I had a retail job years back where part of my work was processing incoming freight and putting it in the inventory system. I set up a spreadsheet that helped me format the entries for the actual system. My boss kinda hated it, like “you’re adding extra steps it’s a waste”. Never did convince them it was saving me time and wrist health, had to use it in secret

Another boss I had actively tried to get me to stop using a spreadsheet to track my time and instead update their time tracking system on every task. I could either spend a couple seconds slapping in a spreadsheet entry and have it auto fill in the time spent since the last entry and bulk copy in the day to the time tracking system as part of me leaving for the day, or I could spend a minute fucking with the time tracking system every few minutes of work

At my current job my boss caught wind of me setting up a way to abstract our build system for dedicated types of builds. Instead of trying to get me to stop I was asked to present it to the team and help other people build little tools like it for their own uses. Feels a lot better