In real life, businesses and organizations are usually run by qualified people. In fiction, that isn't always the case. Sometimes someone ends up in charge of an organization despite being blatantly unqualified or unexpected. Maybe a group of cheerleaders is running the local library, or a biker gang has to serve as the local fire department.
There's a lot of ways this can happen. Maybe someone inherited a business from a more qualified relative. Maybe the villain is running a fake business as part of an evil plan, but it ends up becoming more real than they intended. Perhaps the Closest Thing We Got isn't all that close. Or maybe it's just a Zany Scheme gone completely off the rails. No matter how it happens, expect things to go hilariously wrong. In an ongoing series, things will usually go back to normal by next episode.
Related to New Job as the Plot Demands and Wrong Line of Work. Subtrope of Fish out of Water. Can be part of a New Job Episode.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You: Hahari Hanazono buys out the school Rentarou and his girlfriends attend to become the new chairwoman the day after she herself falls in love with him. Owing to her adoration of anything she finds cute, at least two of the teachers owe their jobs to her, one of them being hired because Hahari thought she was cute, and the other a hedonistic drunkard who lives in a tent in the school garden. It turns out that it's policy at Hanazono companies to hire people if they're cute, no questions asked. Hahari is shown to be a competent administrator and, whether it's despite her policies or because of them, the businesses she's in charge of do well and have good reputations.
- During the first season of Pokémon: The Original Series, Giovanni leaves Jessie and James in charge of the Viridian City Gym while he goes out. It ends about as well as you'd expect.
Comic Strips
- At one point in Dilbert, Ratbert managed to become the CEO of the company Dilbert works at after the previous CEO died. While normally a well-meaning and somewhat dim rat, the power quickly went to his head and he became The Caligula, and he got fired after just a week on the job for abuses like dipping employees in varnish and using them as furniture. Dogbert has also become CEO several times, but given how he's both highly intelligent and highly sociopathic despite being a dog, he's a subversion.
Film — Animated
- Ratatouille: After Gusteau's restaurant gets shut down, Linguini opens his own place. He has to admit to food critic Anton Ego that he is hopelessly out of his depth as a chef; the real culinary genius is Remy the rat, whom Linguini keeps under his toque. Further, almost the entire kitchen staff is composed of rats, taking direction from Remy. Surprisingly, this works out so nicely that Ego agrees to keep Linguini's secret.
Film — Live-Action
- Vinnie of My Blue Heaven is a former New York mobster in witness protection who attempts to run a scam based around raising money to "renovate the little league park". One thing leads to another, and he finds himself coaching a suburban little league team.
- In Small Time Crooks, a group of criminals rent The Convenient Store Next Door to a bank and run a cookie shop as a front while they try to tunnel into the vault. While the tunneling operation is a failure, the cookies are an unexpected hit, and the gang tries to make a career of it. Amusingly, a career arsonist ends up as the fire safety inspector.
- Tommy Boy is about a Book Dumb Manchild who has to save his late father's auto parts manufacturing company.
Live-Action TV
- In an episode of 3rd Rock from the Sun, Sally puts up a sign advertising her fake hair salon as an excuse to get a tax refund. Then the customers start showing up. She decides to actually try to run the hair salon because she enjoys the gossip, but the business quickly tanks when her customers realize that she gives lousy haircuts.
- One episode of Arrested Development has Lindsay take over the business for a day, over the course of which the business literally falls apart. Actually, it just moved downstairs when she wasn't looking.
- Bar Rescue: In the episode "Yo-Ho-Ho and a Bottle of Dumb", the team tries to bail out Piratz Tavern, a pirate-themed bar that initially attracted customers who liked to pretend to be pirates. The owner eventually decided to hire her frequent customers as staff, and, essentially, the animals ended up running the zoo. Everyone is too focused on playing pretend pirate and helping themselves to free drinks to notice that the business is failing to attract any new or normal customers and losing money when John Taffer and his team arrive to try and bail them out. John's presence only leads to conflict when the pirates refuse to make any changes to the bar or their behavior.
