I didn't know where to put this section. It's about idiots that I have known.

The Pointy Haired Boss is the nemesis of the Dilbert character in the comic strip of the same name. He is stupid, arrogant and has no self awareness.

I used to work with someone who was the Pointy Haired Boss personified. He even looked like him. He was one of the two owners of a small design agency I worked for.

Let me outline some of his stupidity. I shall call him Jon, because that was his name.


Pitch work
Jon was (ostensibly) in charge of design and in charge of new business. This meant he was involved in pitches, and therefore preparing pitch documents.

He was notorious for making many errors in any work that he produced. But because he was so arrogant and so confident of his own ability, he refused to have his work checked by anyone else. The quality of his work became so bad that we ended up losing new business, and the feedback came (on more than one occasion) that we had lost because there were so many errors, especially spelling errors, throughout the pitch documents. Jon was so bad at what he did, he wouldn't even run a spellcheck.


Publicity booklet
One day Jon gave me a set of files for a publicity booklet for our company that he had produced. He wanted me to send it to our print shop. He told me just to send it and not show anybody else. He wanted me to do this because he didn't want to be told he had got something wrong, and he knew (whether he admitted it or not) that what he did was going to be wrong.

I immediately went upstairs and told everyone what had just happened. It was the end of the day and everyone was getting ready to leave. But because we were all aware at how bad the quality of Jon's work was, everyone immediately sat back down again and prepared themselves for some proofreading.

We printed the whole booklet on our office printer and divided the pages amongst ourselves to proofread it. Immediately it became clear the book was littered with errors. Multiple errors on every single page. Not the sort of thing you would want to publicise your business.

On the bottom of each page was a phone number, which (in theory) was the number to use to call us for new business. But the number that was printed (on every single page) was not a valid phone number.

I went downstairs to the two owners and told them this. Jon tried to justify the number he had used was the number on his desk and not the main reception number. His business partner countered that Jon was never at his desk, so any calls there would go unanswered anyway. I re‑countered that it wasn't even a real number anyway. Jon insisted that he was correct.

So I took out my phone, put it on speaker and dialled the number in the booklet. "This number is not a valid number, please try again". And he still insisted he was right.


No real job
Jon's job title was "Creative Partner", meaning that the other owner actually did all the running of the business work. "Creative Partner" might sound like that Jon is in charge of the design department, and indeed, he thought he was. But the business also had a "Creative Director" who was the real head of the design department.

In fact, knowing how bad Jon was at almost everything, the Managing Partner had managed to maneuver Jon out of any position of responsibility at all. Jon was so arrogant he didn't notice.

The problem with this is that now Jon could wander around and stick his nose in any project he liked. However, the staff members got wise to this, and experience had showed us that any project he got involved with would go wrong, due to his interference. So if Jon was wandering around the studio, as he walked passed a particular computer screen, the designer would quickly minimise the window on any work that he was doing, so Jon couldn't see and therefore wouldn't get involved in that project.


Wouldn't learn
However Jon was always involved in pitch projects. These weren't billable jobs, so we weren't losing money on them as such, because we weren't earning money on them. They were only the potential of earnings in the future.

Pitch work is often frantic though, as there is often a hard deadline. Jon would prepare a document and then get someone else to make amends to it. The problem was Jon didn't really know how to use the programs that he used to prepare the document. When someone else opened his document they'd have to figure out the stupid, round-about way he'd work to achieve what he wanted.

It was clear that simple things that should take an experienced designer only 5 minutes to achieve, Jon had spent hours and hours doing it the wrong way. This became a problem amplified when another designer had to then make amends. Do they then spend a long time updating it the way Jon did it. Or just tear it down and build it in the correct way? Either way, a simple amend is going to take way longer than it should, and pitch work doesn't have the luxury of time.

I complained to the Managing Partner about this problem. His response was that he tried to make, even force, Jon to go on training to be able to learn how to use the programs he needed, but Jon had refused. Jon is so arrogant that he believes he doesn't need training.


Restaurant reservations
The company tried to organise semi-regular nights out for all the staff. A way for us to socialise together. For a while Jon was in charge of booking the restaurant for these nights out. However, on each of these nights the same thing would happen. We would all gather ourselves at the office. Either we would walk to the restaurant (if it was nearby) or take cabs. We would all arrive at the restaurant. And then we would find out that Jon had not made the reservation. He only imagined he had. Then Jon would argue with the restaurant manager that he had made a reservation. This happened every time, at different restaurants. What's the common thread here? Not the restaurant.

Eventually the Managing Partner got sick of this happening and Jon wasn't in charge of social nights anymore.


