March 26, 2026 at 3:21 pm

Man Replaced The Screen Of His Friend’s Laptop, But While He Was At The Office, He Tried To Help Two Older Employees Learn How To Use Excel

by Heide Lazaro

Employee working on a spreadsheet with numbers and colorful columns

Freepik/Reddit

Technology and automation can save hours of manual work.

In this story, an IT expert was asked to replace a friend’s broken laptop screen at their workplace.

After fixing his friend’s laptop, he tried helping two older employees with Excel automation.

However, what happened next was something he didn’t expect.

Read the full story below for all the details.

The day I got a department fired

I got a message from a friend saying someone wanted to replace the broken screen in their laptop. They already had the replacement screen.

I got in contact with him, and he asked if I could come to his place of work to replace the screen.

I said I would as long as I had permission from his boss.

This man went to his friend’s workplace to replace his laptop screen.

It turns out he was the owner of the company.

So the next day, I showed up at his work.

He gave me his laptop and showed me to an empty desk in the accounting/stats department.

I replaced the laptop screen without any trouble.

He noticed two older gentlemen struggling with spreadsheet work.

He was in a meeting, so while waiting for him to finish, I hung out in the accounting/stats department.

I saw two older gentlemen working on an Excel spreadsheet.

One was reading off each number, while the other was putting it into a calculator and reading the results back.

They were doing this to calculate the sum and average of hundreds of numbers and had started over twice.

He approached them and offered to help.

I introduced myself and showed them how to get Excel to do it automatically for them.

I said, “This way, it will only take you minutes to do a sheet instead of hours.”

I then heard a loud, “You are all fired for incompetence!”

It turns out the owner had been in the doorway listening.

He ended up doing the work of the fired employees over the years.

After everything settled down, he told me:

“I have been waiting on that sheet for 2 days, and you did it in under a minute.”

He ended up giving me $200 and has sent a lot of work my way over the years.

Let’s find out what others have to say about this on Reddit.

This person shares a similar experience.

Screenshot 2026 02 17 at 12.18.18 AM Man Replaced The Screen Of His Friends Laptop, But While He Was At The Office, He Tried To Help Two Older Employees Learn How To Use Excel

This person has a different consequence.

Screenshot 2026 02 17 at 12.18.53 AM Man Replaced The Screen Of His Friends Laptop, But While He Was At The Office, He Tried To Help Two Older Employees Learn How To Use Excel

Lol. Here’s a worse ending.

Screenshot 2026 02 17 at 12.20.07 AM Man Replaced The Screen Of His Friends Laptop, But While He Was At The Office, He Tried To Help Two Older Employees Learn How To Use Excel

This user shares their personal thoughts.

Screenshot 2026 02 17 at 12.21.09 AM Man Replaced The Screen Of His Friends Laptop, But While He Was At The Office, He Tried To Help Two Older Employees Learn How To Use Excel

Finally, short and simple.

Screenshot 2026 02 17 at 12.24.19 AM Man Replaced The Screen Of His Friends Laptop, But While He Was At The Office, He Tried To Help Two Older Employees Learn How To Use Excel

Sometimes, being great at what you do can quickly lead to employee termination.

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.