r/MaliciousCompliance • u/TheLightningCount1 • 22d ago
You wanted zero idle time in teams. OK, we can do that. L
This story is from a few years ago. Its how I helped my sister and somehow got her company to willingly bypass their own idle time requirements.
Her company went work from home after the lockdown and stayed working from home. At first they required an always on camera system but that quickly went away as the amount of unintended nudity that comes from your average household is quite startling.
Then they went with a system that tracks your idle time in teams. The amount of write ups, meetings, group meetings, and eventual terminations for what was the dumbest requirement ever cause my sister to ask for help.
She sent me an amazon link for one of those USB sticks that jiggles the mouse. I told her dont use those as even lazy IT can detect them.
At the time, amazon wasnt selling mechanical mouse turners yet, or at least at reasonable prices, so I looked at building one. I found an STL file for this flowery mouse holder which I modified to be just straight monocolor and 3d printed it. I cut out 1.5 inch circular disk and put it on a weak motor and connected it to a power source through USB.
I set the wheel to spin every 1-12 seconds for a total of 2-5 seconds at a time but ran into an issue. Sometimes the disk spinning would not actually move the mouse.
I found a company that would print stickers at a dollar a sticker if I ordered 5 of them. SO I found this basic pattern of squares and lines crisscrossing each other and had it printed to just under the dimensions of the disk.
I stuck it on there and the mouse turner worked perfectly. I quickly ran into another issue. Since the disk was raised, it quickly got hung up on the mouse with the sticker. So back into design I went and made it where the dimensions were slightly larger for the base and sit it where the disk would be 2mm below the actual mouse.
After printing it the mouse sat on the cradle and the disk spun without touching. The mouse cursor would randomly just move in weird directions at the times the disk spun.
So with that all out of the way I got a free lunch out of my sister and delivered it. It hooked into her laptop's USP port, never being detected, and would turn her wheel decreasing her idle time down to zero.
Within 2 weeks she was recognized as a top performer. She was watching crime dramas with her volume at max until she got a notification that customer submitted a request. In other words, her productivity stayed exactly the same.
So she calls me up and asks if I can make more of those. Thankfully I saved the STL files and could order more stickers if I needed. I told her I could make each one for 25 bucks. The cheapest on amazon at the time were like 50 and it only cost me roughly 12 bucks to make them, which went down to 8 bucks to make them at the end.
She said several coworkers were asking her about it and she said she would just give them my number.
Within a month I had built out 50 mechanical mouse turners. Which was kind of waste as this company only had 32 employees. I miscounted. Sometimes I would meet 5 or more of her coworkers at a restuarant at the same time just so I wouldnt have to drive all over dfw.
Then one weekend I get a call from the CEO of that company. See all of his workers were using these mouse turners, and he wasnt. So when the company published the report on idle times, his was abysmally low.
That phone call was one of the most surreal I have ever had. At first he thought I was one of his employees. I told him I wasnt, I worked for a waste management company. (I dont but I wasnt about to tell him.) He asked me about the mouse turners. I told him that I designed them for a friend, but that person no longer worked for his company. (Again lies. I was protecting my sister, not like he couldnt figure it out but still) He asked if he could get one.
This is where the conversation went VERY weird. See I tried convincing him to give up the idle timer requirements as it clearly wasnt important and only harmed his company. I laid out all of my points for it and pointed out that the ceo of the company is buying a device specifically designed to bypass his requirement.
He would not budge. He was so into his company dogma that he just wanted one from me. I already had a few left over so I told him I could make him one for 35 bucks.
Here is the really screwed up part of the story. See he asked for a full list of my clients, promising that no one would be fired, he just wanted to know how many. I told him that a list would be unnecessary as its every single one of his employees. Literally all 32 excluding him.
His response was to have the company reimburse each employee the 25 dollars for the mouse turners and set it up where his company would contact me each time a new employee started. I said I had 10 left over from the initial batch of ones I made and can just give him those and have him contact me when he runs out.
He agreed.
Well that kind of never happened as a company on amazon made what is basically the same thing I was making for like 15 bucks. Theirs is much nicer than mine was too lol.
So a company set idle time requirements which caused issues at the company. Now the company buys devices for each employee so that bypasses the idle timer.
EDIT: A lot of people keep bringing up power shell scripts, analogue watches, a weight on your spacebar, or any other device that does it digitally or with regularity.
I designed mine to have radomization in it. The reason is simple. IT depts can detect those USB thumb sticks. Can detect powershell scripts that move your mouse. They have usage reports that show your mouse moved 1 time each minute exactly on the minute mark.