Christmas breakfast
I think this happened after the Managing Partner stopped Jon organising dinners. Each year, the company had a whole day at the end of the year for our Christmas social, starting with breakfast. One year Jon reserved breakfast at a traditional English diner (also known as a "greasy spoon") in the back streets of the King's Cross area. He managed to actually make the reservation.

King's Cross has since undergone civic regeneration, but at the time the back streets were a particularly dodgy area – prostitutes, sex shops and porn cinemas. Indeed the place we had breakfast was situated right between two porn cinemas. Although at breakfast time they weren't open. I found it greatly amusing that our company met first thing in the morning in such a seedy part of town. I'm fairly certain Jon had no idea, but he was oblivious to most things.


Cheap
Jon was cheap. By that I mean he was always trying to buy or do thing at very low cost. Less money than could reasonably expected. One of these results was that we didn't have proper IT support. So I ended up being the IT guy, although that was not my job.


Computer screens
One of the things I did as the IT guy was buy some extra computer screens for the accounts department. I sourced the lowest possible cost screens that I could and bought about 6 to 8 new screens. Terrible black plastic, low quality things.

Then, not long after that, out of the blue, in consultation with no-one else, Jon decided that the design team all needed a second screen. So he went out and 'obtained' a set of screens for them. I say 'obtained' because I'm fairly certain these were the 'fell of the back of a van' sort. These new screen were of an even worse quality that the ones I had bought for the accounts team – screen themselves that were the absolute cheapest I could source. I have no idea how he was able to find worse quality screens. It really was an achievement.

Clearly these screens were not fit for purpose. Not fit for a designer, who needed some sort of colour accuracy. So what I then did was swap out these screens with the ones I had given accounts and gave the accounts' screens to design.


Laptops
We needed a laptop for pitch presentation. Something to take to a client, loaded with examples of our work. We were an Apple Mac studio. Everyone in the whole office used a Mac.

So Jon went and bought a Windows PC laptop for pitch work. He did not know how to operate Windows. But he bought it because it was cheap.

Then, the very same day, he lost the power cord for that new laptop. So instead of buying a new power cord, the next day he bought another of the same model laptop, so he could use that power cord.

So now we had two laptops that he didn't know how to use, and one power cord between them.


Phones
Jon seemed to know some dodgy characters – real 'fell off the back of a van' characters. Or maybe just cheap, dodgy IT people. One of his schemes was to do away with our landline phones and install only Voip (voice over internet phones). This we did, without any testing. And it didn't work. So for about a week the whole office didn't have any phones, until we got separate internet lines for the phones. This was the days before mobiles were cheap.


Running out of room
We were really running out of room in our current office. We managed to juggle desk space because there was always someone out of the office – often Jon. But one day it was clear to those of us who actually ran the day-to-day business that the following day we wouldn't have enough seats. We'd have one too many people for places for them to sit.

That evening, those of us who ran the day-to-day (me, Production Manager, Client Services Director) tried to figure out a solution. I went around to every person in the company to check if they were going to be in the office the next day (they all were).

I was checking with each designer about this when Jon got testy with me about it. I explained to him that we probably aren't going to have enough seats tomorrow. He yelled at me that they'll sort it out when it happens. Which of course will be too late, because we'll just have people standing around. And the reason that we had so many people in the office was that we were really busy, so we couldn't afford the time to have people just standing around.

The day-to-day team just ignored Jon and that evening I went and bought another desk. Jon really had no concept of how to keep a business smoothly running, or even that it needed to be. He was so self absorbed that any question that wasn't about him and his work, actually made him angry. A very arrogant man. And yet it was often he that was the problem to smooth running.


New office
As I said, Jon didn't really have a job, as such. One of the ways the Managing Partner got him out of the office was to task him with looking for a new office space, and set it up. This took Jon a whole year. And for a whole year, it was glorious. He wasn't in the office and the rest of us didn't have to deal with his messes.


Move day
This happened on the weekend and I wasn't there, but I heard about all the things that went wrong. For a start we had supposedly reserved the parking space outside the old building for the moving truck. But on the day the space was occupied. The next nearest parking space was a block away.

Then we hadn't hired specialists to move our server. So when it came time to move the server, they found that it wouldn't fit through the external door of the old building. So they dismantled the server in the foyer.

Then at the new building, it wouldn't have fit in the door to the server room. Fortunately the server was already in pieces, but it was up to me to put it back together again. I have no training in servers or IT.


No internet
Our company wasn't supposed to move to the new office until it was ready. Remember, it took a year to get ready. Eventually we moved into the new office, because Jon said it was ready.

The Monday morning came with everyones desks set up and everyone ready to get back to work, and we discovered that we had no internet. Jon had failed to get the internet installed.

Again, he insisted that he had done this. But we had no internet, so it was clearly not true.

It took another week to get the internet installed. Running a business for a week without the internet.


