just done all the work without finding a shortcut. Better yet, I would probably have just quit the whole thing....
Damon Hill 5 years ago
Similar thing happened with my son. Went to work for a company that makes cabinet components IE the cabinets you buy from Lowe's & Home Depot. Second day there they call for a shut down of the entire production line. 5th day there they do it again and he just happened to be in the right place at the right time and found out they were doing it to reboot the computer because of some small issue with a program. He told them they didn't have to shut down or reboot and showed them what to do. After that they would page him to do it when ever it happened (which was often), he could never get them to understand what to do. Even when he quit (he found out they were closing that facility before it happened) they paged him as he was leaving, so security escorted him to the PC, he fixed the problem and left.
Mshauri Mazuri 5 years ago
Trust me, anyone who can fix anything inside the office, is truly a blessing.
Jenna Howe 5 years ago
In that situation I'd always let them know I'd finished already and ask what else they needed done. That was either brilliant or idiotic. I've never figured out which. It's just how I roll.
#3
Worked in a huge hotel by the airport*. We had layover with over 400 people, I think we were 3 employees. They had buffet for dinner and then left to go to bed since it was 1 or 2 am. Rule was, we should always go to the room and pick up as many plates as we could and then bring them to the cleaner. Took for ages and I wanted to go home. I decided to roll out the cart and collect the plates and put them on the cart. Guest were seeing it and started putting their plates on the cart when they left. All of a sudden hundreds of people cleaned up their own stuff. Duty manager saw it and I thought he would blast me, since the hotel was a 5 star place. He just looked at me, smiled and said "that's why I like to hire lazy people, they think of ways to finish work faster"
Mshauri Mazuri 5 years ago
People most of the times wanted to clean up their mess especially on a dining setting, but they couldn't see where to put it or how they should put it that is why people leave them to where they are. Some are just plain entitled.
Gwinevere von Ludwig 5 years ago
5 star hotel near the airport... really? I don't think I've ever seen that. Sure, maybe a nice Hilton or whatever... but 5 stars? Nah.
ADHORTATOR 5 years ago
German proverb: "Ein Fauler war noch nie ein Dummer" A lazy person was never a dumb one
#4
Got hired into a plant that just got a big new job building stuff for the military. My job was "materials associate" which basically meant I drove a fork lift and staged parts that were built. The "Engineers" came up with a floor plan for all of the parts and where they needed to be staged. They used fancy lasers and measuring devices and built it all in CAD. After telling them it wouldn't work they said " well lets see you do a better job". I organized the entire 50,000 sq/ft warehouse so that each part was close to the machines that use them, it followed the first in first out method, and each department knew where their parts went when they were done making them (put up signs and what not). After that my job was basically pointless because the warehouse ran its self. I decided to teach myself how to use the welding robots in my downtime. Fast forward 3 years and now I'm an automation engineer at one of the largest parts supplier in the industry.
#5
At my last job, a truck suspension shop, we did inventory every December and it was someone's job to count all the washers and screws of every size. It was my first inventory and I casually mentioned that they should just weigh one screw or washer, then weigh them all and divide the weight to get the count. Everyone looked at me like I had given them the key to the universe. Counting washers and screws went from a day or two, to just a few hours.
tkd_pastor_g 5 years ago
That is exactly what I was trained to do for 2 weeks of temp while doing inventory with JVC.
#6
Boss hated Excel to the point where he didn't want us using formulas because "you can't trust them to be right" so we needed to "do all the calculations by hand or on a calculator" He would give me a spreadsheet once or twice a week that required lets say, 45 seconds to do, but maybe 7 hours by hand and he told me to "go to starbucks or something and crank it out" He thought that since I pasted as values and he couldn't see the formulas that I did it by hand when really I just did it in 45 seconds, sent an email on delay for 7 hours, and studied for the next semester. First day of internship he told me with a straight face he was a "work harder not smarter kinda guy"
BoredPundits 5 years ago
At least OP used the time wisely to study, and didn't just surf the internet all day.
#7
The joys of being a parent. As the parent of 2 hyperactive boys, I invented a game called the steamroller game. I would lie down across one end of the bed and the kids would start jumping. At some random point I would make a motor noise and roll across the bed. If they didn't jump in time I would roll right over them. They loved that game. I just invented it because I wanted to lie down for a few minutes.
Claire 5 years ago
My father invented a game where my siblings and I tried to lie on the floor without moving for the longest. Sibling rivalry made it an extremely competitive game and we'd all just lie there for a LONG time. He also used to throw coins out in the yard when it was dark and gave us flashlights to find them with.
Kiss Army 5 years ago
My husband told me about a guy he worked with who would play "Cowboys and Indians" or "Cops and Robbers" with his kid when he needed a breather. He would capture the his child Indian Chief or Robber and pretend to tie him up or put him in jail and his son would sit calmly waiting to continue the adventure... (After he was able to regroup, he would continue the game. His son never knew this and when he told his grown son what they used to do his son was stunned. He fondly remembered those playtimes and did not realize there "true" purpose...)
