Timecards...oh how I hate thee

For the last 6 years of my life I have had to fill out a timecard at work. This involves allocating my work hours to different projects and tasks I worked on that week. This information is used to track the amount of labor needed for different projects. It is also used for accounting purposes since some of my labor can be accounted for in different fashions (i.e. capital, expense, research, etc.) - at least that's what the accountants tell me.

The process of filling out my timecard usually goes as follows:

Telling your boss "No"

I was introduced to an important "unwritten rule" of management. Witnessing someone break the rule made me grateful to have learned the rule early in my career.

I was a few years out of college and attending a budget planning meeting with my boss. It seems I was the only one in our department who could manipulate formulas in Excel (correction - I was the only one dumb enough to admit that I knew what a spreadsheet was) so as punishment....oops....I mean reward, I got to help my boss put together the budget numbers for our department.