When Nihad Abbasov came to work, he discovered fascinating scripts on his predecessor’s computer. That programmer believed in one simple rule: if something takes more than 90 seconds, you should automate it. And it also applies to messaging your wife or hacking a coffee machine. Who was he? A superhero of office hacks or a lazy nerd?
Nihad decided to share his find with GitHub community, and the internet loved it. Automation doesn’t end on IFTTT or Marketing Automation!
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1. Honey, I’ll be late
The script sends a message to his wife, saying “I’ll be late” and picks a random reason from the list. It was sent automatically if there was an activity detected on his computer after 9 pm.
2. Unbearable customer
The script called daintily “kumar-asshole” scanned his inbox for emails from hated customer. If a message was found and if it contained words such as “trouble” or “sorry”, the script emailed him back automatically: “No worries mate, be careful next time.” No need for a programmer to have an unnecessary human interaction.
3. Be gentle to yourself when you have a hangover
Each time when the programmer wasn’t logged into the system by 8.45 a.m., the script called “hangover” send an automated message to the boss: “Feeling bad, working from home”. And now he could suffer in peace.
4. Hack your coffee machine
Our lazy hero hated wasting his time on waiting for coffee to be brewed and poured, so he made a script that told the coffee machine to make his favorite medium late and wait for 24 seconds to pour it (the exact time needed from walking from his desk to the kitchen).
See the original GitHub post and the Business Insider comment.
Einstein said that you should invest no more time in completing the task than needed, but also no less. Maybe the mysterious developer is the best illustration of that idea.