(MENAFN- Live Mint) In a bizarre yet oddly poetic turn of events, a company's attempt to monitor remote employee activity went completely off-script - when the tracking software started tracking itself instead.

A Reddit user recently shared the hilarious mix-up in a post titled“My company installed software to track remote activity... it tracked itself instead.” The story quickly went viral for exposing the irony of workplace surveillance gone wrong.

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According to the post, the company had rolled out a“mouse movement tracker” - a monitoring tool meant to record remote employees' activity patterns and gauge productivity levels during work hours. The system was designed to flag idle time and low engagement.

However, as it turned out, the software began monitoring the IT department's test machine - one that was never actually assigned to any employee. Since the test device remained idle for most of the day, the tracker flagged it as evidence of someone“not working for six hours straight.”

The situation reportedly caused panic among senior management, who believed they had caught a severely underperforming employee. The IT team then had to step in to explain that the so-called“slacker” was, in fact, the system itself.

“The irony is poetic,” the original poster wrote, summing up what many users called a“perfect example of tech oversight meeting corporate paranoia.”

The growing debate on digital surveillance

While this incident has amused the internet, it also underscores a larger issue in modern work culture - the growing reliance on employee monitoring software.

Since the pandemic accelerated remote and hybrid work models, several companies across the world have adopted tools that track keystrokes, log activity time, take screenshots, and even monitor mouse movement to assess productivity.

Critics, however, argue that such systems often erode trust and lead to unnecessary micromanagement. Many employees have also reported increased stress and anxiety from being constantly watched.

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In this case, though, the technology ended up making a joke of itself - proving that sometimes, automation can be a little too literal.

As one Reddit user shared a similar incident:“This is kinda like the time I got written up for not being on a call yet to report the status of a compliance project when the client decided to call early - because I was on another, scheduled call getting the status of the same compliance project.”

“that's someone that shouldn't be a manager. your manager is an idiot,” another user wrote.

“Post the executives computers. Let them lead by example and show the rest of the company how to be productive during the day,” the third user wrote.

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