#8
I work in a semi-warehouse environment and we have to track where items are at all times. When we move X item from location A to location B we had to type out the to and from locations. We do this hundreds of times a shift. I went online to a free barcode maker website and spent about 20 minutes making location barcodes. I save hours a day by scanning barcodes.
lara 5 years ago
We own a rental company. We rent everything: party goods, tents, tractors, front end loaders, etc. Every year they have to do inventory. I said to my husband "why don't you put barcodes on all the materials and then you only have to scan them." Big mistake because, I was "interfering" and "trying to take over." His response is that the bar codes would be destroyed while the item was being used, or someone would rip it off. I said "well, then hide it where no one but you know where it is." Guess what? He and the staff still do inventory by hand, takes about a week.
M O'Connell 5 years ago
You can literally download a barcode font for free and print labels :)
The Cute Cat 5 years ago
Remind me when suggesting such system for our company. Too bad that oil price come down like a storm then make our ship sank..
Eglė Bukauskaitė 5 years ago
or buy at least a primitive WMS ;) heck, i saw warehouses, that bought couple scanners and had their IT to code an excel macro
#9
I once was a temp at a tiny office on a construction site in around 2003. I was only there for one day while the regular person was on some training. They sat me down and told me that I just needed to copy all these numbers from one program to another. So I selected them, hit ctrl c and ctrl v. They stared at me. Turns out about 60% of this woman's time had been spent manually typing numbers from one place to another.
M O'Connell 5 years ago
Fun fact, the Xerox programmer who invented the Cut, Copy, Paste concepts passed away in February of 2020.
TigerLily Peterson 5 years ago
I did that with my mom she has to write noes for her job. I watched her one day write the same thing 5 times! i blew her mind with ctrl c and ctrl v
Elisabeth Breckenridge 5 years ago
When I was in grade 9, our school system tried to simplify filling out report cards for teachers. Teachers had to choose one pre-written comment to paste into the report. When a student was doing well, they would just pick the least serious option. I was a straight A student, and so I laughed when my mom read my report card and said to me, "looks like you really need to work on your copying and pasting".
Dianne DeSha 5 years ago
Oh, damn.... *so* many times in temp jobs. I never had a clear verification like this one, but the number of times I showed up to cover a FT person, and found less than an hour's work to actually be done. (And then had to somehow stretch it to 8 hours so I wouldn't get sent home early with only an hour's pay.) Ugh.... hated that...
#10
Worked as a cashier during the holiday season back when i was 16. The supermarket was selling drinks by the boxes and at that time, we only had barcode scanners that was at the front of the computer. No gun type scanners existed. I was lazy and didn’t want to carry boxes up to the scanner. So i politely asked my customers if i could carve out the barcode from their box to scan and keep. Some agreed some didn’t want to but eventually i managed to amass all the barcodes needed. Labelled them and kept them in a file for easy reference.
The Pansexual MELONLORD 5 years ago
You might've felt lazy but I appreciate that type of organization
Kimberly Young 5 years ago
The grocery store I worked at actually had laminated copies of the barcodes for all of the big heavy drinks at every register for this exact reason.
Tiny Dynamine 5 years ago
It's not lazy to come up with a more efficient method. It's called progress.
Grumble O'Pug 5 years ago
I've been in old grocery stores that had binders full of barcodes like that for cashiers.
#11
I used to deliver beer. I did not like delivering beer. I may have ended up with 30 stops in a day, including deliveries that the customer would call in to our office for. I used to bring extra beer and blank invoices with me on the truck, to prevent having to drive back to my warehouse to deliver one keg to a place that I was currently across the street from. 7 years later, the driver of that route is still doing that.
#12
Automated 70% of my job in a large finance firm as an intern. Never disclosed it and got paid easy money for 6 months. I spent the time doing courses and applying for my grad school. Got my admission letter during the final 2 weeks of my internship and never looked back. Pro Tip: Python and Excel can be your best friend.
BorPand8 5 years ago
Yep. If you're in an low-paid hourly job at a big company and you find a way to save yourself a bunch of hours... *do not disclose this to your bosses*. Take care of yourself, collect your paycheck, and don't look back.
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Hugo Raible 5 years ago
Once you've learned about how to access APIs via Python, you start to automate your whole life with it.
timothy tait 5 years ago
i was working as an administrative temp, and one of my main jobs was filling in a multi page spreadsheet in excel. i needed to insert one downloaded file into this sheet, and was told that i needed to get the file from someone else, every day. i was told that this process was about a 4-6 hour job, so that was the lion's share of my work. i talked to the person who got the file, found out where she sourced it from, and then wrote a macro in excel using visual basic, to fetch and insert the file with 2 clicks, and take her out of the equation. new time: 5 minutes (most of which was download time). when i told my boss about it, he mentioned it to a coworker, who poached me, and that's how i got my first programming job.
#13
During my intern, my professor gave me line graphs made on paper and asked me to find the coordinates by drawing horizontal and vertical lines. It would have taken hours if not days. I thought to myself - "I couldn't be the first one who is lazy af". So I googled it, found this cool free to use software "Web Digitizer". Step 1 - Scan the graph. Step 2 - Mark the X and Y axes in the picture. Step 3 - Grab a beer cause you got the the nicest mf graph that you couldn't have drawn by yourself in a million years. My professor was so happy she asked me to document the method and mail it across the entire department.
#14
Eating cheetos with chopsticks so you don't have to wipe your fingers while playing videogames.
Esca Sav 5 years ago
I was about to say the same thing 😂 I dorito's using them
Load More Replies... Ploploplop 5 years ago
I do this at work. My wife bought me chopsticks that break down to pocket size for it.
