If you’ve ever dreamed of karma clocking in for a full shift, this story is for you. One Redditor shared how he was laid off from a large company after years running its temperamental printer room, a job so technical that each of the seven industrial machines had its own “personality.”
When management decided to cut costs, they eliminated his position and replaced him with two “seasoned employees” from another department. The catch? He had to train them before leaving. The bigger catch? They refused to learn anything.
On his final day, those two got their solo test run, and within minutes, the entire printer room collapsed like a house of paper. What followed was a symphony of chaos so loud you could hear it in the cafeteria.
A veteran printer operator was laid off and forced to train two lazy replacements who ignored every instruction until their incompetence shut the company down for hours
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Organizational psychologist Dr. Adam Grant explains in Harvard Business Review that “companies that devalue institutional knowledge often end up spending twice as much re-learning what they just discarded.” The printer room debacle is a perfect example.
For management, it looked efficient on paper: two veteran employees doing one person’s job. But without motivation or skill, the new hires became liabilities. A 2022 Gallup survey found that 85% of workers feel disengaged when assigned tasks they don’t value or understand, directly cutting productivity in half.
Workplace expert Dr. Amy Edmondson from Harvard Business School adds that “psychological safety and learning culture are vital to performance in technical environments.” When employees mock training instead of asking questions, errors explode, sometimes literally.
And then there’s the power of quiet revenge through compliance. The Redditor didn’t sabotage anything; he simply followed orders to the letter. Management forbade him from helping, so he watched the disaster unfold.
Business ethics consultant Dr. Michael Pritchard calls this “moral compliance retaliation”; employees obey the rules so strictly that it exposes flawed systems. It’s a silent, ethical form of protest.
From a psychological standpoint, his composure was remarkable. Instead of rage-quitting, he documented everything and let consequences speak for themselves, a textbook case of self-preservation through emotional detachment. “Choosing to stay professional in a toxic setting isn’t a weakness,” notes Verywell Mind therapist Dr. Sherry Pagoto. “It’s strategic grace.”
Here’s what people had to say to OP:
These folks high-fived the OP’s “not my job” mic drop, praising his supervisor’s foresight and savoring the chaos as a lesson for clueless higher-ups
The justice junkies loved the costly collapse, questioning the “phased out” excuse and hinting at discrimination or legal angles, with one tossing in a Homer Simpson meme for flair
Printer veterans and rage-relaters shared their own tales of quirky machines and bad bosses
So, was he petty for watching the chaos unfold, or did he simply deliver a master class in “professional compliance”? If you’ve ever been the person who trained your own replacement, you already know the answer.
