She was hired a year ago to replace an employee that had left, and to be the backup to me on a number of processes. It became very obvious soon after she was hired that she did not have the same understanding of Excel as she portrayed in her interview (didn't know how to insert/ remove columns and rows, apply/ remove filters, format cells, etc, etc), which became a real problem because a number of the processes I run are heavy Excel and run on a number of macros, VB, pivot tables, etc, etc. As a result, she's never been able to be the backup to me as was hoped.

Anyway, I'll be out the week of Christmas, but will have to still work remotely to run these processes since we don't have a backup (yeah, I know...extremely inefficient, risky. If I were hit by a beer truck on my way into work, we wouldn't have a backup). These processes are mid-level complex, and I could train others, but they need to have at minimum have a good understanding of Excel - something beyond not even knowing how to insert a column.

So I'm telling her I'll be out the week of Christmas, but will still need to work remotely, and I'm not very happy about it. She then asked if I could show her how to run the reports. I tried to explain that before I can train someone, they need to understand how some of these macros and formulas work because they need to understand what the spreadsheets are spitting out, as well as understanding how to fix the spreads if it happens to break. I was hoping she'd realize that she probably doesn't have the grasp of Excel that running these processes requires without me having to come right out and say, yet she kept on pressing and asking why I couldn't just show her how to run it. I finally had to just come right how and say that I didn't think she'd understand the process, and I didn't feel comfortable putting her in a position where she could potentially fail, and fail big time, if these processes broke.

She walked off in a huff