History Main / PointyHairedBoss

* ''Film/GodzillaVsKong'': [[Characters/MonsterVerseMarkRussell Mark Russell]], who works in a managerial role at Monarch, is completely useless throughout the crisis. His ignores all his daughter's warnings which could have derailed the conflict out of personal bias, and he doesn't see the human villains' plot or the emergence of [[BigBad Mechagodzilla]] [[spoiler:under [[HijackedByGanon Ghidorah]]'s control]] coming until it's too late. Hopefully, Monarch hired someone more competent after the film's ending and after the damage that was allowed to happen because of his ineptitude.

* Hal Walker is the administrator LYNX Salvage sends to examine your team in ''VideoGame/HardspaceShipbreaker'' once the corporate overlords get wind of unionization talk. At first, he sounds reasonable, but that ends when he starts interfering in your work. He fills the comm channel with useless corporate motivational speak, overrules Weaver's authority as shift control, and remotely shuts down Lou's spacesuit to get her to do yoga breathing [[spoiler:while she's floating toward the furnace with a load of scrap]]. He revokes privileges from the other team members for minor infractions. When the team finally takes industrial action, Hal goes off, ranting and threatening everyone, even deleting Kai's [[BodyBackupDrive DNA backup]] as an example of consequences for their actions. [[spoiler:Even when Kai sounds like he dies handling a ship's reactor]], Hal still views the crew as expendable. When the Stellar Commission finally intervenes, LYNX pins the fault on Hal, keeping the upper management insulted from the massive changes forced through during union negotations; he gets busted back down to the processing division, the job that he bragged made him just like the shipbreakers.

* In ''Series/{{Reaper}}'' there's Ted, the manager of [[SoulSuckingRetailJob The Work Bench]] who skirts the line between this and BunnyEarsLawyer. While Ted is a jerk that almost no-one likes, he seems fairly good at his actual job. It doesn't help that the main characters are slackers with [[DevilsJobOffer bigger]] [[EscapedFromHell fish]] [[BountyHunter to fry.]] Until he [[spoiler:gets fired, for excellent reason. His replacement, Andi, [[SecretKeeper is more willing to let]] [[OneHourWorkWeek their habits]] slide.]]
* ''Series/{{Taxi}}'': The rarely-seen owners of the Sunshine Cab Company, Mr. [=McKenzie=], and later on, Mr. Ratledge, seem not to give a damn about the welfare, let alone the comfort of either the drivers or the passengers, this being the focus of a couple of episodes, including the two-parter "Shut It Down", which deals with a strike caused by the cabs being in dangerous conditions of disrepair. But perhaps the biggest proof of their incompetence is their keeping someone like Louie as dispatcher, Mr. Ratledge not even caring about him stealing spare parts for selling them in the black market.

-->-- '''John Tuld''', ''Film/MarginCall'' [[note]]If you're wondering why he's not listed below, it's because he's merely ''pretending'' to be one of these for the purposes of the meeting.[[/note]]

* ''WebVideo/{{Bored}}'': How Playtech stays afloat with Rowan as the store manager is a mystery for the ages. He can't grasp that sales are meant to at least look good for the customers, he regularly allows [[UnsatisfiableCustomer Ben]] to get away with stealing merchandise by [[StrangeMindsThinkAlike finding no flaw]] in his InsaneTrollLogic, and has docked Adam's pay ("You're getting a ''massive'' paycut") so many times it's a miracle he's getting paid anything at all. And [[DisproportionateRetribution woe to any employee]] that [[ComicalOverreacting drops a company pen or a spoon]] in his presence...

* ''WebVideo/{{Bored}}'': How Playtech stays afloat with Rowan as the store manager is a mystery for the ages. He can't grasp that sales are meant to at least look good for the customers, he regularly allows [[UnsatisfiableCustomer Ben]] to get away with stealing merchandise by [[StrangeMindsThinkAlike finding no flaw]] in his InsaneTrollLogic, and has docked Adam's pay ("You're getting a ''massive'' paycut") so many times it's a miracle he's getting paid anything at all. And [[DisproportionateRetribution woe to any employee]] that [[RantInducingSlight drops a company pen or a spoon]] in his presence...

* ''WebVideo/ShinyObjectsVideos'': The boss in "Magiconomy" is perfectly willing to banish his employees to the nether dimensions for making suggestions he doesn't like.

* In ''WebVideo/TheGreatWar'', host Indy Neidell explicitly compares General [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarI Conrad von Hötzendorf]] to the original PHB from Dilbert. Despite having a controversial reputation among military historians, the series emphasises von Hötzendorf's tendencies as a GeneralRipper who was at least partly responsible for the war breaking out in the first place, and expresses bafflement that he is still considered by some to be a military genius.