#15
I worked in a CNC shop. There would be a pile of jobs that needed to be done for the month. Some took days to run while others were generally quick. The record for jobs done in 1 day was 8. What I did was looked through all the jobs and organized them by setup. Meaning... Every job has a setup time. Can take an hour to get all the tooling together, setting up the cutting table, and setting the part square to the table so the machine can "gauge" where the part is so when I insert the code into the machine it can run flawlessly and drill, mill, tap whatever within a literally hair measurement. For every single job. Majority of parts use standard tooling. And I have automatic tool changing with 20 pockets. Long story short I figured out how to line up the jobs so they all have the same setup. Blew the record out of the water with 30 jobs done in one day. Saving the company tens of thousands in work hours. All because I didnt feel like doing all the setups that day.
Lillukka79 5 years ago
Must have been a shitty shop, since that's ne normal way of doing things in NC shops.
#16
Co-worker of mine had to get rid of a smaller junk fiberglass boat with no trailer. Our other co-workers are all telling him how much time and money he's going to need to spend to get rid of it, and he's just saying "Oh, is that so?" He took off one day, and sat down on his lawn with a cooler of beer. That day was garbage day. Inevitably, the trash guys roll up. He hands each of them a cold beer, and says "Hey boys, got $50 for each of you if you help me out real quick." They fed the entire 12ft boat into the packer, crushing two feet at a time.
Collin Edward 5 years ago (edited)
Nice username, @smoldoggo (no sarcasm)
Load More Replies... M O'Connell 5 years ago
My mother has done something similar. The trash guys told her they couldn't take [whatever it was, I can't remember] and she asked if they would stop her from throwing it into the back of the truck, they looked at each other and said 'no' and the problem was solved :)
Becca Gizmo the Squirrel 5 years ago
They should have put it at the curb and put a "free" sign on it. Hoarders in the neighborhood would probably fight over it.
#17
Worked construction right out of high school to save money for school. Once every other week, we'd get a shipment of 100's of door parts, and they made me match serial numbers to parts and orders and confirm we got everything, then organize it all. It literally took 16 hours AT LEAST. And time moved so slowly. So I got fed up with it and made a python app that would take a list of pictures, extract text from the pictures, compare it to a order receipt, then spit out a list of all missing parts and extra parts. So it knocked it down to an hour process of just throwing the door parts in the correct pile while waiting for the script to run. The worst part is that I didn't even get a raise for doing it.
#18
I'm in corporate accounting, and I'm the only one in my department with a CPA. Of course, I have to take continuing education for my license, and I usually take as many hours of Excel courses as I can each year. By learning the keyboard shortcuts, advanced formulas, and a bunch of useful hidden features in Excel, I'm able to get most of my work done in less than 2 hours, then spend the rest of the day browsing Reddit and watching YouTube videos. Thank goodness our cubicle walls are high, or I'm sure they would've fired me by now for being on my phone 6+ hours each day.
Jro308 5 years ago
and pivot tables, better yet learn how to write your own macros!
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#19
I don't know that I have a specific example, but a buddy of mine and I used to spend our time working out the most efficient way to do our jobs. We used to tell ourselves "I'm not being lazy, I'm just being efficient!" It became an almost daily thing..."why are we doing it this way? This is stupid. There must be an easier way." Then we'd find that and implement it. Nine months ago, I'd made my job so easy it was eliminated. Be careful what you wish for.
Meg Needler 5 years ago (edited)
How true and how very shortsighted. They should have made a position for you to improve efficiency throughout the company. And given you a whopping raise. Just think of how you could have helped the company!
Damon Hill 5 years ago
I was a security guard in a bank that closed from 1-3 everyday. My job was simply to let the employees in and keep the customers out. A simple electronic lock with a keypad (like the bank across the street used) could do the same thing. I even told them that. When I quit for a better job (at the bank across the street), they installed the electric lock.
Pacifico Fernandez 5 years ago
People like those should be praised, not punished. They should become software developers
#20
Teacher here! We have a K-3rd grade classroom with mixed ages. This year, we decided to assign a big project in pairs. We have a 3rd grade boy who’s cynical, argumentative, and refuses to do work even though he’s extremely intelligent and capable. We decided in an effort to get work out of him, we’d pair him with a very energetic kindergarten boy that has underdeveloped, 5-year old, reading and writing skills. Anyway, the older boy typed sentences on the computer in big 20-point text and gave it to the kindergarten boy to trace on our light board, as well as pictures to color. Well played.
Conrad Strucker 5 years ago
this is oddly wholesome it was nice of the older kid to come through for the younger one
lara 5 years ago
My mom read to us every night. I read all the time. When I was in the second or third grade my teacher sent a note home to my mother saying that I was incapable of reading. Six students would sit in a semi-circle and read a sentence each. Well, they read so damned slow and stumbled over pronunciation that I would just go ahead and read. It was fairy tales. Anyway, when it got to me, I never knew where we were, because I was like three pages ahead. So when my mom got the note, she looked me and said "what'? We go and have a meeting with the teacher. She explains that I get lost. My mom says to me, why do you get lost? And I explain. The teacher didn't believe it, so she got a chapter book and told me to read it. I did. She said "ok." And from then on, during reading, I sat by myself and read. It was great. I read about a book every three days. Good books, not D**k and Jane crap. Students go at their own speed, don't dumb them down.