Not enough internet ports
Jon had arranged the office to be fit out with internet ports. He had got installed two ports for each employee. One for their internet and one for their phone. But this didn't allow for any sort of expansion. As soon as we employed one more person we were short of internet ports. And yet we just had a new wiring system installed. We moved into a new office so that we could employ more people. Maybe a little forethought would have been good.


No branding
With the new office, Jon decided the company should have a new brand. He invented the tagline "Design Matters". I wanted to add "because nothing else does. Not logic, or process, or common sense".

Jon had two very large signs made up that said "Design Matters" that ran the width of the building at either end of the office. But as the Client Services Director pointed out, nowhere do we actually have the name of the business. And even these two new signs can't be seen when a visitor enters the office (the entrance was in the middle of the building). We had no visible branding at all.


Labels & Notifications
In the new office, there was a new kitchen, which had many overhead cupboards for put all the kitchen things in – cups, plates etc.

The first noticeable thing about these cupboards was all the door were put on the wrong way around. By that I mean they opened in the opposite direction to what was logical. Jon was the overseer in the fit out of the kitchen and therefore it was he who had signed off on this. I did have the thought as to whether he had found a cut-price kitchen cabinet maker, and that's why it was wrong.

As the kitchen was new and used by all the staff, the office manageress tried to label all the cupboards so people would know where things were, and so they could put them back in the right place – again, things like cups and plates etc.

Jon was having none of this. He thought the labels were against his 'design aesthetic' and so he kept tearing them down. Indeed, if anybody put up any sort of label or notice, or anything at all on a wall or cupboard door, he would tear it down.

Consequently, no one knew where anything was, or where anything went. I understand that he might dislike ugly labels, but he refused to produce a solution. A well designed label would have been the solution, but his solution was ignorance – which seemed to match everything else he did.

One of the things he refused to have posted was a legally required health and safety notice. All UK businesses must display this notice in their workplace. Most put it in the kitchen, so it is viewable, but out of the way. But Jon refused. He thought it was ugly and wouldn't allow it to be displayed. Which was illegal, and could have resulted in a fine. But he wouldn't be told otherwise.


Table football
In the new office Jon was insistent that a design studio should have table football – because in his mind it was still 1980. When we moved in we had photos taken of the pristine office and we staged a table football match. After that I hid the balls for the table football and no-one ever noticed. Because no-one ever wanted to play table football. It just got covered up and used as a table.


Established date
Eventually, after being harassed by the Client Service Director for a year, Jon arranged for a signwriter to paint the company name on the wall outside the office door. As part of this writing he included the date that the company had been established. But what he had instructed the signwriter to put was "established" and then the current year. I know the business had existed about 10 years at that point.

I also knew that it was pointless telling Jon about this, as he would argue that he was right. So, while the signwriter was still painting, I found the Managing Director, asked him what year the business had been established and then asked him to follow me. Showing him the spurious sign currently being painted. He was able to correct the signwriter.

He then went to tell Jon of the error. Not that Jon admitted the error was his.


Email inbox
As I said, I was reluctantly in charge of IT. As such I was in charge of people's email accounts and I had backdoor entry to them. These were company accounts, so there was nothing personal I could prise into. And I didn't have access to the Managing Director's account, so there was nothing critical I could access.

But I could access Jon's account if I wanted. There was more than one occasion when I know Jon had been emailed some necessary information or file that I (or someone else) needed for a job. We'd ask Jon for it. He'd go away and then claim he hadn't been emailed it.

I would then go to my computer, log on to his email, and find the very thing we needed, sitting very obviously in his inbox.

I mean, the man couldn't even operate email. He was a very stupid man.


No courage
I was getting sick of all the messes and the trail of disasters that Jon left in his wake. I was vocal about what I thought about him, and no-one could tell me I was wrong (because I wasn't).

One of my colleagues pointed out that Jon must have thought I was right. He reasoned that if an employee (me) had a problem then the senior partner (Jon) should confront me and have it out with me. "OK, you've got a problem, tell it to my face". But Jon avoided me, more or less. He knew I was right. Or he didn't have the courage to face me.


Tripping himself up
Actually I think he probably disliked me from early up in my time at the company. One time, when I had been working for the company for a only few weeks and, in front of the whole office, he tried to show that he was smarter than me. I did not know that this is what he was trying to do, and so I did not know that I would so easily outsmart him, in a public setting.

Although I am not London born, I have lived here for some years. He asked me (in front of the whole office) if I knew from what point distances are measured in London.

I answered "Charing Cross".

He countered "No, it's the statue in front of Trafalgar Square". He was obviously very pleased with himself, that he thought he could show off his knowledge.

I replied that this statue sits on the intersection called Charing Cross and that this intersection predates the statue, the station called Charing Cross and Trafalgar Square.

