My boss tracks remote workers with software. It’s one of those programs that monitors mouse clicks, keyboard strokes, and the active window on your screen every second of the day. I’ve been with the company for six years, never missed a deadline, and brought in more revenue last quarter than the rest of my team combined. But none of that mattered to Nigel. He was the kind of manager who believed that if he couldn’t see you sweating in a cubicle, you were probably at home watching daytime television.
I got an email from my boss Tuesday afternoon that made my blood boil. The subject line was “Urgent: Performance Discrepancy,” and the body of the message was cold and clinical. “Your activity shows 3 hrs of work yesterday, alarming,” he wrote. He had attached a screenshot of a bar graph showing a massive drop in my digital engagement during the peak hours of the afternoon. It looked like I had just walked away from my desk and vanished into thin air.
I took a deep breath and replied immediately, trying to keep my tone professional. I explained that I was with clients all day, specifically our three largest accounts who were all threatening to leave for a competitor. I had spent four hours in person at their headquarters, smoothing things over and finalizing new contracts. I wasn’t at my computer because I was out in the real world, doing the actual job that keeps the lights on in our office.
Nigel’s reply came back in less than a minute. “The data doesn’t lie. You can’t be trusted remotely if you aren’t logging the hours into the system. If the software doesn’t record it, it didn’t happen.” He essentially told me that my physical presence and the millions of dollars in contracts I had just saved were secondary to the “activity” score on his dashboard. I stared at the screen for a long time, feeling a mixture of exhaustion and a strange, calm clarity.
“Noted,” I replied. It was a short, simple word that carried a weight he clearly didn’t understand yet. I didn’t argue, I didn’t send photos of my client badges, and I didn’t call him to plead my case. I simply decided that if he wanted to live by the data, he could die by the data. The next day, I didn’t leave my house, I didn’t take any calls on my personal cell, and I sat directly in front of my computer from 8 a.m. sharp.
I spent the entire morning being the most “active” employee in the history of the company. I opened every spreadsheet, I clicked through every internal training module, and I moved my mouse with a frantic energy that must have made Nigel’s dashboard light up like a Christmas tree. My activity score was a perfect 100%. I was a digital superstar, a paragon of remote productivity, and a complete ghost to the people who actually mattered—our clients.
Around 2 p.m., my personal phone started vibrating on the desk next to me. It was Mr. Henderson, the CEO of the biggest logistics firm in the UK and our primary source of income. I watched the phone shake and crawl across the wood, but I didn’t pick it up. According to Nigel’s software, talking on a personal cell phone isn’t “work” because the computer can’t track the audio. I let it go to voicemail and went back to clicking on an internal survey about office snacks.
Then, the emails started flooding in. Mr. Henderson was frantic because a major shipment of medical supplies was stalled at the border, and he needed the specific override codes that only I had the authority to issue. He sent one email, then another, then a third. I saw them pop up in the corner of my screen, but I didn’t open them. Opening an email and reading it only takes a few seconds of “activity,” while filling out a meaningless digital log takes minutes. I stayed focused on the log.
Nigel panicked after seeing the “real-time alert” that finally hit his desk. It wasn’t an alert from the tracking software; it was a frantic, screaming phone call from Mr. Henderson himself. Apparently, since I wasn’t answering, Henderson had tracked down the corporate office and gotten through to Nigel. Nigel came flying into our team’s Slack channel, his messages appearing in rapid-fire bursts of all-caps text. “ARTHUR, WHY AREN’T YOU RESPONDING TO HENDERSON? THE MED-SUPPLY LINE IS DOWN! CHECK YOUR EMAIL NOW!”
I didn’t rush. I finished the sentence I was typing in a completely irrelevant document about “Future Goal Alignment” and then slowly typed back to Nigel. “I’m sorry, Nigel. I’m currently at 98% activity according to the software. If I stop to handle an external phone call or a complex problem-solving task that doesn’t involve keyboard input, my score might drop again. I don’t want to lose your trust.”
I could almost hear him hyperventilating through the screen. He tried to call me through the company’s VoIP system, and I answered with a calm, steady voice. “Arthur, forget the software! This is a crisis! Henderson is threatening to pull the entire contract if we don’t get those codes in the next ten minutes!” I leaned back in my chair, looking out at the rainy London street. “But Nigel,” I said, “the data doesn’t lie. You told me if it’s not in the system, it didn’t happen. Solving this takes a lot of thinking and very little clicking. I thought you said I couldn’t be trusted remotely?”
There was a long, agonizing silence on the other end of the line. I could hear him realize the corner he had painted himself into. He had spent months dehumanizing his best workers into points on a graph, and now that graph was perfectly high while his business was crumbling. He had prioritized the shadow of work over the work itself. “Arthur, please,” he finally whispered, his voice cracking. “Just fix it. I’ll delete the software. I’ll give you whatever you want. Just don’t let Henderson walk.”
I fixed the issue, of course, because I actually care about the clients and the people who rely on those supplies. It took me about three minutes of “low activity” thinking to find the error and one single click to send the code. But the aftermath was where the real rewarding conclusion happened. Nigel didn’t just delete the software; he was actually investigated by the higher-ups. It turned out that the “tracking” software he bought was a third-party app that wasn’t even cleared by our IT security team.
The twist I didn’t see coming was that Nigel hadn’t just been tracking us to be a micromanager. He had been using the data to try and justify cutting our bonuses. He was planning to show the board that our “low activity” meant we were overpaid. When the board saw that the most “active” day in company history nearly cost them their biggest client, they realized the software was a liability, not an asset. Nigel was demoted, and I was asked to help rewrite the remote work policy for the entire firm.
I realized then that the biggest mistake a leader can make is confusing “busyness” with “impact.” You can track a mouse, but you can’t track a mind. You can measure hours, but you can’t measure loyalty or the subtle art of keeping a client happy. When you treat people like machines, they eventually give you exactly what you asked for—mechanical, soulless repetition—and that is the quickest way to kill a business.
I now manage my own team, and the only “tracking” I do is checking in on their mental health and asking if they have everything they need to succeed. We don’t have dashboards, and we don’t have mouse-trackers. We have trust, and ironically, our productivity has never been higher. My team knows that as long as the work is excellent and the clients are happy, I don’t care if they spent three hours at their desk or three hours at a park thinking of the next big idea.
True leadership is about seeing the person, not the data point. If you spend all your time watching the clock, you’ll eventually miss the sunset. I’m glad Nigel sent that email, because it gave me the chance to prove that the most valuable work often happens when the screen is dark and the mouse is still. We aren’t just digits in a spreadsheet; we are the heartbeat of the company.
If this story reminded you that your worth isn’t measured by a software score, please share and like this post. We need to remind the world that trust is the only metric that truly matters in a successful career. Would you like me to help you find a way to talk to your boss about moving toward a more trust-based work environment?
