This is a story from my call center times – we used to answer customer e-mails and had a quota of 40 e-mails we had to answer in our 8 hour shift. Regardless of how complicated or easy those e-mails were. Not only did we have to answer the e-mail, we also had to document everything in a hideously complicated and slow system that was not really designed for it.
So you would get an e-mail, attach that e-mail to an existing customer, or create a new customer in the data base so you could attach the e-mail. Then you would answer his e-mail and also attach that e-mail to the existing account, and also document separately what you had done.
Sometimes people would get some spam mails. The same applied, but you did not have to answer them, so that made things easier. People would actually fight over spam mails, because those were easier to answer.
Enter my colleague O. O had been an adequate employee, but his request for a pay raise after 5 years had been refused, so his motivation was pretty much shot to hell. One day he watched the movie “Office Space”, and something clicked within him.
For some reason I showed him how to use macros with our old and klunky software. Macros were pretty much useless, because you could not save them, and it was not flexible. But you could use it on spam mails easily. Do one, while recording, then you could do a few more without lifting a finger.
O would come in, grab 40 spam mails, then go home. He would return just before the end of his shift, run 40 spam mails through a macro, and go home again. He managed to keep this up for half a year. Everybody knew that he didn't do any work, but management failed to bother to notice for half a year.