A field service engineer who turned down a promotion to consultancy ended up spending months cleaning up after the colleague who took the job instead, according to a story shared with The Register's On Call column. The engineer, identified only as "Preston," said he declined the role because he enjoyed working directly with clients and appreciated the respect he received in the field.
His colleague, who accepted the promotion, soon began leaving a trail of errors: botched Windows NT 4.0 upgrades, failing backup systems, and a UPS installation that powered down a system every day. In one case, the colleague wiped a customer database that his backup regime did not protect. Preston said he covered for the colleague as best he could to protect the company.
Preston eventually left IT services and became a trainer, using the incidents as cautionary tales. He said they taught him not to assume the person who did a job before you got things right. The Register's story is a single account from one reader, so no independent verification or contrasting views are provided.