In other words, I schooled him. In front of the entire staff. I think he disliked me from the start. Maybe my intellectual arrogance got the better of me, but I was just responding like with like.


What do you do?
By the end of my time in the company, I was doing five jobs (I was only being paid for one). My paid job was Senior Digital Artworker. But because the person in the position of my line manager kept quitting I was doing that job as well – Production Manager. And because we were down one more person in our department I was doing that job as well – Print Artworker. And I was IT manager. And I was actually doing Jon's job around the office – Resource Manager.

Then one day Jon said to me "What do you actually do around here?" in a very condescending manner – he was a very arrogant man.

I quit the next day.


Office security
I had said, from the moment that we had moved into the new office, that there was no security. In fact really poor security. No alarms. The windows didn't lock properly (we were on the first floor about ground floor). This was Jon's responsibility.

About a week after I left the company I got a call from one of my colleagues, asking if I had log in details for one of our systems. I told them from memory, but I thought it was odd they were asking me. So I asked why. The company had been burgled and almost all of the computers had been stolen, including the server (fortunately they had off site backups). But Jon's incompetence has cost them deep.


How is he still alive?
I asked myself this question. How is this man still alive? How has he successfully managed to cross the road without getting hit? When he is so often wrong, but won't admit it in the face of overwhelming evidence. How has he not just walked into the road and told himself that the traffic would go around him? I'm surprised he's still alive.

War, war, war! Warne, Warne, Warne! Oz News reigns supreme. Both Ray and Jana are back on 9, the football season has recommenced (with some very silly rule changes) and all is right with the world. Here follows a cautionary tale which will probably give you much giggles. It certainly has been the principle issue in our lives these last months...

As you are aware, at the Fringe three years ago, one M Smith [not his real name] had a fling with a German tourist – no more than a few days. Foolishly, they failed to utilise contraception and, when she returned to Deutschland, he was sore amazed to get a phone call telling him he was going to be a father. Ho ho! Being ever the gentleman (or the kind of character who always needed to be seen to be doing the right thing) he decided a) to be a father and b) to marry someone on the strength of half an hour's sweating and grunting.

Is that bright? we asked ourselves. But he was set on it and so was she, so we shrugged compliantly. Finally he went off to Germany and returned with a son and a wife-to-be. It was immediately apparent that they had NOTHING in common and it followed on fairly quickly from that neither of them really wanted to have anything in common. He got a proper job (if such a thing exists in arts administration) and she started to whine about the fact he was never home.

Junior was less that 12 months old and – bingo – someone miscarried the second unplanned pregnancy. (See a pattern forming here?) She was getting increasingly depressed and irrational and – hating Oz – thought she'd holiday back to Deutschland. In the end, she hated that too! However, while she was away, she phoned hubby to inform him that they were going to be parents again! (The date is currently around May 2002.)

Papa's first response was that it wasn't his because they hadn't been sleeping together – at least penetratively... Hmm, I was confused, but I am a naif sort. While she was away, he began to associate with a young female colleague of his. My other half – suspicious little critter that she is – said 'I think they're having an affair.'

Mama came back from Germany and the relationship took a serious turn for the worse. Accusations and lunacy flew left, right and centre. Finally he was forced to retreat from the mutual domicile. The new baby was born. The new father wanted to move in with his mother – she told him he had to sort his shit out for himself. He wasn't welcome at his home. Then he decides the time is right to confirm my other half's suspicion. His missus slings him out of the house. His mother says there is no way in hell that she's having anything to do with him. He moves into the spare room of a good samaritan.

The he starts bringing the new chick over to the samaritan's place. He studiously avoids all contact with his friends and his mother. His crazy missus – jobless, skill-less, linguistically disadvantaged, with two kids under two – begins to harass the samaritan (as being the only point of contact she has with her husband). The samaritan puts up with this for a fortnight then slings Smith out too.

Oh christ, we all groan. But: 'oh well, things can't get any worse!'

How stupid we can be...

Turns out that this bit of fluff of his is four months pregnant and she's going to keep the baby!

One unplanned pregnancy is unfortunate but it happens – and there are solutions for all moral codes. Two is either very unfortunate or a little foolish. Four in three years is, of course, the act of a complete fucking moron!

So, as the play stands now: He's living with this new woman. He has publicly announced to their mutual colleagues that they are an item and expecting their first baby. The only contact between husband and wife is through the lawyers and my poor bloody partner – who was dobbed in (without consultation) to be the go-between for access to children. He has agreed to allow her to return to Germany – ostensibly for a holiday. She will not return.

So, there you go. Wipe your eyes and realise that in a world peopled thus, there is no way we will try and avoid a land war in the middle east!