Underperforming employee covers another position when the worker goes on leave and turns out to be much better at it; another employee wonders if he was also hired for the wrong job: 'There's no analytics-person-goes-on-leave accident coming to rescue me'

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Olivia Arocena • Writer and Editor
Jul 18, 2026 8:00 AM EDT

Was  it fate or pure luck?

The way the OP narrates the story is a bit messy, but to me, it's profoundly revealing. It confesses a desire to be rescued from his position without necessarily having to do anything about it, just like it happened to Marcus. From the start, we know, and I suppose this Redditor knows as well, that this other employee's lucky strike cannot be replicated, and responsibility is knocking at his door. Will he be able to answer it?

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  • man using macbook looking stressed
    via Tim Gouw

    The underperforming employee

    Subject is a model

  • The coworker everyone wanted to fire became our best hire once he landed in the right seat …now I think I'm the miscast one

    This was maybe six years ago at a mid-size marketing agency.
    via Bobobo130
  • We had a guy, I'll call him Marcus, everyone had quietly written off. Account coordinator role, which at our place meant you lived on the phone, ran the
    via Bobobo130
  • client check-ins, worked the room at the quarterly dinners. Marcus was terrible at all of it. He'd go quiet on calls, clients said. he seemed "disengaged,"
    via Bobobo130
  • and he'd vanish at the networking stuff so you'd find him outside on his phone. Two managers wanted him gone. There was a real conversation about managing him out.
    via Bobobo130
  • Here's the thing though. Anything you handed Marcus that he could do alone, he crushed. A messy dataset, a broken reporting process, a deck
    via Bobobo130
  • nobody could make sense of, it came back cleaner than anyone else could've done it. We just didn't count that, because the job was "officially" about being client-facing.
    via Bobobo130
  • What saved him was dumb luck. Our analytics. person went on leave, someone had to cover the reporting for a quarter, and Marcus was the only one
    via Bobobo130
  • a red and white sign that says good luck
    via Yunshuo Qu

    The good luck the other employee had

    Stock image for illustrative purposes


  • I think it’s common to wish for something to be handed to us from above, without us doing much to obtain it, and it does sometimes happen; the thing is we can’t plan when, and we can’t spend our lives waiting. I mean, we can if we want to, but we have to accept there is an enormous price to pay.

  • free. Within a month he'd rebuilt the whole reporting system and the account leads were fighting to get him on their projects. They
    via Bobobo130
  • made it permanent. Last I heard he runs the data team there now. I bring it up because lately I think I might be the
    via Bobobo130
  • Marcus on my own team, and there's no analytics- person-goes-on-leave accident coming to rescue me. Good reviews on the actual output, but I'm
    via Bobobo130
  • clearly miscast for the visible, room-working half of the job and it's quietly capping me. Marcus got saved by luck. I'd rather not wait around for mine.
    via Bobobo130
  • So for anyone who realized they were in the wrong seat and actually did something about it, how did you work out what your right one even was? Without just waiting to get reassigned by accident.
    via Bobobo130
  • group of men in suits
    via Gatot Adri

    The group of workers where one was wrongly hired

    Representative image

  • viniciusjooj Yeah, and the hard part is most people don't get the lucky cover-for- someone break Marcus got. Usually you have to engineer your own, which is way less satisfying.
    via Bobobo130
  • talexbatreddit Huh. It sounds like he was hired for the wrong job, no? I sound a little like Marcus, actually, usually a poor performer at a networking event, unless I know a few people, but loving setting up systems and writing reports. I'm very happy to hear he's found his niche -- always awesome news.
    via Bobobo130

  • We can laugh thinking about Marcus, and even envy him a little, but we have to find a way to make ourselves valuable in our current position or find another position; there’s no other choice. Or I guess the other choice would be to wait it out, to wait and see if we get kicked out, or the Gods decide it’s our time to be handed a massive lucky strike. I personally wouldn’t risk that. All in all, I think this employee is asking the right questions, and he will soon find out what he is best at and will pursue it; it’s just not that simple to get from point A to point B, but it’s doable, and he started right on time.

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workplace-stories toxic-workplace work workplace toxic-work-environment
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