One day my manager pulled me aside in the open office. “I got a new manager as you heard who now works in this office, and we’ve been talking restructuring the team,” he said, with a grave tone, “And he says you don’t type at your computer enough.”

— Stephanie Hurlburt (@sehurlburt) April 22, 2019

This happens a lot in IT. Had a manager tell someone who worked for me, “I don’t see you working on the servers enough.” The employee tried to explain that we remoted into them and had no need to be at the physical console almost ever, but the manager didn’t understand this at all.

I’ve also gotten criticized for staring at my screen “doing nothing.” I had to explain that I do a lot of design, and if I think about something for two hours I need to actually think and not type, not read (though reading breaks help the unconscious work), not have meetings, and not chat with co-workers (all crap MBAs absolutely love to do). I got a little snippy and said that I might stare at the screen for two hours, but when I was done what emerged on said screen was correct and didn’t need all the re-work of the social butterflies.