BoredPundits 5 years ago
Yep. It sounds like he was bored. It's difficult for bright children to be in composite classes, particularly if the lessons are aimed at the lower classes. I've never heard of K-3 being in the same class though. That's a huge difference.
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Katinka Min 5 years ago
How does a 3rd grade manage to get cynical? It took me about 40 years to achieve that.
#21
I worked a summer at a mortgage company as an assistant to the underwriters. My only job was printing documents and then hole-punching them to put in folders. They had a super fancy xerox printer that basically did my entire job for me, but the underwriters at this company didn’t know how to click through printer settings to make the machine hole-punch as it was being printed. I showed them how to do it, and they resisted it suuuuper hard (like they didn’t trust it? Idk). So I got to keep my job, but what was supposed to take me all day literally took me about 20-30 minutes first thing in the morning. So they started assigning me real tasks, and even offered to keep me on to eventually become an underwriter, too. Because I was “so sharp” (i.e. I knew how to use the very expensive printer they already had).
Tl;dr: they had a printer that already did my job for me but didn’t know how to use it. I showed them.
M O'Connell 5 years ago
This is why "new blood" can be extremely useful, regardless of how much experience the greybeards have.
#22
A programmer outsourced his own job overseas, paying Chinese programmers one fifth of his salary to write code for him, while he spent his days surfing Reddit and watching cat videos. His performance reviews praised him for clean, well-written code and called him "the best developer in the building."
Jaded Queen 5 years ago
The world is ruled by such assholes. Every body copies everybody or takes advantage. There is nothing new under the sun. Actual talented people never reach the limelight or the money. Inventors scientists, artist,all the same. The assholes get ahead in life or rather smart assholes
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Andrea Hall 5 years ago
Not a terrible example of this concept, but I personally don't like the fact that he didn't do it himself, but took the credit.
Grumble O'Pug 5 years ago
old story, and judging by the upsurge in Chinese middle class, very old.
manon M 5 years ago
until the day when "his employees" will overtake him and he will have lost everything 🤷♀️😂
Marcellus the Third 5 years ago
No, he just branches out and becomes an outsourcing company. This way he makes maybe only as much as each overseas employee, but times the number of them which is thousands--tenthousands per company.
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onitsuka 5 years ago
Er...that's an issue if they're actually IN this country as well. As it were, 1/5th his salary might very well be alot of money depending on where they live in China.
Load More Replies... #23
I worked at a chain restaurant and in my last few months there we got those stupid table ziosks that customers could pay at. There was a survey at the end of every transaction and our managers added new performance metrics based on how many people paid using the ziosk and also how well our service was based on the surveys. One as*hole would just fill the surveys out himself after his customers left and gave himself five stars in everything. Dude was always ranked top of the servers. Fu*king genius
M O'Connell 5 years ago
I really hate those things. The first thing I do is put it face-down somewhere where it isn't in the way.
JessG 5 years ago
I do this too, and LOTS of servers do this. You don’t even tell the customer about the survey, you just help them pay through the ziosk, then say goodbye, and do it yourself
Full Name 5 years ago
"You don’t even tell the customer about the survey". This is most certainly asshole territory.
Load More Replies... #24
My parents were having a summer get-together a couple of years ago and my dad wanted my brother and me to dig a small pit for a bonfire. He handed us two shovels and left us to dig, My brother went and started up our old tractor, drove it across the lawn, dropped the bucket into the earth and drove forward a few feet. The pit ended up a little larger than what we had planned but once we lined it with stones it was actually a pretty nice pit. *Edited "my brother and I" to "my brother and me."
Some Cool Guy 5 years ago
I feel sorry for all the europeans asians and others required to learn english to effectively use the wider internet. It's a b!tch of a language to learn.
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Kitten claws 5 years ago
What? I was always taught that the proper way was ''my brother and I''
CousinFish 5 years ago (edited)
"I" is used as a subject noun: My brother and I will dig a pit. (“My brother and I” = who the sentence is about.) --- "Me" is used as an object noun: My dad wanted my brother and me to dig a pit. --- The easiest way to know is to use the "me" or the "I" alone in the sentence, and whichever is correct alone will also be correct when adding others.
Load More Replies... CousinFish 5 years ago (edited)
The grammer was correct the first time. The test is to take away the other person and what is left is correct for both. So, "my dad wanted my brother and me" becomes "my dad wanted me", thus the original was correct. "My dad wanted my brother and I" becomes "my dad wanted I", which i s incorrect, making both of these statements incorrect.
#25
In high school we had to do four book reports every year. A friend of mine did his on each Lord of the Rings books and the Hobbit freshman year and turned in the same four book reports for the rest of his time in high school. You switched english teachers every year so no one ever caught on. I was never brave enough to try the same thing.
Raven 5 years ago
Do things while you can, and take risks. Otherwise you'll never know what could've happened, and you will regret it.
Marcellus the Third 5 years ago
Logically his grade should be on a downhill course? "This is freshman level, I expect better from you guys by now!"
BorPand8 5 years ago
Meanwhile the people who actually wrote new book reports learned how to become better writers. And writing is an incredibly useful skill, even if you just want to leave comments on the internet.
