‘What is a cheat code at your job that only employees would know?’ – 17 sneaky workplace hacks

From the outside, workplaces can appear very professional with strict ways of doing things. But once you peep behind the curtain, it’s a very different story.

As anyone familiar with the world of work will know, there are lots of ways to game the corporate system. To get an idea of what’s really going on – and how you can benefit – halushki_ put this question to the crafty workers over at r/AskReddit:

‘What is a cheat code at your job that only employees would know?’

Here’s the top insider knowledge to make note of…

1.
‘I worked at the library. The librarian in charge of the Teen Center had a policy that every rank and file employee underneath her was empowered to waive up to $50 in fines without asking permission or giving a reason. This was mostly intended to help teenagers who had lost track of some Arthur book when they were 6 and now couldn’t get what they needed for high school projects. But we were at liberty to use it for whoever we wished.

‘So, if they say “no” to waiving your fines at the circulation desk or any other desk, you may just get a yes in the Teen Center, if you’re nice.

‘I changed some adult man’s whole life by doing it for him once. He didn’t even ask me to. He would always come in to get graphic novels from the teen section but could only read them at the library because he owed $20 in late fees, and that was a lot of money to him.

‘When he asked me if there was any way to get a comic sent over from another branch without placing a hold (which he couldn’t do because of his fees), I just took his card and waived the fees. I saw his face change as I gave it back to him and told him what I’d done. Suddenly he was able to read at home at whatever time he wanted. I think about him a lot.’
-dough_eating_squid

2.
‘I worked in a customer-service-type position with a recorded telephone line.

“You should do what you think is best” is code for “you should do that, but on a recorded line, I can’t tell you to do that.”’
-hymie0

3.
‘I work at a casino, the cheat code is: don’t gamble.’
-VirgoFanboi

4.
‘Doctor’s office here! If you are trying to get in for a sooner appointment, call the office in the morning on days you’re available. When patients cancel their appointment on the night before or the same day, we usually have it open because it’s such short notice.

‘That’s your best shot at getting an appointment really soon. It often works even for providers who have wait lists going out months in advance. Same thing for testing and imaging.’
-AcanthocephalaOk2966

5.
‘You know how 90% of the time, restarting a Windows computer fixes whatever issue you’re having?

‘Nearly all our employees will say they’ve restarted their computer before calling for help. We have a script we can run that shows (without them knowing) the last time they rebooted. It’s almost always over a week or so.

‘So the first thing we’ll do is run another script to reboot their computer. We’ll say we’re “running an update/fix”. But we aren’t. We’re just rebooting it.

‘And nearly always, that fixes their issue. They think we’re wizards, but in reality, we just did what they claimed to have done.’
-ChairmanLaParka

6.
‘When booking a flight through our travel system, only the cheapest flight is marked as to “green“, if it’s within a certain range of that flight it’s „yellow“ it requires and explanation on why you need the more expensive flight and your higher up needs to approve manually, all other flights are „red“ and need to be approved by even higher up management and usually get declined because you should get the green or yellow flights.

‘If you want to book one of these red flights (because it’s a better connection, better airline, more convenient time) without approval you can just set the search parameters for the departure time to exactly what the preferred flight is departing at. The system then sees it as the cheapest flight for those parameters and you can book without any further approval.’
-Nass44

7.
‘We have to clock in on our phones with GPS on. I found out if I’m late I can just change the system time setting on my phone and it’ll register the clock in at that time, then you can immediately change it back to ‘automatic network time’ and if you go back you’ll see the timesheet app be updated instantly.

‘So if I’m 10 mins late I’ll change the system time to 6am, clock in, then put automatic time back on and the app will say I’ve been clocked in for those 10 mins. I haven’t told any of my coworkers in fear of these jackasses messing it up for me.’
-naturalborn

8.
‘If they’ll let you use your own credit card, do it. I racked up 40k in bonus cashback by using my credit card for travel in a 2 year period. They changed the policy and I was one of the only ones that was mad about it.’
-BGOG83

9.
‘Wait for the aggressive cat to hiss and you can squirt the liquid gabapentin in easier’
-Ok_Pickle7063