Almost like Homer Simpson: US companies fight with simulated hard work

In the USA, companies are increasingly grappling with the phenomenon of employees working from home using creative technical solutions to simulate busyness. The whole thing is strikingly reminiscent of a particularly popular Simpsons episode in which family man Homer switches to working from home and chaos breaks out at his workplace.

This has even cost some people their jobs. However, the feigned diligence is also the result of companies’ increased need for control in times of mobile working.

The well-known major bank Wells Fargo fired several dozen employees in May. The accusation: “Simulated keyboard activity that gives the impression of active work.” Wells Fargo does not tolerate “unethical behavior,” the bank said.

Instructional videos on the Internet

Online shops and video platforms such as Tiktok and YouTube are full of devices, software solutions and advice on how to simulate activity on the computer or other devices provided by the company. This is usually intended to prevent the computer from going into sleep mode, activating the screen saver or changing the status in conferences from “active” to “inactive”.

There is the “Mouse Jiggler”, for example: a small device on which the mouse is placed. The computer mouse is then moved at regular intervals. Another popular option is to open a writing program on the computer and fixate on any letter – line after line, page after page is then filled with “text” made up of the same letter. There are also software solutions that “move” the mouse or “press” keys at regular intervals.

Or start long presentations and then sit back. “Just press ‘start slideshow’ and everything will be fine,” says influencer Sho Dewan in a Tiktok video. He used to be responsible for personnel recruitment himself and is now sharing his secrets.

Such videos sometimes have millions of views. One user wrote in the comments under the clip: “Why didn’t I discover this sooner?” He himself once taped a computer mouse to a fan that was running.

Of course, the risk of getting caught is high. In a post on the Reddit network called “My boss caught me using a mouse mover,” an employee tells of his bad luck. Being caught was the last straw, after he had already apologized several times at meetings with “power outages” and “thunderstorms” and left without a word. Some users advised him to use a physical mouse mover instead of software, as it was not so easy to prove that he was using it.

Employer as supervisor

Basically, however, employers have to take responsibility for themselves, because according to several US studies, they have drastically increased the monitoring of their employees as a result of home office and mobile working. For example, the demand for software for desktop monitoring, tracking keystrokes and even GPS tracking of employees has increased significantly since the pandemic. According to information from the magazine “Harvard Business Review”, a company from Florida installed software on its employees’ computers that takes a screenshot every ten minutes.

According to human resources experts, the monitoring has led to a real “productivity theater” in some companies, in which employees pretend to be productive. The cat-and-mouse game also raises the question of how useful it is to monitor the mouse and keyboard in order to measure the productivity and effectiveness of employees.

Last but not least, the whole thing can backfire: The magazine “Harvard Business Review” found in a survey that monitored employees are particularly likely to take unauthorized breaks and disobey instructions. They are also more likely to damage company property, steal office supplies and “work deliberately slowly,” according to the report.

AJ Mizes, head of the consulting firm Human Reach, lamented the result of a work culture that is more about quantity than “human relationships and true productivity.” The trend toward excessive surveillance in the U.S. economy is worrying, he said. “Instead of encouraging innovation and trust, this will only lead employees to find even more ways to appear busy.”