Observe the Peter Principle: "People rise to their level of incompetence and stay there."

It is necessary, from time to time, to see who just might undo all the good your company has done, not through deliberate wrongdoing, but through sheer incompetence.

That is when I change an employee's department to something that they can handle, and term it a "promotion."

One such case was a negligent explosives "hot packer." HP's go in after the "mucker" has removed the rubble from a previous blast. The rock face may still be hot from the previous shot. Underground blasting is dangerous work anyway, but to be careless with explosives is something akin to suicide.

Rather than have four other people quit, I put him into the preparation cage, at the expected higher salary. If I hadn't done my homework about this guy, we'd have had disabling injuries or fatalities as the result.