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The coworker who tried to automate his job… and accidentally everyone else’s

· 2 min read

Ever meet a techie who thinks the only way to win the war against Monday is by writing scripts? Meet Ron, the coworker who took “automation” a little too literally. He started with a single script to auto‑save his coffee breaks, then expanded to a full‑blown “end‑of‑day report generator.” Before he knew it, he had a script for every task – from emailing the boss to ordering donuts on autopilot.

Things went sideways when he accidentally pointed his newest “batch‑process” at the shared department folder instead of his personal one. Suddenly, emails were blasting before they finished typing, database entries were mutating like a bad sci‑fi sequel, and the IT guys had a full‑blown “hacked” panic attack. The manager? He was about to launch a full‑scale emergency meeting.

In the end, Ron spent the next few hours apologizing nonstop while IT tried to reverse engineer the chaos. A new policy was drafted on the spot: “Ron must obtain approval before running automation scripts.” Ron? Still salty, but at least the office isn’t accidentally turning into a sci‑fi set now.

Comment Section​

He accidentally speed‑ran digital transformation.

He accidentally speed‑ran digital transformation.

I was young and wrote a bunch of scripts to help coworkers. I ended up getting them all laid off because I unknowingly automated their entire jobs. This was 25 years ago and I still feel bad about it.

AI post, yawn, next.

Hi everyone this is Ron, don't be like Ron. Nothing left to see here. That Ron such a great guy. Love you Ron.

TL;DR​

Ron’s attempt to automate his job accidentally turned the entire office into a self‑serving, self‑destroying, self‑apologizing machine. Now he’s got a rule that says, “Ron, ask before you auto‑do.” Even the IT guys are still shaking their heads at the “digital transformation” he tried to speed‑run.