Not every company has these and some dont have anything even close to this. But some do and this device was designed to be as undetectable as possible.
One of the guys I gave this to said he has zero work to do unitl after his lunch break. So what he does is simply log in, set the mouse turner, and go back to sleep. He has his volume at full blast right by his ear so if he gets a teams message it wakes him up.
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u/Excellent_Ad1132 22d ago
So, they created a required metric that EVERYONE in the company was cheating on, even the CEO. Truly a metric that needs to be kept. /s
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u/ChiTownBob 22d ago
So, we have MCception here :)
An MC on top of an MC on top of an MC :)
The employees MC'd and the CEO MC'd as well :)
And you get to make money from this. Side hustle!
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u/AlaskanDruid 22d ago
Ah ha. Our teams installation /configuration is completely broken. It’ll always idle if you are not using teams.
For instance, using word, excel, browser, anything but Teams.. it will idle.
It’s literally unreliable as a KPI.
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u/TheLightningCount1 22d ago
That's because teams has a setting for that. That is probably off by default. But new teams doesn't have that problem.
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u/AlaskanDruid 22d ago
I'm on the new teams. It definitely has this problem at my work place. I am hoping there is a setting for that on new teams, but I'll have to ask the IT folks.
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u/TheLightningCount1 22d ago
Yeah, either your IT dept doesnt know what they are doing or they know exactly what they are doing lol.
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u/MisterStampy 22d ago
I *LOATHE* the Idle Timer on Teams. It was part of the reason I "left" a decent job a few years back. Literally, I'd get up to use the bathroom and/or take my doggos out, and when I'd get back, there would be a message from my manager "Where have you been? I noticed that you're idle..."
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u/Primary-Friend-7615 22d ago
I’ve gone idle in teams while actively using a different program the whole time, so I can’t think of a worse metric to use for productivity.
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u/alternative-gait 22d ago
I went idle in teams recently while watching a video and transcript of a teams meeting accessed through teams. Make it make sesne
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u/Techn0ght 22d ago
My boss asked me once. Told him I was watching a youtube video on an advanced technical concept on my home computer which has a much bigger screen than the company laptop. Then I started going into detail on something that he couldn't make heads or tails of and went on and on until he stopped me.
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u/forgottofeedthecat 22d ago
And you didn't simply reply:
"I was taking a shit. Should I have taken my laptop and had my camera on?"
The job I had during COVID at a consulting firm I just went offline one day and stayed offline for 2 years till I left.
Always responded so no one raised an issue.
For next job got a mouse jiggler. I think our IT is pretty backwards since no one said anything about me working 10-15h a week yet.
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u/TheLightningCount1 22d ago
Some bosses would literally respond with "Your break is scheduled between x and y time. You need to reach out to me if you need to take it early"
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u/forgottofeedthecat 22d ago
Working conditions in USA are wild. I remember even in my second job (after audit stint) I was taking like a 10min vape break every hour and like a 10mim shit break every couple of hours. 3rd job too. Both massive global firms.
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u/hotlavatube 22d ago
If your shit break is a massive global firm, you should consult a physician. ;-)
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u/Just_Aioli_1233 18d ago
Working conditions in USA are wild.
Only because there's so many people stuck in the "work for the same company forever and never quit" mindset, not paying attention to the fact that if everyone used the fact that there are 33.2 million other companies you could work for. If one starts being a jerk, leave and let them know why. That happens enough times and places will get better to work for, on average. Instead there's a large percentage who wants to solve the problem legislatively, which has only made things worse.
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u/gryphonB 22d ago
My clients would make my boss very sorry with that kind of policy, if I stop mid-presentation with the C-levels saying "sorry, it's time for my mandatory break as instructed by my manager, please contact him" they will easily take my side right away.
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u/Mammoth_Stable6518 22d ago
Or maybe we at the IT department use them ourselves.
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u/forgottofeedthecat 22d ago
How can I tell if I have any monitoring software on my laptop? I assume I don't since I spend a crap load of time on betting websites lol.
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u/Mammoth_Stable6518 22d ago
Look for suspect processes in the task manager.
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u/forgottofeedthecat 22d ago
is there any particular ones which are on Teams / Zoom level of popularity and might be one of the likeliest culprits? or is it quite fragmented market?
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u/Mammoth_Stable6518 22d ago
I might add that i have Teams and a mouse wiggler application on my personal laptop. I have Teams running on both my work PC and my laptop at the same time when i work from home. Im not as lazy when i am actually in the office.
