I have been pretending to work from home for 6 months and nobody has noticed

I need to get this off my chest because I cannot tell anyone in real life.

I work for a mid-size DFW company in project management. When we went hybrid in late 2025, my team was assigned 3 days in office and 2 days remote. I figured out pretty quickly that nobody actually checks if I am working on remote days.

So I started testing the limits.

Month 1: I would do 2-3 hours of real work on remote days and spend the rest of the afternoon at Klyde Warren Park or running errands.

Month 2: I automated my status updates. I wrote a script that sends pre-written Slack messages at random intervals so it looks like I am active. Green dot stays on.

Month 3: I stopped doing any work on Wednesdays entirely. Just kept the laptop open and responded to messages from my phone.

Month 4: I started a side business. I now spend my remote days building a small e-commerce brand.

Month 5: My performance review came back as "meets expectations." My manager said, and I quote, "You are reliable and consistent." I almost choked.

Month 6: I am now making almost as much from the side business as my salary. I am seriously considering going full-time on it but the benefits and stability keep me here.

The thing is, my actual output has not changed. I still deliver everything on time. I still hit every deadline. The work I was doing before in 8 hours, I now do in 3. Which makes me wonder — was I ever really working 8 hours? Or was I always just stretching 3 hours of work across 8 hours of desk time?

I feel guilty sometimes. But then I look at my manager who spends half his in-office days in meetings that could be emails, and the guilt disappears.

I know this cannot last forever. Either they will crack down on remote work or the side business will take off and I will leave. But right now I am in this weird limbo where I am essentially being paid to build my own company.

Throwaway account for obvious reasons.