I worked for the Ultimate Wimp. He was hired as a Director but had no experience managing (go figure). So he chose the youngest and least threatening person in our office (who literally had zero experience) and gave her all of the projects with direct access to senior executives. She forwarded them a lot of blank e-mails. Nice. Then, he has a nervous breakdown and just stopped showing up to work for 2 weeks. Comes back and never says so much as, ‘Thanks for keeping it going while I was gone!” He proceeds to fall asleep at his desk every afternoon (that he shows up that is) and blows off every meeting. Because his wife was a friend of mine, I did my best to cover for him (big mistake). I was even offered his job by our VP but turned it down because I didn’t want him to get fired — (I really like his wife!) The clincher was when the magazine I was editor of won 6 major awards, and he had the girl filling out the submissions put his name on them (although he did NOTHING on the magazine itself!!) I sat next to him at the awards dinner, and after the 5th award was announced and he came down off of the stage where everyone clapped for him, he had the gall to lean over to me and say, “you can go up and accept the next one if you’d like!”

What do you think? A board in the back of the head do it for this boss? Or something a little more protracted?