* In ''WebComic/{{Lackadaisy}},'' ProfessionalKiller Mordecai Heller was once one half of a pair of enforcers at the Lackadaisy gang, but defected to a new position as TheDragon at the much larger Marigold gang. His new boss has him managing a pair of minions of his own, [[OverzealousUnderling overkill-happy]] bandits the Savoys. He is depicted as being near-universally ''terrible'' at reining them in, with NoSocialSkills to judge when they'll steamroll him, or otherwise ignore his orders, a fact they readily {{Exploit|ed}} to do anything from hazing him to ''scarring'' him. Mordecai himself has begun to realize the position he's in, and {{Exploit|ed}}s his genuine inability to control the Savoys to play "good cop" while blackmailing an informant.

* Hamnpork, leader of the Clan in ''Literature/TheAmazingMauriceAndHisEducatedRodents'', didn't take the shift to sentience particularly well, being fairly old at the time. By the time the book rolls around, Hamnpork is reduced to being a figurehead for Peaches and Darktan. However, unlike most pointy-haired bosses, Hamnpork is well aware that his leadership qualifications are from a different time, and while he is clearly unhappy about it, he is willing to let Darktan and Peaches call the shots and quietly groom Darktan as his successor. Also, while Hamnpork isn't much of a peacetime leader, he ''is'' a highly competent scrapper and solid, if unimaginative, small-unit tactician (he managed to gain and hold authority well into his old age, at a time when AsskickingLeadsToLeadership was in full effect) and puts those skills to good use when called upon to do so.

* Mr. Perkins, the evil head of the Bank of Evil ([[TakeThat formerly Lehman Bros]].) in ''WesternAnimation/DespicableMe'' certainly [[ShoutOut looks like]] the original (or [[Webcomic/WeaponBrown the unrated version of him]]) but he's actually scarily competent.

Very often such a boss is not merely incompetent but [[BadBoss evil]]; the kind of guy who takes all the credit for their employees' success but blames them for their own failures. In these cases they can be ''more'' contemptible than the [[CorruptCorporateExecutive CEO]] whom they serve: while the CEO is only concerned with padding the bottom line (thereby keeping the company humming along), the Pointy-Haired Boss will sink to any depths to protect their job--a job little better than that of their subordinates, yet one the PHB is completely unqualified for--and will cut the knees out from under employees to [[NeverMyFault make themselves look competent.]]

%%* Mullet Boss from ''Webcomic/BasicInstructions'' fits this trope to a T

* Bill Lumbergh in ''Film/OfficeSpace'' doesn't do much besides orchestrating useless events and badger his employees, who universally dislike him. He puts up a veneer of affability, but reveals himself to be a MeanBoss in the only time he has to actually do something - namely, instead of informing Milton that he's being let go due to downsizing, he quietly moves his office to the basement and has him kill cockroaches after he's already been removed from the company payroll. Even the two hatchetmen he hired start grilling ''him'' [[EveryoneHasStandards after getting an inkling about how he's run Initech]].

-->-- '''John Tuld''', ''Film/MarginCall''

* ''WesternAnimation/AmericanDad'': Deputy Director Avery Bullock tends to waste the CIA's funding on strip clubs, drugs, axial fans, and missile defenses. He also treats his employees like preschoolers, is easily fooled by obvious lies and deceptions, refuses to negotiate with terrorists even when his wife is held captive by them, and once moved Stan's office to ''the bathroom'' to make room for a new table.

* Played deadly serious in ''Series/{{Chernobyl}}''. All three of the guys in charge of Chernobyl power plant are horrible - Dyatlov insists on going forward with the test despite everything that went wrong and later sends people to their deaths because he just can't accept what happened, Bryukhanov is a ProfessionalButtKisser whose only thought after reactor #4 exploded is to cover his own butt, and Fomin bullies those under him and is ''also'' in such denial that he tells Sitnikov to ''go look at the exposed reactor core'' to see if it really had exploded (it had, but even after Sitnikov reports this Fomin denies it). All of them take NeverMyFault to the extreme, and their only real purpose in the story is to hamper response to the accident and cause it to get worse. You'd think an exploded reactor would be bad enough ''without'' letting it continue for weeks, but no...

* ''Series/KenanAndKel'': Chris Potter is the owner of Rigby's and the superior to Kenan (and later Sharla). However, he seems incapable of taking care of his store, which is constantly vandalized by Kenan and Kel's shenanigans.

IncompetenceInc is a likely place to find a PHB, but just about any organization with a large hierarchy will do. Occasionally he will be surrounded by ''very'' competent workers when ConservationOfCompetence is in effect.

All too often this is TruthInTelevision; one technical term is "manglement", a portmanteau of "mangle" and "management". Compare with the military's GeneralFailure. Shares a lot of overlap with a CluelessBoss. If enough of these are in a company, expect the company to be an example of IncompetenceInc.

* ''WesternAnimation/BeavisAndButthead'': The manager of [[BurgerFool Burger World]] has to deal with Beavis and Butt-Head's shenanigans -- constantly goofing off at work, harassing customers and delaying/withdrawing their orders, having no standards of sanitation when dealing with the food (which has gotten the place shut down by the health department once), etc. And yet, he [[UltimateJobSecurity never even bothers to fire them for any of this]] or keep them in line, instead just telling them to get back to work.