diff --git a/docs/changelog.rst b/docs/changelog.rst
index b446e45cf..db5fb6a15 100644
--- a/docs/changelog.rst
+++ b/docs/changelog.rst
@@ -10,6 +10,12 @@ Changelog
   been updated on the Docker Hub, so you just need to pull the latest one from
   there if you're a Docker user.
 
+* "Login free" instances of Paperless were breaking whenever you tried to edit
+  objects in the admin: adding/deleting tags or correspondents, or even fixing
+  spelling.  This was due to the "user hack" we were applying to sessions that
+  weren't using a login, as that hack user didn't have a valid id.  The fix was
+  to attribute the first user id in the system to this hack user.  `#394`_
+
 * A problem in how we handle slug values on Tags and Correspondents required a
   few changes to how we handle this field `#393`_:
 
@@ -648,6 +654,7 @@ bulk of the work on this big change.
 .. _#392: https://github.com/danielquinn/paperless/issues/392
 .. _#393: https://github.com/danielquinn/paperless/issues/393
 .. _#395: https://github.com/danielquinn/paperless/pull/395
+.. _#394: https://github.com/danielquinn/paperless/issues/394
 .. _#396: https://github.com/danielquinn/paperless/pull/396
 .. _#399: https://github.com/danielquinn/paperless/pull/399
 .. _#400: https://github.com/danielquinn/paperless/pull/400
diff --git a/src/paperless/models.py b/src/paperless/models.py
index 4001d3468..e390032db 100644
--- a/src/paperless/models.py
+++ b/src/paperless/models.py
@@ -1,15 +1,20 @@
+from django.contrib.auth.models import User as DjangoUser
+
+
 class User:
     """
-      This is a dummy django User used with our middleware to disable
-      login authentication if that is configured in paperless.conf
+    This is a dummy django User used with our middleware to disable
+    login authentication if that is configured in paperless.conf
     """
+
     is_superuser = True
     is_active = True
     is_staff = True
     is_authenticated = True
 
-    # Must be -1 to avoid colliding with real user ID's (which start at 1)
-    id = -1
+    @property
+    def id(self):
+        return DjangoUser.objects.order_by("pk").first().pk
 
     @property
     def pk(self):
@@ -17,9 +22,9 @@ class User:
 
 
 """
-  NOTE: These are here as a hack instead of being in the User definition
-  above due to the way pycodestyle handles lamdbdas.
-  See https://github.com/PyCQA/pycodestyle/issues/379 for more.
+NOTE: These are here as a hack instead of being in the User definition
+NOTE: above due to the way pycodestyle handles lamdbdas.
+NOTE: See https://github.com/PyCQA/pycodestyle/issues/379 for more.
 """
 
 User.has_module_perms = lambda *_: True