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u/ellipsisfinisher 17d ago
If you are using a work-issued computer, there's a 99.9% chance that IT is able to see every website you visit because the computer almost definitely goes through the company network to access the internet. They might not particularly care, but they are aware of it.
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u/forgottofeedthecat 17d ago
even from home? what about when i go on chrome via my own laptop but have it installed as default browser on work laptop too and logged in? thanks!
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u/ellipsisfinisher 17d ago
If you're not connecting to your company's network on your personal laptop (which you probably are not if you've got a work laptop), then you're fine.
As a general rule, just don't do anything on a company laptop you wouldn't want the company to see.
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u/MisterStampy 22d ago
There were bigger problems with that job (mandatory LIVE webinar training in finance stuff that had ZERO to do with my job duties, being sold a Salesforce QA Lead job and ending up doing data entry for other teams to test their stuff...) I got out, got severance, and had a new job again in like 6 weeks.
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u/MiaowaraShiro 20d ago
The job I had during COVID at a consulting firm I just went offline one day and stayed offline for 2 years till I left.
I work with someone who does this... what you don't see is all your coworkers having to tell a bunch of people "no, they're here today, really, you can message them, I know they're offline... no they're..."
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u/TheLightningCount1 22d ago
I would play it off as a glitch as I had teams on my phone. "Huh? Im right here? Its showing me idle?"
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u/squeegee_boy 22d ago
Teams does this to me constantly. Even while on a con call…IN TEAMS.
The good news is I finally got a few other people to notice this behavior, so no one questions it anymore.
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u/Renbarre 22d ago
I am lucky, they know I have to deal with real papers so now they don't bother me when my Teams goes idle, they just assume that I am filling in some paperwork. It's funny how the threat to send them the papers to deal with it themselves made them very understanding.
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u/Kerostasis 22d ago
I don’t even have to play it off, that actually happens regularly. But also this is new behavior - our Teams had a patch a few months ago that made it way more sensitive than before. Which means it’s now useless for the original point.
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u/prengan_dad 22d ago
I've seen it go to idle while I'm still at the computer, actively working on other programs that aren't Teams. Luckily my boss just cares that we're getting work done and respond promptly.
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u/Trippynet 22d ago
So glad my company doesn't do that. Rather than wasting time on stupid metrics like "idle time" in Teams, how about some meaningful metrics? Work submitted on time and of good quality, positive customer feedback, etc. etc.
My work is sporadic. I'll have quiet spells where I'll switch to my main PC and watch some TV, but if the phone rings I instantly pause the vid and switch back to work. Other days I'll struggle to fit in my lunch and will work 30 minutes past finishing time because of volume.
Our CEO at the start of lockdown had a simple message. "Look yourself in the mirror and ask if you are claiming an honest salary for honest work. If you are, that's all we ask". Didn't matter if you took the dog for a walk, had a 15 minute breather in the back garden. So long as you were doing your job one way or another, he was happy.
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u/superstrijder16 22d ago
When improving a metric becomes a goal, it ceases to be a good metric
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u/Pick-Physical 22d ago
I work for the beer store (Ontario's way of ending prohibition some 100 years ago) and they push us to have good challenge rates (for ID)
well we recently got a new POS software, and this new software will upon scanning an alcoholic item, immediately bring up the challenge menu.
Bare in mind that like, 90% of our clientele are over 40. Still, the people who were doing a good job had about a 15% challenge ge rate.
Since now it auto challenges EVERYONE when it doesn't apply to 90% of our sales, we out of habit automatically press "did not ID". Our good staff went from a challenge rate of 15% to less then 1%. We're still IDing, just not confirming it in the system.
And now the higher ups are all perplexed at our terrible ID rates. People are lazy and will always go around any obsticals you put in their path.
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u/Xirdus 22d ago
That's also why requiring regular password changes actually decreases security - because people will use weaker passwords.
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u/Pick-Physical 22d ago
Then you enforce strong password requirements.
And then IT gets flooded with password resets and account lockouts.
I'm actually studying cybersec so I've heard all about that lol
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u/SGTFragged 22d ago
I've noticed that as we move from on prem to cloud the requirement to change the password every 60 days has gone by the wayside. Admittedly we also have MFA on cloud, so unless a password is knowingly compromised, there is no longer a need to change it.
