Shutterstock, RedditSome managers are so bad at their job that they can bring a successful company down by their actions.

What would you do if you were an IT engineer at a company, and the new boss found a way to fire you so that her nephew could do the job instead?

That is what happened to the IT engineer in this story, and the nephew didn’t know a thing about how to keep things running, so he and the bad manager ended up getting fired.

Check it out.

Don’t fire me so you can hire your nephew

This happened several years ago. I was working for a small medical supply company as the IT manager.

Business was bad and eventually the IT department had to downsize to just me. During this time they brought in a new CFO that I had to report directly to.

Let’s call her Pam.

If she knows nothing about IT, she should have no control over it, or she could cause some major problems.

Pam had zero knowledge of IT and how things worked. Her motto was if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.

PC/server lifecycles didn’t exist.

We don’t have to pay for licensing to keep our firewall updated, it’s working just fine now. I went from having an annual budget to a “wish list” which she would deny everything I asked for.

He should be looking for a new job like yesterday.

The couple that owned the company were real pieces of work too. One time we had a quarterly meeting and people were asking about how secure their jobs were.

The owners said that nobody was getting laid off and that our jobs were all secure. This was at 5:00 pm on a Wednesday. The very next morning at 9:00 they laid off 6 people.

At noon one of the owners showed up to show off the Escalade that he had just purchased that morning.

During the first six months that Pam was there she started firing everyone that worked for the old CFO and replaced them with her friends and family.

Three of her bridesmaids from her wedding a few years prior got hired to replace those that she fired. I knew I was on borrowed time.

Wow, she really got rid of a lot of people quickly. I’m sure this guy is next.

After she had been there for 9 months I was the only one left out of what was about a dozen people that worked for the old CFO.

I knew my time was running out. I had been looking for work but the 2009 crash just happened and the job market in my area went south quickly.

Sure enough she called me into HR and blindsided me with an entirely trumped up charge that she claimed happened the day before.

I was working with the VP of sales on a project that entire day so I had a witness.

I asked to bring him in since my boss was lying and was told “this is not about him this is about you” (remember kids, HR is there to protect the business, not do what is right or legal in some cases).

Needless to say I knew my days were numbered.

IT jobs aren’t something you can fake knowledge in, most of the time.

The next morning I get introduced to an IT expert who just happens to be Pam’s 21 year-old nephew.

He was to shadow me and evaluate everything that I did to see if we could streamline any processes. In other words, they wanted me to train him to do my job.

I quickly learned that this kid had absolutely no knowledge of IT. He’s the kid people think is an IT expert because he can hook up a play station to a TV.

This is a pretty basic task for an IT professional.

He didn’t even know how to join a PC to a domain. So, I knew what had to be done. The inventory, billing, and shipping and receiving were all run by scripts that I created on the server.

They were all run using the domain admin account.

I raised quite a fuss about giving him the domain admin account in front of Pam and him.

I then loudly proclaimed that I was going to change the password to it since you can’t have people who don’t work for the company to have admin access to our network.

I was overruled and was told to give it to him. I complied but I also showed him multiple times how to change passwords on the domain.

If he didn’t write it down, I’m sure he would forget.

I even had him write it down to make sure that he could do it.

I really stressed the importance of changing the admin password and deleting his local account the second he is no longer “consulting” with us to him. I showed him a few things (but nothing in regards to what really made the company run) that day.

There wasn’t enough time in a year to bring this kid up to speed on how to run that place due to his complete ignorance of IT.

As a contractor, you can demand a very high salary.

I come into work the next day and sure enough I was let go because her nephew had found “my skills lacking in many areas”. I collect my last paycheck and head home.

The next morning I get a call from the CFO and owners.

Apparently her nephew wasn’t quite up to speed on everything we did there and she was graciously offering to pay me my regular salary to come in as a consultant and get her nephew up to speed on the IT infrastructure.

I told her that I was now an independent contractor and if she wanted my services I was going to charge her $200 per hour with a 250 hour minimum. At that point she told me that she was going to call the police and have me arrested for what I did if I didn’t come in and fix everything.

My response was “Just so we’re clear, you fired me, replaced me with a completely unqualified idiot and now you’re threatening to call the cops on me if I don’t come in and fix what he did? I’ll hold, please call the police and let me know what they said.”

She started cursing at me and hung up the phone.

I bet he was so happy when he heard that he had changed that password!

Turns out her nephew did actually learn something from me, he changed the admin password after I had left.

The one that ran all the scripts for inventory, billing, shipping and ordering. According to some of my coworkers, the place was dead in the water for several days until they could get a real consultant in to go through the documentation that I had created and fix the issue.

The nephew was immediately fired and Pam was gone within a month.

The sad thing is how long it took for them to get rid of Pam, but it really isn’t surprising.

Let’s see what the people in the comments have to say about it.

Yeah, he pushed for a very good deal.

It is funny to see.

This is very good advice.

Respect the IT guys.

Yup, I love it every time.

Did they really think this kid could handle the job?

Because that was just looking for trouble.

Thought that was satisfying? Check out what this employee did when their manager refused to pay for their time while they were traveling for business.