TL;DR - he'd waste hours every morning going through each inbound email report from our customers' overnight diagnostics. delete/respond one by one. Get distracted all the time, and it just took forever.

I started either pulling directly from the databases the emails were checking, or pulling the relevant info out of the always-formatted-the-same notifications.

Literally auto-sorted greens to archive, yellows went into a "when you have time" bin, reds either triggered outgoing stuff we did by procedure, or texted me, or texted a customer, whatever. Maybe it just moves that email to the top of my inbox.

I just kind of iterated as I went along - but after a month or so of tinkering, like half my day was freed up. I only ever got more productive, and never got a raise after that, so eventually I bailed.

Owner sold the business a couple years later - he never did manage to hire another service manager.