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This is a question Worst Person for the Job

In a week where it emerges that the new Health Secretary is a fan of the hocus-pocus that is homeopathy, tell us about people who are spectacularly out of their depth in a job. Have you ever found yourself wallowing in your own incompetence? Tell us. (Note: "Name of football manager/politician - nuff said" does not constitute an answer)

(, Thu 6 Sep 2012, 12:48)
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I'm sure they'll be a lot of "My boss...." type ones,
...but, my old boss:

I used to sit next to him but with some weird perspect divider that barely muffled any sound coming from his desk - he needed it as he would regularly discuss 'confidential' matters - apparently.

I was sitting there one afternoon after a few down the pub next door, when he had one of these 'confidential' meetings.
The chap he was speaking to was also notoriously useless and both had in fact been shuffled sideways to our out-of-town office where they couldn't cause too much damage - they'd both been there decades and the general consensus was that they would cost too much to make redundant.
The conversation went along the lines of:

"So, shall we use Windows NT or Oracle?"
"I think we should use Oracle. It costs more. It's surely better."

There were many like this.

Now, aside from the fact that they were asking a question in keeping with "Shall I use a fork, or a slice of wholemeal toast", they also had a managerial attitude of "it costs more, therefore it must be good".
The managerial people skills were also very badly lacking. On one occassionm, I'd had around 10 days off sick - I'm rarely sick and there was a lot going on in my family which had run me down and meant I was getting pretty much every bloody virus in the air every few weeks.
A year after this happened he pulled me up on it. He'd looked at previous years and had seen that in the last 4 years, I'd had one day off sick, yet still concluded that I was a serial sicky-taker.
That evening, the automated mail responder had stopped working. We finished work at 4. He phoned and asked me to come in and fix it. I wasn't paid overtime, and had no call-out fee. I'm sure you can guess my answer.

So, in short, an IT manager with the IT skills of a dead hedghog, and the people skills of David Brent.

Apologies for lack of funnies. This bloke was such a nob it's making me feel depressed just realising that he's probably still out there somewhere - probably running some global IT dept. for BA.
(, Thu 6 Sep 2012, 13:29, 4 replies)
No apologies necessary
"Shall I use a fork, or a slice of wholemeal toast" gave me my biggest LOL of the day so far :)
(, Thu 6 Sep 2012, 13:46, closed)
I think
the problem was that both were utterly useless, and each of them knew it about themselves....they just couldn't admit it to each other, so the charade went on and on and on.
If one had said "Hang on...I don't really understand what either of these things are. Shall we ask someone who might?" then the company would probaby has saved dozens of pounds.
(, Thu 6 Sep 2012, 13:50, closed)
"It costs more, therefore it must be good" is a notion firmly rooted in certain parts of our culture.
Those two were clearly very aspirational.
(, Thu 6 Sep 2012, 14:23, closed)
You've never worked for me you fibber!

(, Thu 6 Sep 2012, 16:28, closed)

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