Rejecting a Promotion Sent Field Service Tech Into Support Hell
The Register, Friday, October 9th, 2026
On Call: a 1990s field engineer who turned down a promotion spent his time cleaning up after the incompetent colleague who took it.
In The Register's reader-contributed On Call column, 'Preston' recalls being a senior field service engineer in the late 1990s who turned down a consultancy role because he liked hands-on work and the clients who made his coffee just right.
A colleague took the job and was soon reconfiguring Windows NT 4.0 servers for dual CPUs, setting up backups and installing UPSes.
That colleague left a trail of wreckage Preston had to repair, producing what the column calls invaluable case studies in what happens when incompetent people climb the ladder.