Ask HN: What is the worst bullshit thing you were asked to do at $JOB?

Green energy project in the western US, on ancestral tribal land so we were advised to keep our eyes out for historical sites, and to let tribal advisors/inspectors know if we found any.

Well, we (my group was a subcontractor, and some of the first out pioneering through new areas) found some ancient hunting blinds on either side of a saddle through a ridge, complete with trash pits/stone knapping shards and even some paintings on the walls. We advised the General Contractor as the tribal rep wasn't onsite that day. The GC told us to forget what we saw and they'd send a bulldozer over to wipe out the site, as the blinds were right in the planned route of an access road and they didn't want the hassle of a redesign.

Hell to the no, we got hold of the tribal rep outside the chain of command and let them know what was up. They rushed to the site issued a very stern stop work order (either you stop your equipment so we can assess this find, or you will load your shit up and get off our land) and went through the proper processes. A realignment of the road did happen, and the GC got annoyed at us, but fuck them.

Later, the same tribal inspector gifted my boss with a hand-knapped obsidian spear head as thanks.

At one job, the order came on down from on high that we had to do timesheets, but we had to log precisely 7.2 hours a day. So I made a little emacs lisp function to adjust my times proportionally. Hot key was C-M f (for Fraud) :)

I was asked to defend myself against accusations of theft of hundreds of pounds of copper cable.

My immediate supervisor was loading his pickup truck in the morning and carting it down to the scrap yard down the road before anyone got in.

It took one of the truck drivers for the shop arriving early one morning to notice it before upper management even checked the security tapes which showed him loading his pickup for weeks while aiding in rumours that I was responsible. Meanwhile I was poised to be fired and charged.

I didn't own a car, but somehow was making off with piles of industrial 4/0 power lines.

Not a great experience. Would not recommend. I quit, found a better life.

It was the 1980s, and I had just started working in the stock room at the local Montgomery Wards (A department store similar to Sears). Less than 2 months in, most of my co-workers were arrested and taken to jail, (they had been stealing by the truck load!) leaving me to handle all the pickups (the dock at the back of the store where you get your TV, etc) by myself on the Friday before Christmas.

I did the best I could, as I still didn't even know where things were... but everyone got pissed as I got up to 2 hours behind...and took one insult too many, so I left.

I have a bit of regret, and I believe I could have handled it better had I managed expectations, etc... but I was a kid thrown in over his head.

I can't remember the details of the actual task. A couple years ago we got a request from the business analyst to make a change to the system. Whatever the change was I remember objecting to it, saying we would create issue in the system and there was a better alternative that wouldn't involve constant prod issue fixes (but was a substantial lift and probably not worth the effort). They decided to do it their way and assigned the story to me. Nope, I'm not going to be a part of breaking our system with some BS. I told them I wouldn't work on it for the reasons I stated. They assigned it to someone else and implementated... briefly. The business realized their mistake and rolled it back. They never tried the other implementation because it wasn't enough return on the effort, like I said. If I had been wrong I probably would have been fired. Because I was right, I kept my job but my relationship/rep with the business was shot.

I had a second issue on that same team where the business analyst wanted me to implement an accrual. The requirements didn't match with the stated intent- basically they were calling it an accrual but the requirements wanted snapshots of what would be paid later. I brought up the discrepancy and asked for some clarification. I was told "build it how the I tell you". So I wasted 3 weeks building it out. Then they again realized I was right and had me rebuild it as an actual accrual. No "thanks", no "sorry". Just "We need to build it this other way now".