(Historical Notes: Past Me gets a bit snarky in the Alt Text, but upon further reflection, I don’t think it’s especially warranted.  Technically speaking, Ichabod’s current situation isn’t really a result of him doing a worse job nitpicking for others.  Everything Aunt Domino is bringing up here is more the result of his personal life catching up with him, and we’ve seen NUMEROUS examples of that not really being a deal-breaker for being a Nitpicker, just so long as it doesn’t interfere with business.  If Ichabod is to believed that he got this exception made on his behalf because of what a good job he was doing in the past, we can then assume that everybody else’s workloads were probably a bit lighter thanks to him handling so many jobs.  If everybody else is inconvenienced now that they’re having to cover for him, then it makes all the sense in the world for HIM to have to make things easier for somebody else by taking on the apprentice nobody else wants.)