JessG 5 years ago
If it got a good grade the first time around, then you know what your doing I think
Load More Replies... Dianne DeSha 5 years ago
I did this with "memorize a poem to recite before the class next week". I memorized a reasonably popular one poem in 4th? grade and used it every time. New teacher, kids who might have heard it before were too busy with their own stuff and weren't listening. Made recitation for the uber-shy kid a whole lot easier!
Christian Hicks 5 years ago
I know of a student in college who did that and was expelled. Careful.
#26
In college, a professor always assigned 20 page papers. No one could ever get 20 pages out of one topic. We were only undergraduates. I consistently turned in papers that were 14-15 pages long and suffered for it. Then I learned about Kyle. He would write papers called something like The Origins of the Federal Reserve, it's Role in the Depression of 1920, the Great Depression, and the 2008 Recession. Four 5 page papers = one 20 page paper!
Jenn C 5 years ago
Also, if the teacher doesn't specify margin width, or header and footer height, adjust them by a tiny bit.
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Shalini Pabreja 5 years ago
Double space, wide margin with filler content on the topic per section. I sometimes have to struggle to fit my papers onto the given word limit!
Raven 5 years ago
Don't becomes do not, very becomes a lot, etc. you do crazy things to heighten your word count 😂
Load More Replies... Katinka Min 5 years ago
20 pages? If you have a hard time filling that, you are not going into the topic deeply enough. Mind you, proper academics take time. You can't churn out these kind of papers in a week.
#27
My friend who’d take his baby’s clothes off when he fed him. Next level brilliant. Spray the kid off after.
Tiny Dynamine 5 years ago
This is risky though as it could lead to them taking off their clothes when the waiter brings the food over. 😜
#28
I was working a kids’ chess summer camp with this guy who just horked down pot like you wouldn’t believe (still a far, far better chess player than me). One day, the kids were being particularly rambunctious and I told him he had to take them outside to get their energy out. He had them spend the next hour doing “American Ninja Warrior” on the jungle gym/playground. I hadn’t even heard of the show, but it was a group of young boys like 6-12, so they all adored it. This coworker loved to get super stoned and watch it. Don’t know if he was high at the camp, but he just got to sit on a bench and tell kids their time was getting slower when they did “stunts” and they just scurried and jumped around faster.
Katinka Min 5 years ago
Why? What else to do with physical energy than making kids jump and climb and compete?
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#29
Herding yak with a drone takes the cake for me. They run from it, and oddly fear it. Which is surprising considering they have literally zero aerial predators. We only did it a few times because it really makes them uneasy, and doesn't treat them well. But it is very effective and easy, and you can herd them from over 1/2 a mile a way from inside the house.
BoredPanda is awesome 5 years ago
Maybe they are scared because they have never seen it before
Marcellus the Third 5 years ago
I don't know. Cats remain scared of hoovers since multiple generations... unless their ancestors were preyed on by the hoover's ancestors of course.
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BlackestDawn 5 years ago
It's not about it being a predator but rather something unknown. I read somewhere that in the olden big game hunting times they used white bed sheets to herd lions.
Grumble O'Pug 5 years ago
Clearly you haven't listened to a drone compared to a bird. Plus the only birds who will deal down on a yak will be something that eats carrion, not attack.
Stephanie Did It 5 years ago
Imagine you're peacefully grazing with your herd and a foot-wide insect swoops down at you...yeah, I'd be scared too
Tiny Dynamine 5 years ago
This person sounds like a piece of s**t to me. Not bothered about knowing that it makes them feel uneasy, just does it anyway.
JessG 5 years ago
Don’t you think sheep feel uneasy around a herding dog? You gotta make them move somehow
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#30
I read a comment on here a while back about a college kid who picked up an office job over one summer. He became friends with an older lady at the front desk who always needed help figuring out Excel. He kept finding shortcuts for her, and eventually wrote scripts for her that took a load of work off her plate. By the end of the summer he had made her job so easy that they decided they didn’t need her to do it anymore. They fired her.
AIDAN SIVITS 5 years ago
how? they found a way to do her job more effeicently and for free sounds like a good buisness move
Load More Replies... Meg Needler 5 years ago
And the moral of the story is never let your employer know how easy your job is or how little time it takes to do it. You’ll either lose your job or be given a LOT more work with no increase in pay.
Banjo Peppers 5 years ago
They still would’ve needed someone to run the formulas and stuff though
BoredPanda is awesome 5 years ago
that's mean. She's the one who made it so easy and helped them a lot
Pacifico Fernandez 5 years ago
Well, in my country this little old lady is representing over half a million people in the public administration. People, who are useless, refuse to learn, lazy, but inefficient get paid to do tasks, that could be done for half an hour, but it takes them days. But they will not get fired, as they are the main voters for the current government. Because of those people, our country is super inefficient and we have to wait days for every document. The young man does not have a fault in the situation. The lady should adapt and learn, she obviously didn't.
#31
In one of my early IT jobs I spent about two months automating everything I did. Thereafter, I spent my days in air-conditioned isolation reading, hacking out entirely unrelated programs, engaging in protracted debates on UseNet and responding to the very rare client problem. Things seemed to be running smoothly so I took a couple weeks of vacation. When I returned from holiday I was told that everything had run so smoothly in my absence that my services would no longer be needed. I had lazied myself redundant.
