Basic Trope: A character in a managerial position is incompetent.
- Straight: Peter Harrison is a manager at Incompetence, Inc. He's a total buffoon who has no idea what he's doing and, by mutual agreement with his Hyper-Competent Sidekick, lets the latter do everything.
- Exaggerated: Peter isn't aware of his job responsibilities, what's going on around him, or even where he works.
- Downplayed:
- Peter isn't as good at his new job as his superiors had hoped, but he can still get it done.
- Peter only looks bad by comparison with his predecessor, Alice.
- Justified:
- Peter was competent at his job once, but he couldn't handle the strains of managerial duties.
- Peter was an incompetent from the start, but the company couldn't really get rid of him for whatever reason (a complicated union situation, for example), so he was Kicked Upstairs to limit the amount of damage he could do.
- Peter wants to do his job properly but bureaucratic red tape has gotten in his way so strongly and often that he's quit trying to do more than the bare minimum to spare himself the frustration.
- Peter isn't necessarily incompetent or even incapable of handling the job, but a perfect storm of adverse circumstances has left him in way over his head and he compensates with draconian and often completely unreasonable policies to keep his team in line.
- Peter threatens legal action whenever his job is seriously threatened, and HR is so afraid of a lawsuit or bad press that they back down every time.
- Peter is in a protected class, and while he has never threatened legal action, another worker in the same class successfully sued the company a while back. Now, HR won't even dare look at anyone in that class funny, no matter how much cause they have.
- Everyone else is even worse.
- Peter became a manager during a boom time for the company and, when its fortunes fell, he didn't know how to revive them.
- Peter got the job through Nepotism or similar. Just because you know the right people, or are related to them, or whatever the case may be, doesn't necessarily mean you are suited to the position.
- Inverted:
- Subverted:
- At first Peter seems to have all the hallmarks of the Pointy-Haired Boss, but it turns out that was just a lie spread by Bob, who hates him.
- Peter is assigned a task, which he is expected to fail because of his past incompetence, but it falls within his single area of capability and he succeeds.
- A new hire, just before being introduced to Peter, is told there is a Pointy-Haired Boss in this office. He impresses them thoroughly.
- Double Subverted:
- Bob barely scratched the surface; Peter is far less competent than even his worst enemy would have dared guess.
- Peter's surprise success was entirely accidental.
- The Pointy-Haired Boss alluded to isn't Peter but somebody who outranks him.
- Alternatively, Peter is the Pointy-Haired Boss alluded to but fooled the new person for five minutes by being extremely charming and strictly following a script (written for him by somebody else, of course).
- Parodied:
- Peter is so incompetent at management that, in a completely mundane office environment, his employees start dying off in various absurd/tragic ways.
- Incompetence, Inc.'s main competitor declares Peter to be their Employee of the Month.
- When Peter is promoted to a supervisory position, he gets his hair restyled so it sticks up in one or more points above his head.
- Zig-Zagged:
- Peter is competent in some functions of his job, exceptional in a few, and abysmal in others.
- The office manager's position has a High Turnover Rate that goes quickly from an adept manager to an inept one to a hyper-competent one and back.
- Averted:
- Peter is competent enough for his position, and no evidence to the contrary is presented.
- The Ditz in the office isn't the boss.
- Enforced: "Those wage slaves watching this will love it if the boss is terrible. That way they sympathize with the office workers on this sitcom."
- Lampshaded: "How did you get promoted?"
- Invoked:
- When it's realized that Peter is incompetent, he's Kicked Upstairs.
- The Mole who leads Incompetence, Inc. personally assigns Peter to an active supervisory role in a vital office to cripple the company.
- Exploited:
- All Peter's underlings ignore their own jobs, knowing he won't do anything to correct them.
- Peter absolutely hates his new position. He really wants to go back to the cubicle farm, where he was before he got Kicked Upstairs for reasons that made no sense to him. He figures that if he does this job so badly, they'll either demote him or fire him.
- Defied:
- "I know I'm a good salesman, but I don't think I should be leading the sales branch."
- The first time Peter screws up, everybody under him revolts en masse and literally throw him out of the company.
- Discussed: "The management staff need better training, and not just copies of Who Moved My Cheese? They need to be promoted from the floor and take a few calls themselves so they know their employees' jobs as well as their own."
- Conversed:Jim: Peter should have resigned a long time ago. He's not at all cut out to manage this project and he knows it as well as we do, but he just won't admit it and I'm sick of his ridiculous displays of dominance because he conflates being an iron-fisted asshole with being a strong leader.Kate: I don't even think it's that. I think he just got put in a no-win situation, and he's afraid that if he admits it, we'll be on him like a bunch of sharks that just smelled blood. Mind you, I'm not saying I feel that sorry for him; he's a dick and I'm sick of his shit, but the deck was hopelessly stacked against him from the minute he got shuffled into this role.
- Implied:
- Peter appears only infrequently and, when he does appear, is perpetually twiddling his thumbs.
- Peter is listed as the manager of his department on his Linkedin, and Glassdoor reviews from his department consistently complain about incompetent and unqualified management.
- Deconstructed: Peter's incompetence comes back to bite him when the newest Incompetence, Inc. product fails due to him. His entire office is shut down, costing all the employees their jobs.
- Reconstructed:
- While there are some heavy losses on his end, Peter's office weathers the storm, but his incompetence is revealed. He's demoted back to Sales, which is where he wanted to be in the first place.
- Peter may lack the technical skills to run the company, but he has the necessary social skills to butter people left and right. Peter then acts as The Heart who mediates conflict and keeps everyone working together, and the company runs smoothly.
- Played for Laughs: Peter at least has a great sense of humour and tends to appear with someone else goofing around.
- Played for Drama: Many good workers are fired due to Peter's inability to lead the office, while he gets away scot-free thanks to his connections.
- Played for Horror: Peter's ineptitude has caused the local branch of Incompetence, Inc. to backslide into a state of having No OSHA Compliance, people die Cruel and Unusual Deaths, and the head office couldn't care less.
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