Sweeping Baking Soda with Adam
A friend's story about Slack Time and Associations with Busy
Story Time
Adam once had a job where he got paid to sweep baking soda back and forth. Seriously.
Adam, a friend from my Ramsey Solutions days, previously worked on a production line in a manufacturing plant. Like most production lines, downtime for maintenance was routine and, during those periods, Adam and his team found themselves with nothing to do.
That’s when Adam’s manager came up with a solution:
Whenever the line was down, workers were to take a box of baking soda, pour it onto the floor, and sweep it from one end of the shop to the other—until the machines were back up.
Why? So if a supervisor walked by, they’d look busy.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I’d hate having to constantly prove I was busy just to justify getting paid. But in some industries, especially hourly work, it kinda makes sense, right? If you’re paying for someone’s time to do a specific manual job, you expect to see them working.
I remember my days at Sonic Drive-In (yes, I even wore skates), where one manager loved saying, “If you have time to lean, you have time to clean.” My wife, Natalie, tells a similar story from when she worked as an office admin for her dad’s pest control business. She’d hear him say, “I’m not paying you to sit around!”—so she’d grab a vacuum and start tidying the office.
In those jobs, staying busy maximized the investment. Hourly work teaches us that looking busy equals getting paid.
But in knowledge work, that mindset isn’t just outdated—it’s harmful.
The real problem? When you’re busy with busy work, you’re not ready for the work that actually matters. For Adam, if he was off sweeping baking soda when the line came back up, he wasn’t at his station, ready to jump in. He was stuck doing work that didn’t need to be done, just to look busy.
The Trap of Looking Busy
Adam told me this story during a conversation about empowered teams. For work that requires problem-solving and creativity—AKA knowledge work—the rules are different. That’s why in Kanban, we manage work, not people. The focus isn’t on whether someone looks busy, but whether they’re achieving meaningful outcomes.
I was reminded of this during a 1:1 with one of my direct reports. Every few seconds, she’d subtly wiggle her computer mouse. Curious, I asked about it.
Her response?
"It’s so my chat app won’t show me as ‘Away’—I don’t want to look like I’m not working."
Her leader was sitting right there (me). We were in the middle of a valuable conversation. And yet, she was distracted—worried about looking busy rather than actually engaging in meaningful work.
That was Adam, sweeping up baking soda.
Are You Managing Work—or Just Keeping People Busy?
If you’re not sure, it might be time to rethink how you structure your team’s work. Check out my write-up on Slack Time for practical ways to introduce breathing room into your workflow.
Until next time, Keep Learning. Keep Growing.