- Dead Like Me: In the episode "A Cook", after the regular cook at the reapers' hangout, Der Waffle Haus, dies, Rube, who has a passion for cooking at his home apartment (and, more importantly, reaped the cook's soul), figures he'd try to put in a shift and take over their kitchen. Rube quickly finds out how much more difficult cooking for paying customers can be, compared to what he's used to fixing for himself. On top of that, the cook's soul hangs around. Initially the cook's soul is critical of Rube's failures, but, gradually, he starts to coach Rube in the kitchen and imparts his personal philosophy that the cook shouldn't bow to the demands of the customer. After Rube caught on and stood up to a particularly rude customer, the cook's soul finally passed on to the other side.
- Dharma & Greg once broke into a small-town diner to use their phone, but when caught by the police, claimed to be relatives of the owners there to run it while they were away. One thing leads to another, and at closing time, they ended up with quite a bit of money in the till for the owners (despite "Ike's" wooden leg).
- Frasier and Niles (two psychiatrists with no experience in the restaurant business) take over a restaurant — and their father later recounts it as the craziest blunder they ever make.
- On How I Met Your Mother, Ted and Barney convinced the owner of McLaren's not to close early and let them lock up. They open the bar for a couple of hotties they had been trying to hook up with earlier and a few of their friends... the entire Arizona Tech marching band. Oh, and they break a few glasses imitating Tom Cruise in Cocktail.
- Kamen Rider Zero-One: The premise of the season. Right before his death, Hiden Intelligence CEO Korenosuke Hiden passed down his position (and by proxy the Zero-One anti-Robot War self-defense arsenal) to his grandson Aruto, a down-on-his-luck comedian with no training and zero business savvy.
- Kitchen Nightmares: The Kingston Cafe is owned by Dr. Una Morris, a radiotherapist who runs the restaurant like it's a hospital.
- Laverne & Shirley: Lenny inherits his uncle's diner ("Laslo's Place"), which he & Squiggy decide to rename ("Dead Laslo's Place") and run themselves, hiring Laverne to be the cook and Shirley as the waitress.
- In an episode of The Suite Life on Deck, Zack, Woody, and Marcus (three teenagers) set up a fake Beauty Contest as a way to get girls. However, once they're caught, Mr. Mosby forces them to actually organize a proper beauty pageant as a punishment.
- Ted Lasso is about an American Football coach who is hired to coach an Association Football team by an owner who wishes to sabotage the team to spite her ex-husband. He does about as well as you'd expect initially, but he eventually has some success when he focuses on building a good culture while leaving the actual on-field decisions to more knowledgeable assistants.
Podcasts
- There may be no stranger management anywhere than Night Vale Community Radio. Station management — which is only ever referred as station management — is never described directly but heavily implied to be some form of terrifying gestalt entity. It mainly lurks in its extradimensional hellscape "office", emerging only to devour problematic employees (like when they ask for a raise) and go on dates with its romantic partner, Night Vale's city council — a likewise terrifying gestalt entity.
Video Games
- Played for ominous creeps in Control, which begins with protagonist Jesse Faden reaching the HQ of the Federal Bureau of Control in search of her long-missing brother, only to discover it's gone under lockdown due to an outbreak of a resonance-based evil called The Hiss, and its director dead in his office, seemingly by suicide. Jesse then finds herself compelled to pick up the gun — a psychic artifact dubbed the Service Weapon — and after being thrust into an Incomprehensible Entrance Exam by a mysterious higher power known as The Board, Jesse becomes appointed the new director, and spends the rest of the game having to take on the responsibility of cleaning up the mess.
- In Criminal Case: Mysteries of the Past, the heroes, who are essentially police Internal Affairs, end up running a telephone company when they discover that it's a scam and try to salvage it so that the locals who invested in it won't lose their money.
- The WarioWare series has this premise. After Wario saw in a TV ad how much money you can make with Video Games, he founds his own Video Game company. However, he doesn't have any idea how to and falls asleep. His friends (or you in WarioWare: D.I.Y.) are now tasked with creating games for him. D.I.Y. in particular showed that he really has no idea how to make video games.
Webcomics
- Team Fortress 2: After Gray Mann takes over Mann Co. and fires the mercs, Pyro becomes the successful CEO of an engineering company, despite being an insane pyromaniac who sees the world as a Sugar Bowl and fire as beautiful rainbows, never takes off their gas mask, and speaks in an unintelligible "Mmmmph-mmmmph-mmmmph" at all times.
