If we pretend this was a real story, Charles's manager should really have spoken to Charles about playing Space Invaders for 2 weeks straight. While Charles may

If we pretend this was a real story, Charles's manager should really have spoken to Charles about playing Space Invaders for 2 weeks straight. While Charles may be getting some valuable thinking time in, I can imagine he's also pissing off his colleagues who will feel they're working to support a guy messing around. The exact nature of that depends on Charles, his manager, and the company, but it is possible to have those conversations without diving in and accusing Charles of goofing off. Also, the manager made a huge mistake in judging the code based on what he saw. He should have spoke to Charles about this and tried to glean some insight into how it came to look so easy. If I'm speculating, the manager was looking to punish Charles for his behaviour and went about it completely the wrong way.