No one likes to be replaced at work. Sadly, it’s just part of life for a good number of folks – but learning your job is being handed to friends of the boss who aren’t qualified or grateful puts a little extra sting on it.

OP worked in a very niche role at his company. It took him two hard weeks to learn, and even with experience and training, he and the other person in the role had to be on their toes and ready to troubleshoot.

I used to be in charge of the printer room in a rather large company. We shipped a ton of product every day, and everything shipped had to have the accompanying printed label/documents. Nothing can even be loaded onto the trucks without this paperwork.

Now this was in the olden days of the 90s, so we had seven massive, 4-foot tall dot matrix printers that did all the work.

These printers were temperamental, and if the paper jammed, the printer did not automatically stop printing. It would just keep pushing/jamming more and more paper into the machine until, if left untended, it would break down.

Running the printer room was a 2-person job. When I started I trained for 2 full weeks with the two current printer room employees (one was being promoted, I was replacing him). It was a rough two weeks, let me tell you, getting the hang of the job, the various things you had to learn, do, etc.

One thing that made it even more complicated was the fact that each printer had it’s own personality with it’s own problems. Another was the fact that a problem in one printer could have a different fix than the exact same problem in another.

The job would be quiet for 45 minutes straight, during which we did routine maintenance and such, but was really slow and quiet and restful. Because this company processed it’s shipping orders in batches, once an hour.

And then boy, on the hour, every hour, the batch of orders would go through and thousands and thousands of orders would come spitting out.

Now, if you were on top of things and kept everything running smoothly, the orders would print out very neatly and quickly.

But if you didn’t know what you were doing, if you didn’t maintain things just right, you’d get a back up and things would go bad very, very fast. And when one machine went down you had to fix it FAST, before the next one jammed, because guaranteed those machines would jam up multiple times on every batch print job.

When he was left alone to do the job it got even harder.

So I’ve been working the print room for several months, and things were great. Then my coworker gave his 2-weeks notice.

We tried to train my replacement, but he was incredibly lazy and got fired fairly a few days after the end of his training. Which left me in the printer room alone.

That said, he liked his work and was sorry when he heard he was going to be let go and replaced – especially when he learned his replacements were friends of the company’s higher-ups.

Then the bosses inform me that my “position” is being phased out, and I am going to be replaced by two employees transferred from a different department. So not only am I losing my job, but I have to train my replacements. And I desperately needed a good recommendation from this company, so I couldn’t just quit or phone it in.

I quickly learn that both of these transfers are lazy and useless. They’d been with the company for decades, had friends in the head office, and knew their jobs were safe.

I’d show them how to do something and they’d flat out laugh and say, “Yeah, I’m not doing that”.

Every day I’d be trying to train them and they would ignore me, chat with each other, leave to go sit in the cafeteria.

Leaving me to do a 2-person job alone. Luckily I was good enough to handle the workload, but it was annoying.

Still, he tried his best to train them. They weren’t interested and made no secret of that fact. OP made sure he documented everything and that his supervisor was aware.

Mindful of the fact that I needed a reference of this company, I kept extensive notes on each day’s progress. I clearly documented every single instance of the replacements refusing to learn, even listen to my instructions.

I also followed up daily with my direct supervisor, and he knew what was going on. And my notes went into the company files and were passed up the line.

Despite my scathing reports, head office did nothing.

On his last day, he was told to not help at all and let his replacements handle everything.

Now it’s my last day. This is the day the training process assigned for letting the newbies work alone, with no help or supervision allowed, to see how well they handle the job and the pressure.

I was, in writing, forbidden to help them or answer any questions.

So, he sat there while the company lost thousands and everything went to h*** in a handbasket.

As I expected, things fell apart pretty much immediately, minutes into the first batch of orders. One of the biggest printers jammed, and the clueless jerks had no idea how to fix the printer jam. Because they ignored me every time I tried to show them how.

So they turn to me, and demand that I fix things. I’m sitting on a desk, coffee in one hand, an apple in the other, and smile and say, “Yeah, I’m not doing that”.

So one of them is yelling at me while the other is basically thumping uselessly on the printer like a gorilla that just found a candy machine. Then a second printer jams.

Paper starts spilling out of the back of the first printer (which, if you knew the job, was a really, really REALLY bad warning sign). “Well, I’m going to go to the cafeteria, good luck!” I say as I stand up.

As I’m leaving a hear a third printer cccrrrruuunnnch and jam up.

I went to my supervisor and let him know what was happening. He said he not only expected as much, he had predicted so repeatedly to his superiors.

He once once again specifically forbade me from offering any help. So I went to the cafeteria and read my book for a little over an hour.

Then my supervisor comes to me to let me know what happened. The entire printer room is down, every single printer either jammed up or actually broken.

The company is losing thousands of dollars every single minute. One of the shipper/receiving supervisors finds me, all in a panic, begging me to get the orders printed.

“Sorry, I’m not allowed to do that,” I replied. Now several people are running around outside the cafeteria, all in a panic, running from place to place to figure out why they don’t have any shipping orders.

The chaos took HOURS to resolve. And I wasn’t allowed to fix the problems. Any time someone started giving me a hard time, my supervisor would intervene and show the memo from the bosses stating that I was forbidden to help in the printer room that day.

I spent my entire last day at work drinking coffee, chatting with coworkers, and reading my book. The whole fiasco ended up costing the company tens of thousands of dollars.

It was great – at least for OP.

The top comment says at least his immediate supervisor had his back.

They say nepotism shouldn’t be a thing if the person can’t do the work.

Even as most people recognize that often, it is about who you know.

Management just keeps making the same mistakes.

This person thinks it’s more of an institutional issues.

Things don’t have to be as complicated as some companies try to make it.

But I doubt things will change anytime soon.