- xkcd has Beret Guy, who is a Cloudcuckoolander of the highest order - half of the things he says don't make sense in context, and the other half is only tangentially related - but still somehow manages to become a multimillionaire when inexplicably placed in charge of a company, and lead that company to record profits. In at least one case, he wasn't even aware his company did anything.
Western Animation
- Archer: Most of the employees of ISIS must have been recruited from the loony bin. Malory Archer runs the place as an Alpha Bitch: she's a Bad Boss with no patience, no sympathy, and no scruples. Her son Sterling Archer is an alcoholic Jerkass that happens to excel at combat, but not much else. Kreiger is a Mad Scientist on the payroll, Pam Poovey is an Action Girl with enough body mass to steamroller opponents, and Cheryl Tunt is a ditzy heiress that tags along just for fun. Poor Cyril Figgis is the Only Sane Man, and Lana Kane is the Only Sane Woman. Eventually, their collective incompetence results in the FBI shutting them down, whereupon they take to cocaine trafficking instead, then reform into their old roles under the Figgis Agency, before finally taking up their old jobs as spies, albeit under a new name.
- From the Family Guy episode "Start Me Up": After more success than expected on a Kickstarter campaign, Chris (a teenager), Brian (a talking dog), and Stewie (a baby) find themselves having to make a movie. While they're somehow able to complete the film, it flops hard and they get booed only seconds after it starts.
- Kim Possible: Supervillain Dr. Drakken once owned a muffin company. It was originally a front for an evil plan, but when it was more successful than the evil plan, he tried to cancel the plan and just focus on the muffins.
- This is how Speedy Gonzalez ended up running his pizza place in The Looney Tunes Show. Years ago, the pizzeria was owned by Cool Old Guy Mr Girardi, who eventually decided to retire and move away. Bugs Bunny didn't want his favourite hangout spot to close down, so he bought the place. Of course, he couldn't run it on his own and had to ask Daffy for help. After Bugs named him "Commander-in-Chief of Pizza Operations” to get him on board, Daffy started to take the job a little too seriously. They ended up hiring Marvin the Martian, Pete Puma, and their friend Porky, and their first day running the restaurant was such a disaster that the local Chinese restaurant sent them a gift basket to thank them for all the customers their awful service had sent their way. Speedy called Bugs out on the decision to buy the restaurant like this since he never wanted to run a restaurant and his "I want a place to hang out with my friends" problem could be fixed by converting his garage. Bugs didn't convert his garage, but he wised up: He locked Daffy, Marvin, and Pete in the fridge so they wouldn't get in anyone's way, and let Speedy take care of all the work since he was fast enough, responsible enough, and genuinely passionate about making people happy and being surrounded with cheese all day. Eventually, the only decision that made sense was to give the restaurant over to Speedy.
- Phineas and Ferb, who are "a little bit young to be" doing whatever they're doing on any given day have run several businesses and organizations over their many adventures, from a diner to a ski resort to a cartoon studio. Because Phineas and Ferb are hypercompetent geniuses, these businesses are always successful initially. However, due to the nature of the show, they always vanish before the episode is over. Sometimes because they're so successful that someone else buys it off them.
- The Simpsons: "Homer the Moe": Moe goes off for a few days, leaving Homer in charge of the bar.
Moe: ... and if anyone wants potato chips or anything fancy, tell him to go to Hell.
Homer: Can do. Now, don't you worry about a thing. gleefully turns on a beer tap, spilling the beer onto the floor
Moe: shuts off the tap Hey, what are you doing? I gotta pay for that!
Homer: No, Moe, you've got it all wrong. People buy beer from you.- Moe isn't confident the bar is in good hands, but he leaves anyway. Before he gets two steps away, there's a huge explosion. When Moe rushes back in, Homer looks at him nonchalantly and says, "I thought you had to go."
- The South Park episode "Lil' Crime Stoppers" involves the main characters (literal children) going from playing detective to being recruited by the South Park police force to take down a meth lab. They succeed only due to the extreme stupidity of the criminals.
- Tig 'n Seek: The Department of Lost and Found is run by a simple-minded anthropomorphic dog who inherited it from his father. His main employee is an 8-year-old kid who looks for missing things, and his assistant is a cat who alternates between Gadgeteer Genius and Apathetic Pet. The rest of the staff consists of a rabbit with an eyepatch who is remodeling things seemingly at random and a mild-mannered fuzzy-headed monster who seems to be the Only Sane Man.
