Unqualified managers make me laugh.

A guy I work with was slotted into an interim director position while the actual director is overseeing part of acquisition we are going though.  His attitude immediately changed when he moved in to the office.  He went from happy-go-lucky, clueless guy to slacks and serious-face clueless guy.  Most of us are wondering how he got slotted in to this position since the last three projects he has managed have been botched to hell. 

That's neither here nor there.  He has been in this position for a grand total of 5 business days.  I would like to present to you actual phrases I have heard him use in the past 5 business days that have never escaped his mouth in the past.  Unfortunately, I am not paraphrasing, these are actual phrases.

1. "Hey there [name removed], step in to my office and let's have a pow-wow." -- Now this phrase in and of itself is fairly innocuous, but he made the person wait nearly 10 minutes.  I am almost sure he was on a fake phone call because he read somewhere in a management 101 book it was good to make people wait.

2. "What are the roadblocks we need to hurdle to accomplish the task at hand?" -- Again, a fairly typical management question, BUT the kicker here is the last project he managed before sliding into this interim position is everyone's roadblock at this point.  It was so poorly managed, scheduled, and executed that it has become the butt of all the jokes.

3. "We need to establish a more synergistic relationship between [group name removed] and [group name removed].  The conflict and negativity is having a negative impact on release scheduling." -- The day he found out about the position he must have poured through the 7 Habits books looking for excellent management tips.  Imagine negativity having a negative impact...

4. Let me set this one up a little bit.  We had a problem with a piece of software we use and it was impacting one of the groups because of the amount of extra work it was creating.  We logged a bug with the vendor and the vendor went in to damage control.  Emails started to fly around and Mr. Interim Director decided it would be a good idea to get everyone in a room and have a call with the vendor.  "So everyone understands the issue, let's go over what the problem is again."  -- Here is the thing, everyone already knows what the problem is, but this ignoramous, either doesn't read or understand his email.  "What kind of proposed solution are we looking at and in what timeframe?" -- At this point, my boss was ready to kill him.  All of this stuff was already detailed in the email and here we are wasting our time and the vendor's time.  At this point, I started quoting directly from the emails.  He started asking about implementation, rollout schedules, impacts on production, etc.  I continued to quote directly from the email chain.  I could tell he was getting pissed at me and he quickly ended the call at that point.

I am probably going to get some backlash on Monday, but I am not worried.  This guy is a moron and putting him in this position only further highlights his total ineptitude.