#32
A few years ago my mom was tasked with fixing my grandparent's toilet while we were visiting for the holidays. The toilet reservoir was constantly filling and running, and thus flooding the bathroom, because the buoy arm wasn't lifting high enough from the water in the reservoir to switch off the water flow. My mom (who is normally a very practical person) had been tackling the issue for hours. She was pretty distraught, thinking we would have to order a new buoy arm, maybe even a new sensor, or switch and pull the whole assembly apart to replace everything. She was planning out a trip to Lowes' and pricing things out when I walked in. I took one look at it and bent the metal arm the buoy was attached to, down, so the arm had a slight upwards curve. The buoy still reached the same level in the reservoir, but registered on the sensor as 'higher' because of the curve in the arm. Problem solved, Rangers lead the way.
M O'Connell 5 years ago
I have to imagine the writer is a younger person... Toilets don't have sensors, my friend. The float arm is a direct mechanical linkage to the water valve. As the rubber seal inside the valve ages and becomes stiffer, it requires more force to make an effective seal. You didn't 'fool' anything, you applied physics.
#33
Someone gave me a report they'd been doing manually for literally years, using nothing but excel and access databases that took two people upwards of nearly three hours to complete. Got that shit automated down to 30 seconds in a few days. I'm not about your stupid v-lookup bullshit, Brittany.
Tiny Dynamine 5 years ago
It was fine until that last sentence, then I had no clue what they were talking about!
Some Cool Guy 5 years ago
It's sometimes easier and faster to look up a pre-calculated table of values rather than do the calculation itself. VLOOKUP from memory is the excel implementation of it.
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#34
Not sure if this counts, but when I was unemployed a few years back, I was visiting my mother at her office when she was stuck in a conundrum: her then-current task was to rename these ridiculously long-named files into something more manageable, but the length of the files combined with how deep in the system they were, the computer straight-up wouldn't allow her to rename said files. She was nearly pulling her hair out in frustration when I, the visiting non-employee with nothing better to do, suggested "Could you drag it to Desktop so it isn't so deep in the system, rename it there, then bring it back?" She could, it worked, day saved.
Adam Belaire 5 years ago
I'm in the process of trying to clean up files on our server at work. The character limit is supposed to be 265 chars (including folders and spaces). My record find right now is one at 370.
Ray Martin 5 years ago (edited)
On pre-Windows 10 systems, there is a 260 character file path limit. In other words, if files and folders are poorly marked, and the total number of characters reaches 260, then it's game over for any further changes. Using the method in this post, it's sometimes possible to change the file name, and once it's returned to its proper location, the file becomes completely inaccessible - unable to be opened, moved, or renamed directly. As an I.T helpdesk guy, I often had to resolve screw-ups like this.
#35
Got hired for a 3 week temp job that was transporting strings of text from a text document that the companies app produced, into separate excel sheets relating to what the string in the text document was. It was hundreds of thousands of lines of records of which office was printing, calling, emailing, basically any time the network was used. They were making graphs about how much of call time was to what department/customer/etc, and things like that. Yeah, just wrote a script that read the first couple words, determined which excel sheet for which string, then watched tv for the rest of the two weeks. It ran 24/7 while I finished a bunch of netflix shows. It worked perfectly, and the company paid me extra to keep using the script i had written. To make things better, someone shut the computer down and couldn’t figure out how to restart the script properly so I came in and restarted it for an extra $50. Best 3 weeks of my life.
#36
Need to count 300 pieces of paper? Print 300 blank pages
Nigel Rodgers 5 years ago
I don't get why the previous comment was down voted so much. Printing 200 blank pages is significantly less time than 300
Hugo Raible 5 years ago
Seems that math is not strong with the average BP voter.
Load More Replies... Dave P 5 years ago
Also a waste of electricity and wears down the gears and spools in the printer, shortening its lifespan
Erin E 5 years ago
... yeah the employee totally gets paid enough to care about the electricity and equipment they aren’t paying for... and would rather spend twenty minutes counting pages....
Load More Replies... #37
I remember having to peel 20kg of charred eggplant at a restaurant I worked in. I asked the chef if there was an easier way to do it. His reply was "yep, get someone else to do it"
#38
I did this. A few years back, I was roommates with a super mechanically inclined dude. Our top-loading clothes washer stopped working well because the lid got a little warped and didn't trip the safe switch for the spin cycle to run anymore. He was all geared up to pull the washer out, take it apart, bend the lid back into proper shape, and reseat the sensor so it would run properly. I told him to hold off; I put a load of laundry in, and popped a quarter inch shim under the lid. It ran perfectly.
#39
When I was at university I had an IT helpdesk job for one of the colleges. My team was tasked with taking inventory on every computer in every room of like 5 buildings. Computer ame, some college ID code, the Dell serial number, all kinds of stuff. I mean it took ages to gather all the information in just ine room. About a week into the process, I decided that I'd had enough of manuall writing everything down. On my work machine I just started running all of the GET CMD commands I could find, and eventually had a batch file on a flash drive that would just save a computer's information as a txt file on the flash drive. So I'd walk into a room, log in to each computer, run my file, then log off. I went from doing a couple of rooms a day to doing a couple of floors a day. I still had to input everything into the system, but that felt great.
