It seems ridiculous in this modern age, but there are a huge number of people who will never bother to look into their problems on their own before asking someone else. Then this other person does a simple Google search and becomes the hero expert.

This all too often results in further dependence, with no real reward for the guy who took this basic step except more requests in the future. If this one guy can get a day off in this instance, it'll be a victory for every person who has ever said "Oh, if you google that, you'll see one of the first results with instructions to do x, y, z." to a time-draining coworker.

I even seem to recall one that when I set the clock back much more than 30 days gave me as many more days beyond the 30 as as much as I had set it back.

Then there were a couple pieces of software that would detect such trickery and which would punish you by taking away the time you had left also if you set back the date before the 30 days were up.

Anyway, with this in mind, the first thing I thought when I read the headlines was, “I wonder if one can get around this by setting the clock back”, and I doubt I was alone in that, so to say that it “probably wasn’t his idea”... I dunno man.