In the mid-1990s I dropped out of college and took a temp job doing data entry, a job that was supposed to last 6 months. I had very minimal programming skills

In the mid-1990s I dropped out of college and took a temp job doing data entry, a job that was supposed to last 6 months. I had very minimal programming skills but even so, it was clear from the first day that I could automate the entire job. In a few weeks I wrote a combination of macros and some SQL to do literally 99% of the work. The only problem was that it ran too fast and the DBA started to get cranky due to the load on the database. The official word from my boss was to stop immediately and proceed at a more normal pace. I showed him the automation, he shrugged and said "can you just slow it down a bit?". So I throttled the script and added some pauses, slow enough to make the process look like a human was doing the work. The DBA was happy because his Oracle database wasn't under load, my boss was happy since the work would definitely be done in 6 months and he didn't have to hire anyone else, and I was happy because I got to sit on ass and read books while getting paid. NO ONE CARED. The hardest part was looking busy to my co-workers who weren't in the loop. Eventually in my spare time I got so bored that I learned SQL proper, which prompted me to go back to school and start a career in data and software.