M O'Connell 5 years ago
You could go a step further and "copy /b *.txt newfile.txt" which would combine all the gathered text files into a single document. Assuming you set your original batch file to tab-delimit the text of each file that would put it in a standard format that can be imported by most spreadsheet and database programs without extra work :)
#40
My dad and I were working on my grandma's water heater a couple of years ago, we needed a cork or something to go over the end of the pipe. I had a bottle of coke in my hand, I downed the coke and put the cap on the end of the pipe as a joke but it fit perfectly so we kept it there. When my grandma sold the house 5 years later that cap was still on the end of the pipe. I wasn't necessarily the laziest person but I was the DLH (designated light holder) and I was providing "emotional support" thru smartass comments so I was definitely taking the job the least seriously.
Marek Yanchurak 5 years ago
I mean a cork wouldn't seem to be very effective in such a case either, but what else could it be? An input maybe?
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#41
I work in finance at a large multinational corporation. I feel like a big part of our job is to just stop doing things and wait to see who complains. If someone complains, we keep doing it, if silence, then we call it a "controlled drop" and put it on our performance review for creating efficiencies.
M O'Connell 5 years ago
In very large organizations there can be a buildup of 'chores' like specific reports for specific executives, particular ways of preparing documentation, etc. Some of those 'chores' end up becoming redundant, or the executives requesting custom reports leave, but those reports are still on the list of things to be done, even though nobody reads them. Nobody told them to stop generating that report, but if nobody complains about the stopping, it wasn't necessary.
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#42
My professor asked me to check the answer sheets of a test. By utilizing the readily available algorithms in image processing (machine learning), I made a mobile app that takes a picture of the answer sheet and return the score.
M O'Connell 5 years ago
And your professor wasn't using an optically-scanned bubble sheet, why?
#43
had a meeting group arriving in the morning, about 130 people, and each one was going to pay their part. but for every person I needed to insert 4 items (food, beverage, room, etc), every item had their price, and it needed to be inserted individually and in order (software limitations) - it needed to be ABCDABCDABCD etc. 130 times! 4 times each! individually! so I spent 20 minutes setting up a mouse macro program, and set it up to run 130 times. lucky for me I had two computers and was able do my stuff in one while the other was busy for almost two hours.
amgryracoon 5 years ago
macro programs a really useful when you have to repeat the same thing over and over and you don't want to do it.
#44
Was tiling a bathroom floor. One young guy I was working with was cleaning up when we were done. I told him to take the leftover tile back downstairs to the truck, and then went back to cleaning what I was doing. Ten seconds later I hear this huge crash and then a soft "oh, right." He had gone out onto the balcony and dropped them down to the truck, shattering over $100 worth of tile. He said he "thought it would be faster". He wasn't exactly wrong!
#45
My teacher not wanting to grade papers so he gives us easy sh*t to do
Bored Little Panda 5 years ago
My teacher when even ever they don't want to grade anything they give us busy work and then it's a 100 if your done. Different teachers do different things.
Load More Replies... #46
When i was like 10 i had to sweep the house, and walk the dogs. These were my only 2 chores, but I was a lazy little twerp, so I tied a towel to my dogs back legs, then put a toy on the back of my remote control car, and released the hounds. Mom came out to see all 3 dogs knocking over the table trying to get the toy, with their legs essentially tied together. I was a problem child.......
#47
When sweeping the concession stand at the movie theater I work at instead of using the dust pan to slowly pick up all the trash I sweep it all to one end and put the trash can on the floor and sweep it straight into there
Isabella Vega 5 years ago
That’s smart! Works the same way when raking! Just rake the stuff into a bucket!
#48
When I worked at an inpatient unit one of the tasks we'd get would be to do a check in with every patient (there were about 100 when we were full). Nobody wanted that task-- it would usually get split up-- except this one guy who was pretty lazy always wanted it and I didn't understand it because he was lazy. Finally one day I was walking out for a break and I figured out what he did. He plopped himself right beside the food line door and wouldn't let people go in until they did their check in with him. That's not how it was supposed to be done, it was supposed to be a chance for clients to connect with staff. But he'd get it done in an hour or so for the whole unit and be done for the day
M O'Connell 5 years ago
But did it result in any decline in 'connection' between patients and staff?
#49
I once ordered a painter to paint my bathroom walls. His price was extortionate for the small job, and he only had a relatively small brush to complete it. It was a pretty lousy paint job because of the small brush, so a few weeks later I finally convinced myself to get another painter, but just a cheap one to go over the bad job done by this other guy. Instead of using just a brush he had a huge roller, and consequentially got the job done much quicker. He did a great job and charged significantly less than the other guy. Lee from Lee’s painting, wherever you are, thanks.
Becca Gizmo the Squirrel 5 years ago
None of that made sense. Could you just not paint it yourself? Why did pro have small brush? Second guy was only thing that made sense.
M O'Connell 5 years ago
Perhaps in all his 'ordering' he neglected to notice that he had hired a sign-painter. Thus the small brush and high price.
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Corey Smith 5 years ago
A roller is faster than a brush? You don't say! Next you'll tell me that a sprayer is faster than a roller.
Roxanne D'souza 5 years ago
"Ordered" is a lousy word. You can't order people around. You hire them for their services.
JessG 5 years ago
Because everyone knows that a roller is faster than a brush.