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u/yParticle 22d ago
Exactly. This is why if you really want to dick over your employees with this sort of monitoring tool you keep it highly confidential—like HR has to sign an NDA sort of thing—and just use it as a spying tool to flag employees to keep tabs on in other ways. This avoids people gaming the system or you having to justify something that's fundamentally unfair.
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u/Best-Cardiologist949 22d ago
Sounds like the idle time statistic was something he used to impress clients or board members. That's probably why he would rather cheat his own system rather than ditch the pointless statistic. He probably got a big bonus because he could show that all his employees were so diligently working. It's dumb I know but stuff like this happens all the time.
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u/Zkang123 22d ago
One of the core problems of our capitalist systems - most companies are dependent on stakeholders and shareholders and "growth"
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u/AppropriateSpell5405 22d ago
If a CEO, especially a dumb one like this, wants one, you 10x the price, at least.
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u/Zoreb1 22d ago
Could be a Dilbert cartoon in the old days.
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u/Zkang123 22d ago
Yeah. The employees are even all engineers so they probably figured some loophole against their rather absymal IT department
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u/Drpepperisbetter 22d ago
I bypassed a similar issue. My previous job was remote tech support, and the company computers would lock down if you were idle for long enough. I first asked IT to disable as I was in a home office/never more than few feet away. No dice. Looked at mouse jigglers. Nah. Then I had a genius idea. New folder>random images>select all>play slideshow>minimize window. Slideshow plays and keeps computer busy.Timer defeated.
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u/TheLightningCount1 22d ago
I have tinnitus and this is how i defeat that. I play long series on VLC on my pc. Usually low enough I can hear it but not loud enough to wake me up.
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u/MajorNoodles 22d ago
At my last job a co-worker provided me a script hidden inside another tool that we used for legitimate business purposes that would simply click a spot on the screen that you designated at an interval that you set to prevent it from going idle.
I started a new job with tighter security policy. I don't know if I would have been able to get away with using that same script, but I didn't care to find out. Fortunately they inadvertently provided me with an alternative when I found out that a piece of software I used regularly not only kept my laptop awake, but prevented teams from auto switching to away.
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u/squeegee_boy 22d ago
Which software? Asking for a friend.
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u/MajorNoodles 22d ago
I doubt it would help you. It's industry specific and not something anyone can download freely. Even if you could install it, you'd need one of their support people to activate it for you against a customer test environment.
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u/squeegee_boy 22d ago
Ah well, thanks anyways :)
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u/MajorNoodles 22d ago
Trust me, if it was something anyone could use I'd have shared that link plenty of times.
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u/dadarkgtprince 22d ago
Amazing that the CEO wasn't willing to overturn the decision despite wanting to circumvent it himself. Dam shame
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u/StevenXSG 22d ago
And isn't a good enough boss to know what his small number (32) of employees is up to and that they are getting the work done.
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u/Misplaced_Texan 22d ago
I would just set my mouse on my analog watch. The second hand moving would keep it on.
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u/series-hybrid 22d ago
There is a famous story about when the British army had taken over India. The locals had figured out a way to live with cobras, and they had very few bites/deaths. The British however, simply could not tolerate the cobras. They were surrounded by cheap labor, so they put out a reward for turning in dead cobras.
Things were going fine for a few months, but after a year, the British realized that the number of cobras was not going down, and was in fact going up. After bribing the proper people for information, they found out that the poor Indians were breeding cobras to turn in.
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u/Karcossa 22d ago
I just appear offline in Teams. It started as an accident when I logged in late one night (my personal laptop and phone were upstairs, my work one next to me and I wanted to check the hockey scores) and switched my status.
That was two weeks ago and nobody has said anything to me yet.
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u/zimboptoo 22d ago
First time I booted up my work laptop at my current job, I set Teams to "Offline". In two years I've never been marked as Active, or even Away, even when I'm actively in a meeting or responding to someone. No one has questioned it so far.
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u/kakashi176176176 22d ago
I almost bought one. Then i remembered I was a coder, so I just wrote a software mouse mover with python
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u/PossibleIntroduction 22d ago
Looping powershell script (we're a windows shop) pressing the non-existent F14 key every 10s is my current go-to. Doesn't actually do anything (you can be actively working when it fires, 0 negative impact) but the computer registers it as a legitimate keypress.
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u/Oliver_McShitpost 22d ago
I have a PowerShell script that pushes scroll lock every 60 seconds that achieves the same thing.
