Hotel owner forces his lead landscaper to train his incompetent nephew to take over his job, nepotism leads to a property fire that burns the place down: 'The nephew seemed more concerned with playing Pokemon than working'

Author image for Jesse Kessenheimer
Jesse Kessenheimer • Writer and Editor
Apr 6, 2025 9:00 AM EDT

When you play with fire, you're going to get burned. Luckily for this all-star landscaper, he dodged a scathing property fire after his nepo-hire replacement dared to burn the place down. 

Incompetence comes in many forms, but none are more frustrating than in the workplace. You expect newly hired employees to put their back into it and try their best during training, soaking up their new job's tasks like a sponge in order to do their best. However, with nepo-hires—the unfireable family member of the owner—that's never the case. Usually, nepotism hires are the worst employees, essentially ensuring the destruction of the company brick by brick. 

So when this hotel landscaper found out he was being replaced by his boss's clownish nephew, he decided to let the nepotism run its course. 

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  • Whenever I see weeds growing in my lawn, my first instinct isn't to pour gasoline on them and burn them to a crisp. But this Gameboy-loving new hire thought that he knew what was best for the hotel lawn, and against the better judgment of any of his training managers, he accidentally burnt the building to a crisp. And I'd like to think that the weeds still came back…

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    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

  • Work forces me to train my own replacement. So I do, with the same effort they put into hiring him.
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  • My first job out of high school was doing the landscaping for a posh hotel near my hometown. I loved the job and the work was often demanding but rewarding
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  • nonetheless. After working there a few years, the hotel was sold to a businessman as the owner wanted to retire to Florida. The new owner had a gambling
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  • addiction and a drinking problem. He constantly drained funds from his businesses to support his vices, which showed in how quickly the hotel went from posh to the literal definition of a roach
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  • motel. I continued doing my job faithfully despite the rapid downturn in overall appearance. My paychecks were still nice and I didn't feel as many effects of the downtown as other departments.
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  • About six months into the new ownership, the owner introduces me to his nephew and says that he wants me to train him to do my job so that I don't have to spend all day doing the
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  • landscaping for the property. The nephew seemed more concerned with playing Pokemon on his game boy than working and even when I set him to simple tasks like raking leaves or watering
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  • flowers, I would often find him playing his Gameboy somewhere or sitting in the lounge drinking with his uncle. I constantly complained about
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  • Cheezburger Image 10489270528
    via Africa Images

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

  • him to the owner and told him that I had enough seniority in my position to search for and train a more suitable person to do the job. That's when the owner dropped the bombshell. His
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  • nephew was going to replace me in six months. He was only paying his nephew minimum wage, whereas I was getting nearly three times as much because of my seniority and how much the original owner loved me.
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  • At this point, I realized that I was too expensive for him and he wanted to have more money available for his habits. I immediately started looking for a new job. I continued working at
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  • the hotel, but I didn't put as much effort into it. I showed the lazy nephew some basic stuff, but I pretty much left him to his own devices for the rest of the day. By the time I was asked to leave, the
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  • amount of neglect was overwhelmingly apparent. Poison ivy was growing around entrances, the normally well manicured lawns looked like overgrown meadows.
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  • Six months after I left, there was a massive fire in the middle garden because the nephew somehow thought the most effective way to get rid of the poison ivy and weeds in the
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  • mulch was to dowse it in gasoline and light it aflame. He was stood nearby with a garden hose to put it out, but was swiftly overwhelmed as dry leaves and other material quickly spread the
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  • flames into the hotel itself. The fire department was called, the hotel evacuated. The nephew was arrested for arson despite trying to convince everyone that he fully intended to put the fire
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  • out with the garden hose after he got the desired effect. The owner was forced to sell the hotel and restaurant on the property to a franchise. He was
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  • eventually audited by the IRS and arrested for tax fraud. Today the property is bustling again, the restaurant was bought by a Mexican restaurant franchise and does decent business. The two
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  • side blocks of rooms that were damaged in the fire were torn down and turned into an outdoor banquet area for the Mexican restaurant. The main hotel has bounced back after the owner was replaced. The entire property barely resembles what it looked like when I worked there.
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  • farie_princess Play with fire and the thing burns down.
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  • jeffthetrucker69 Forced you to train your replacement?? This happened to me. I gave 2 weeks notice and the response was you can't leave until you train your replacement. I left 2 weeks early.
    via jeffthetrucker69

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nepotism boss worker employee hotel landscaping manager job nepo hire new hire work coworkers working ceo employees supervisor workplace bad bosses company coworker business nepo baby
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