So this one time, many many years ago, the boss came to the back of the shop to chew out a colleague for not putting enough details on his work notes for the invoice. Just billed an hour, no reason why, just said he couldn't replicate the issue.

"You have to put down details as to what you did, even if it's bullshit."

So from then on he put some bullshit on every work order:

"23 (OTHER) - GREASED SPINDLEDWARFS"

I shit you not, my friends.

Every computer that came to his workbench had its spindledwarfs greased. Nobody questioned it for months. None of the service advisers, none of the customers, not the boss. Nobody.

Until year end came around and Penny from Accounting noticed that there was a lot of 23-OTHER for greasing spindledwarfs. She noticed. She knew. Oh boy I thought Aaron was going to get shit on.

Nope!
Fiscal year 1999 opened up and not only was there a code 24-Y2K BIOS CHECK but also a code 25-GREASE SPINDLEDWARFS

Penny had asked Aaron hope much time it took to grease spindledwarfs on a typical computer, "Ah, about 5-10 minutes, depends how many screws to get at them"

So code 25 was entered to bill 10 minutes of tech time for any time a computer needed that.

2000 came around and my fuck we had made money testing BIOS for Y2K bug and flashing fixes for same.

But the boss noticed Aaron had been billing for code 25 regularly while none of the other techs were - and this got him noticed. Added up to a pretty fair amount!

"Aaron, what the fuck is a spindledwarf?" The boss asked him one day.

He choked. The joke had gone on way too long. He turned bright red. I swear he thought he was about to be fired.

And people had been paying to have their spindledwarfs greased.

Now that guy can think on the spot. He grabs an old CDROM drive out of an abandoned machine, opens it up, points to the little plastic gear that moves the laser head across the media. "Spindledwarf. Gotta grease 'em or the drive fails."

My jaw hit the fucking workbench.

"Everyone gather around. Hey listen up. Aaron's got a thing to show you. I want you all to do this on every machine that comes in here and bill code 25 from now on."

For fuck sakes, I thought!

And that is why, whenever I need to come up with some bullshit to justify my time, I still to this day put down that I greased the spindledwarfs and nobody has ever EVER asked me why or what that is.

And now you know too.
Go forth and grease the spindledwarfs my friends and remember to bill accordingly.

**sigh**
Or you could try honesty.