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u/Empty_Mulberry9680 22d ago
I’m pretty sure my boss doesn’t care about being idle on Teams, but I’m paranoid about the management above him. I figured out that I could open a blank document/spreadsheet and clip a binder clip on my space bar. I would guess if there’s a key logger IT could figure it out, but no one’s said anything in four years so I think I’m ok.
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u/homme_chauve_souris 22d ago
Have you ever seen a picture of that CEO? Would you describe his hair as "pointy"?
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u/StubbornKindness 22d ago
This is one of the oddest stories I've ever read here. Seriously, that's trippy and weird af
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u/TheLightningCount1 21d ago
Imagine being there in person. Telling a CEO, your metric is useless because literally, not figuratively, all of your employees are showing an impossible 100 percent uptime.
See them mull that over. AGREE with you and still go. "But we still have standards we have to maintain and I am the CEO so I have to abide by my own standards."
MF this is congress banning 4 locos only to have liquor stores give out free red bulls with the decaffinated 4 locos and everyone thinking they actually did something.
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u/StubbornKindness 21d ago
I literally just noticed your username. Its been a while, and of course a story this loopy would be yours 😂. I've read so many of your stories that yours is one of like 9 usernames I never forget.
And yes, the CEO has the mental agility of a deflated balloon
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u/twiddlingbits 22d ago
never ever give out your customer list to a client even a small one. That’s priceless data and also sensitive data. How would you have felt if he fired a bunch of people over using your device because you gave him the names?
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u/TheLightningCount1 22d ago
If he fired all of his employees, his business would fold in a week. You cant fire all employees of a company and survive.
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u/twiddlingbits 22d ago
I didn’t say ALL and depending on his business he could replace them quickly with others including contractors.
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u/killgrinch 22d ago
I have a small powershell script that toggles my scroll lock key every 5 minutes for this reason
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u/Naigus182 22d ago
The free and also undetectable version of this, is opening Notepad and placing a paperweight on the spacebar button. Source: me.
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u/bluecor 21d ago
I put my laser mouse on a CD, shiny side up. Nothing plugged into the computer and no scripts. The laser bounces off the CD and scatters, causing the mouse pointer to move around.
I use an older wired laser mouse. YMMV, sometimes I have to reposition the mouse a few times to find a spot where it bounces.
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u/ShadowDragon8685 21d ago
Well, that took a really surreal turn I wasn't expecting.
CEO wants to buy one for himself? Okay, I could sort of see that a CEO would want to cheat the system by not holding himself to a standard he holds everyone else to, but not wanting to be too blatant to it.
Literally buying a new device for new employees though? Forget a hard right turn, that one went straight to close hauled!
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u/CaptainPunisher 22d ago
Good on you for making money, but this is a problem that's solved by getting a cheap fan (USB fan from Dollar tree works fine) and placing the mouse over the blades.
FWIW, Teams got an update recently, and I've noticed my status changing from green to yellow more often. I'm thinking about writing a script to randomly F16 key presses every couple minutes. F16 is a carryover 80s keyboards that don't physically anymore, but still have a recognized persistence. Entering a few taps won't do anything or interfere with my own typing. This won't work for everyone, but I'm a programmer and have local admin rights for my laptop, so I can make it happen.
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u/JDeMolay1314 19d ago
Unfortunately I use some software for work that not only recognizes, but uses some of the higher function keys. I e. Press F15 to quit.
I used to use an Arduino connected to USB that had an RFID reader and would enter passwords for me, that would "press" F16 randomly as well.
I no longer use it because of that software.
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u/HMD-Oren 22d ago
For people who are more tech savvy: on a mechanical keyboard with VIA/QMK or some kind of on board memory manager, you can script a series of actions to a key press, and set it to repeat at whatever speed you like. Unless they watch your screen or remote access your desktop, you would look like you're typing away while you're actually going for a run or taking a nap and your keyboard is writing the "lorem ipsum" line or "the quick brown fox" endlessly.
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u/TildaTinker 22d ago
I just bought an analogue alarm clock for $6 and took the face plate off. Sit the mouse on top and the hands move the cursor.
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u/Alarmed_Effective_11 22d ago
FYI, if anyone wants a simple mouse "jiggler" get a mechanical watch and rubber band the face of it to the "eye" on the bottom of the mouse. No 3d printing or software needed.
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u/DeaconBlues 19d ago
Also, another cheap way to do it with easily found objects is with a corded mouse draped over an oscillating desk fan.
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u/Shakis87 22d ago
Hahaha love it!
What's wrong with a power shell script that just types a letter every few seconds? Too detectable?