Load More Replies... #50
There was this guy at a software company that does integrated software systems. He hated his boss and his job and apparently most of his team. Every time he was assigned a bug to fix, he would mark it resolved and assign it to a no-reply email address associated with the team. The odd thing that I don't understand is how he managed to keep issues from getting escalated to other real people. At any rate, no one caught on. When he found a new job and a couple people on his team took him out for drinks he said, "You should look into all the bugs I fixed. I never did any of that." So the guys who took him out for drinks went back and audited his work and were like "Holy Fu*k! He not only did nothing, he hid identified issues for like...a year."
Linda van der Pal 5 years ago
And thus the company learned about this thing called code reviews...
What do you think ?
you_see_davis _ 5 years ago
i just thought this was kinda funny, i saw a bp post a little while ago called something like "50 times people got exposed for their lies on the internet" or "25 times people got caught faking on the internet" and a lot of the stories were similar to this one, but this title doesnt have "fake" or "lie" in the title, so all the posts are true? it just seems kinda funny to me that this was taken from reddit and we have no idea who they are, but we believe its truthful because the bp who wrote this said it was? (im not trying to be mean to anyone, sorry!)
Momma Dubb 5 years ago (edited)
This article is a bit annoying. People increasing efficiency at their job doesn't make them lazy, it makes them innovative. There are entire jobs (consulting) created to do exactly this in every department of a business or organization.
mysty 5 years ago
unrelated but, fruit salad by the wiggles is literally the bop of the century.
Lee Junho 2 years ago
I was thinking of what to tell my Parent about my University grade because I failed woefully not until I searched for a solution and I saw a lot of testimony posts on quora about this hacker pro, I opened a case with their customer support on their platform and i was patched through to Wizard Ivan their database specialist who eventually assisted me in changing my grade so after he asks me some few questions and collected my details together with my school portal login. he asks me to message him after 6 hours so I did then he told me to go and check my grade in the school portal I was amazed at what I saw and I can proudly tell my parent about my grades, you can also contact him if you need such help, his work is swift and although quite expensive. you can Email him on : wizardivanrecovery@gmail.com
Patti Vance 5 years ago
maybe not the same thing but while in college i had to take biology course. not very good at that subject especially when it came to identifying things with microscope. for final the prof stated that we could use our books & notes but only if the notes were stapled/attached to text because he would be flipping through the book anything that fell out would not be allowed in class as he thought this would limit resources we would have. spent the weekend prior making 3x5 cards for each chapter, putting them in envelopes & stapling them to the inside of the book. made the text twice as thick. when i got into class he started flipping through books and papers were falling out of them. got to mine, kind of smiled at me and then flipped it. nothing came out. took the book by the covers and shook it hard and still nothing came out. finally, he said, fair is fair and handed it back. aced the final but wouldnt have done it without my notes.
Brett 5 years ago (edited)
Your a jerk you sat around hired some people to do some hard work for you so they can get paid then you don’t pay them and you get to be lazy that’s not working smarter my guy that’s being a jacka**
Load More Replies... you_see_davis _ 5 years ago
i just thought this was kinda funny, i saw a bp post a little while ago called something like "50 times people got exposed for their lies on the internet" or "25 times people got caught faking on the internet" and a lot of the stories were similar to this one, but this title doesnt have "fake" or "lie" in the title, so all the posts are true? it just seems kinda funny to me that this was taken from reddit and we have no idea who they are, but we believe its truthful because the bp who wrote this said it was? (im not trying to be mean to anyone, sorry!)
Momma Dubb 5 years ago (edited)
This article is a bit annoying. People increasing efficiency at their job doesn't make them lazy, it makes them innovative. There are entire jobs (consulting) created to do exactly this in every department of a business or organization.
mysty 5 years ago
unrelated but, fruit salad by the wiggles is literally the bop of the century.
Lee Junho 2 years ago
I was thinking of what to tell my Parent about my University grade because I failed woefully not until I searched for a solution and I saw a lot of testimony posts on quora about this hacker pro, I opened a case with their customer support on their platform and i was patched through to Wizard Ivan their database specialist who eventually assisted me in changing my grade so after he asks me some few questions and collected my details together with my school portal login. he asks me to message him after 6 hours so I did then he told me to go and check my grade in the school portal I was amazed at what I saw and I can proudly tell my parent about my grades, you can also contact him if you need such help, his work is swift and although quite expensive. you can Email him on : wizardivanrecovery@gmail.com
Patti Vance 5 years ago
maybe not the same thing but while in college i had to take biology course. not very good at that subject especially when it came to identifying things with microscope. for final the prof stated that we could use our books & notes but only if the notes were stapled/attached to text because he would be flipping through the book anything that fell out would not be allowed in class as he thought this would limit resources we would have. spent the weekend prior making 3x5 cards for each chapter, putting them in envelopes & stapling them to the inside of the book. made the text twice as thick. when i got into class he started flipping through books and papers were falling out of them. got to mine, kind of smiled at me and then flipped it. nothing came out. took the book by the covers and shook it hard and still nothing came out. finally, he said, fair is fair and handed it back. aced the final but wouldnt have done it without my notes.
Brett 5 years ago (edited)
Your a jerk you sat around hired some people to do some hard work for you so they can get paid then you don’t pay them and you get to be lazy that’s not working smarter my guy that’s being a jacka**
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