u/PMSMediumPurple

I have a coworker who is what we’ll very nicely call “technologically challenged”. This person regularly gets frustrated about what he says is “china hacking into the system” when he runs into simple small glitches, will pass his work onto other when he can’t figure out how to use the fedex shipping site, won’t check his email for half a day at a time (but is sitting in front of his computer all day), and always seems to run into tech issues (daily) where others who use the same shared computer/same software/same procedures never experience any of the same problems. It’s almost bizarre how often these tech problems arise for him, but it feels much more like weaponized incompetence than an actual technological problem. As we’re in our slow season, he’s been trying to find ways to keep himself busy but instead of doing housekeeping or something helpful he has been pushing to pickup a new responsibility that will require him to be in contact with other plants, ship in and out, and adjust and rotate QC machines for 6 plants up and down the west coast, we’re talking tens of thousands of records for huge companies all over the globe. This is going to cause headaches for literal years to come if he makes any serious mistakes, which with these machines in particular, he often has issues with. He’s also retiring in less than a year, and on top of that we have a coworker who would be perfect for this task (younger, tech savvy, great at communication etc). How do I tell my supervisor (who returns from leave on Monday) that this is a terrible idea, without sounding like an asshole?