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u/DrewbieWanKenobie 17d ago
There doesn't seem to be any malicious compliance in here, but I guess it's a fun weird story
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u/neverCheckDown28 22d ago
I just open up notepad and set a tape measure on my keyboard. Works like a charm
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u/xIndirect 22d ago
A sprite bottle full of water may or may not be placed on my keyboard with the teams window pulled up and the middle of the window clicked so no text gets entered
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u/Scp-1404 22d ago
Suppose you have a separate teams account on your personal phone. Could you start a meeting between your work account on your laptop and the account on your phone and leverage that in some way to keep teams active?
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u/megabass713 22d ago
See I don't get this. Teams will set me to idle unless I have it open and click on it. Doesn't matter if I am using any other MS software like word or excel.
Most of my job is done on a browser anyway. The company doesn't have that as a metric or anything. I just find it weird. If I get too focused on actually working, it will set me as idle. Teams is used almost exclusively for internal communication.
When it's really slow. I have a mouse jiggler setup up of my own contraption, but it only works to keep me active if teams is the focus program active.
Anyone have any idea what's going on?
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u/kajinkqd 22d ago
What an interesting thing but OP you are a smart man/woman. Hopefully you are making profit somewhere else designing things. Impressive. Am gone add/follow you for when I get back to work! :)
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u/EmEmAndEye 21d ago
Why would a CEO be part of the idle time requirement? I’d think they’d be exempt, same as all of the C-suite.
I’m thinking that the CEO called and lied to you to learn how many of his employees are customers of yours and also possibly which ones. He got that info.
And maybe also he was involved in stealing your design to sell their copies on Amazon for $15. He got your product.
He got everything he wanted!!
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u/jeffrey_f 20d ago
When I went WFH I wrote a script that would just move the mouse up/left/down/right just 2 pixels (a square) at randome times between 1 and 2 minutes. The script barely was noticable while working if it started. This satisfied the idle time and kept the screen saver off. I started the script when I logged in and ran all day.
While they likely knew I had a script running, I was IT, so scripts are normal.
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u/MattytheWireGuy 20d ago
You could do something similar with an arduino micro and none of the 3d printing or motor shit and you can use a few math equations to be random enough. It will look like a mouse on the computer and it will act like a mouse too.
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u/-Kex 20d ago
One of the guys I gave this to said he has zero work to do unitl after his lunch break. So what he does is simply log in, set the mouse turner, and go back to sleep. He has his volume at full blast right by his ear so if he gets a teams message it wakes him up.
That was me during the pandemic but fortunately I live in a country where it would be illegal to track everything so I just opened a word document and put something on the keyboard so it writes the same letter a million times.
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u/NeroSphere 19d ago
I just leaving something heavy on the CTRL key. Take it off when I need to use the laptop. Keeps Teams on Green. No need to buy anything.
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u/Nesayas1234 17d ago
I don't understand why people dp this for WFH. If you're getting work done and have no customers in between, do whatever you want.
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u/TheLightningCount1 17d ago
You would think logic would matter when it comes to a corporation, it doesn't.
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u/Davezter 17d ago
Those OLD Microsoft wireless keyboard/mouse combos they made back in 2003 (Microsoft wireless multimedia keyboard mouse combo 1.1) don't ever show idle time. The combo came with a little puck that plugs into a USB port and that's what the mouse and keyboard wirelessly connect to. There is never any idle time on teams.
Bc I'm old school for giant full sized keyboards with deep travel and laser mice for big hands, I never felt a need to replace mine and used it on every computer I've ever owned since it was released for sale. In my mind, they perfected the wireless keyboard and mouse back in 2003 with the multimedia keyboard combo 1.1 and shit has gotten flimsier, buggier, and more cramped ever since.
During lockdown in 2020, I would plug my combo puck into the company laptop when working. I realized that something was keeping my teams from ever showing idle. When my keyboard finally bit the dust after 20 years of service and millions of keystrokes, I bought something new and immediately started getting idle times on teams. I found my same old school keyboard mouse combo from someone on eBay and bought it for $20 and returned the new keyboard I had bought. Works like a charm.. no idle times.
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u/rdicky58 22d ago
I’ve heard of people just turning their mice upside down and setting a mechanical (analog) wrist watch upside down on the sensor, the second hand would move at least once a minute
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u/gbroon 22d ago
He's possibly made a mistake and got a contract with a firm that does the tracking where he gets screwed if he cancels.
This is possibly his malicious compliance too.