Imagine taking all of the qualifying tests to get a promotion, but you’re still told you don’t qualify for the promotion. Would you feel defeated, try harder to qualify, or find a workaround?

In this story, a merchant marine is in this situation. Instead of feeling defeated, he finds a way to make the qualifications he does have work in his favor.

Let’s read all about it from the perspective of one of his coworkers.

Sorry Boss I’m not qualified

In the merchant marine. There are licensing and credential requirements that determine what capacity you can work at. It boils down to, the more time and experience you have, the higher you can sail.

Sometimes you also have to take a test to upgrade your license or rating. At my current company they have promotion boards once per year.

Everyone has a permanent rating that determines the minimum they can sail as, but if you have the license, you can sometimes get temp promoted to a higher job with a higher salary until you either leave that ship, or the person you were temp working for returns.

Here’s the situation one of his coworkers was in…

On my ship several years ago there was a Third Assistant Engineer. This guy was working as a third but already had his second assistant’s license.

When he arrived he had just completed the tests to upgrade to First Assistant Engineer but was waiting on his new license to come.

In the engine department the highest is Chief Engineer, then First Assistant, Second, and so on.

This engineer had put in his promotion package to advance to Second assistant engineer permanently but he failed to be promoted. Specifically, the company told him he was “not qualified” for promotion to Second engineer. This meant he couldn’t be permanently promoted to second, but he could get temp jobs.

One employee had to leave.

Several months after he got onboard, the Chief Engineer (CHENG) wanted to give the second leave for a month or two – so the second would leave for 30 or 60 days, then come back.

To do his job, he wanted the Third to fill in in the meantime.

The third said, nope sorry no can do, you see I’m not qualified, according to our employer.

But then another employee had to leave.

What the CHENG didn’t know was that the First engineer had to leave for some reason 30 days after the second was due to leave.

The second did not hold a First Engineer license – but the third did!

The first engineer left and there was no one on land to replace him – so the third engineer, whos license had come in since then, skipped right over two levels and became the new First!

He said, you people said I’m only not qualified for Second, you didn’t say anything about First.

That’s awesome! I love how he skipped right into first!

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

This person loved the story.

One person has a good question.

Here’s another story about getting around the rules.

Why get promoted for less money?

If you’re qualified, you’re qualified!

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.