A contractor working for a housing association in the North West of England was having none of his IT manager’s incompetence. The IT manager had no people skills and enjoyed bullying colleagues, but that wasn’t the worst part – he didn’t know how to use Excel.
The contractor received a call from the IT manager to fix an issue with a spreadsheet, but when he arrived, he found out that the problem was using a table in a Word document. The contractor easily fixed the issue by copying data into an actual spreadsheet, leaving the IT manager feeling embarrassed and humiliated. Two hours later, the contractor’s services were cancelled due to the IT manager’s apparent discomfort with being told he made a mistake.
The contractor wonders if his diagnosis was the reason for the sacking, and if so, whether an IT manager should be ashamed of not knowing the basics of Microsoft Office software.
Source: https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/19/on_call