Most workplaces have at least one employee whom everyone wonders how they got their job, and why they haven’t been fired. When it comes to government jobs, the answer is often clear. They got the job due to nepotism, and they can’t be fired because the role is a political appointee.

That is the case in this story, where one worker was constantly out of the office, didn’t get anything done, and everyone hated her. The problem is that she was appointed by her mother, so she could never get fired from the position.

When a new manager came in and started looking into her performance, she got upset that anyone would even question her, so she did the one thing that nobody expected. She got offended at the accusation that she wasn’t doing her job well and slammed down a resignation letter.

Of course, she realized her mistake shortly after and begged the manager to give her the letter back, but she had burned way too many bridges by then. The whole office loved the fact that she did the one thing nobody else could. Fired herself.

No One Can Fire My Boss So She Does It Herself

This isn’t my story, but I was able to witness it in all its glory because I used to work for one of the people involved.

Nepotism is very common in government offices.

Years ago, I used to work at a state government agency where my boss was a political appointee.

Her mom was a bigwig in our governor’s party who wrangled a political appointment for her daughter, which meant she had some clout behind her.

Let’s call her Shannon.

This type of thing is exactly why people can’t trust the government.

Shannon was not good at her job. At all. She was frequently out of the office for “meetings” (e.g., two-hour lunches, coffee with friends, a bit of shopping).

She was also a bully and a tyrant. She bullied her staff and would hold the threat of firing over everyone’s heads to get them to do what she wanted.

Everyone hates her, and I bet she doesn’t care at all.

She wasn’t a micromanager because she was never around enough to actually micromanage anything.

And she was widely disliked throughout the entire building. This was a large agency, so to have a building where almost everyone disliked you took a lot of work.

This is government corruption that is found everywhere.

The problem is that, as a political appointee, she was untouchable. The people who had the power to fire her couldn’t because of her family.

Even the number three person in the agency couldn’t do it, and he was a political appointee as well.

Great, so now she has even less responsibility, but is still getting paid with taxpayer money.

But after a year of mystery meetings and time out of the office, her excuses were catching up to her. The agency director removed her from her job and put her in charge of “special projects.”

Anyone who’s worked in a corporate job knows that people get put in charge of special projects because they were largely incapable of doing their previous job. They didn’t get fired, but they no longer had any power.

This was Shannon’s case.

She almost learned her lesson, but not quite.

For a while, she seemed to get the message. She shaped up, didn’t have any more mystery meetings, didn’t disappear from the building for two hours, and treated people somewhat nicely.

Of course, it didn’t last and Shannon returned to her old ways.

Finally, someone is looking into her. Let’s see how it plays out.

Around that time, we got a new assistant director — we’ll call her Tricia — who was also a political appointee. She was the number two person in the whole agency, and she was great to work for. She was very serious about her job.

She had access to Shannon’s electronic calendar and saw what Shannon had been up to. She then cross-checked the security logs to see when Shannon was in and out of the building.

Well, if she insists on quitting, nobody is going to stop her.

After her brief investigation, Tricia emailed Shannon with a list of dates and said, “Can you tell me more about these different meetings you were having? And why they took so long?” (I’m paraphrasing.)

Well, Shannon wasn’t having any of that! How dare Tricia call her character into question?! This was an outrage! It was so outrageous, in fact, that Shannon wrote a resignation letter and slammed it down on Tricia’s desk! That’ll show her!

She almost immediately regretted her decision.

After a few hours, Shannon had time to think about what she had done. She remembered that she had a 1-year-old at home. She also remembered that her husband was an unskilled truck driver who made very little money. (Edit: He was a local delivery driver for a construction firm, NOT a CDL driver.)

And she remembered that she was the primary breadwinner for her family.

They would be idiots to let her come back.

She went back, hat in hand, and apologized for her attitude, she said she was willing to try harder, and she asked Tricia if she could please possibly have her letter back, pretty please?

Tricia said, “Oh, I’m sorry, you’re too late. I already processed the letter and sent it off to HR. I’m afraid I can’t undo that.”

She was so incompetent that she got fired from an unfirable position.

Do you remember in the movie, The Incredibles, when Mr. Incredible fought the giant ball with legs? The ball was so indestructible and powerful, the only thing that could beat it was itself?

This was that moment. The previously untouchable political appointee had just been fired by the only political appointee who had that power: herself.

She burned way too many bridges to expect any help from people in this office.

And rather than protect her or do her a solid, Tricia would not undo her self-termination. She just let Shannon be her own undoing.

When news of Shannon’s self-firing raced through the building, you could hear the cries of “What? Are you serious?” followed by howls of laughter as each new person heard the story.

I bet they never expected anything like this.

Shannon was out and everyone who had to deal with her was much happier than they had ever been in that job.

This is one of those situations where everything played out so perfectly that people couldn’t believe it. Shannon was basically set up to have an easy job for life, and she managed to ruin it by being an idiot and making everyone hate her. You love to see it.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a warehouse worker who noticed some fellow employees were always sneaking out early for the same strange reason.

Check out what the people in the comments have to say about this story.

Ouch, I wonder if the hated co-worker ever found out about the party.

This person has been on special projects teams and says it is a good thing.

Shannon finally did one good thing that everyone loved.

Eventually, this type of behavior will come back to bite you.

Everyone wishes they could experience something like this.

She had a good thing going, and ruined it by making everyone hate her. If she had just put in a little bit of effort and stayed friendly with her coworkers, she wouldn’t have lost this amazing job.

Fortunately, when you are the type of person whom everyone hates, things tend to eventually backfire on you. That’s exactly what happened to this person, and not one tear was shed for her.