It's fair to say that many of the bosses I've had have been idiots. One of the great traditions and paradoxes in Britain is that the worse you are at your job, the more likely it is that you will be promoted. Now, it's also fair to point out that most of these people are harmless, or at least relatively so. Generally, what happens is that their manager (who is also likely to be an idiot) will ensure that they get promoted, thus removing the problem from their own immediate area. One of my bosses was so good/bad that I used him as an anti-hero in my novel. Rather cruelly, I've made him a bit nastier than he really is, but that's artistic license for you. Another boss that I had - when I worked for the National Health Service - was a thoroughly nice chap, but dimmer than a torch with no batteries. He it was that telephoned me one day when I had to work on a Bank Holiday to tell me not to answer the phone. One more: the boss I had that informed us that the computer system was down and that we should engage ourselves in something manual. "How will we know when it's back up?" somebody asked. "I'll email you," he replied. Surely it's not just me?
While working on a loading dock for a local company, it was almost quitting time and we were just about finished loading a semi trailer. Our boss came running up yelling, "stop. I made a mistake. That all goes on the trailer at the other end of the dock. It has to go on that trailer now". So, we got about 4 hours of unwanted overtime, and on a Friday afternoon too. This boss did that several times, and even the supervisor was getting fed up with him.
I had a boss that went on vacation without telling anyone in her section to be in charge while she was out. She had 4 people working under her with no one to go to when they questions about accounts. Her staff came to me to ask for assistance with their problems while she was out. When she returned from her vacation the department was restructured and she was not happy with the changes.
My first job in a bank was as a methods analyst. Our unit merged with the programming group. Our boss used to be a good methods analyst - dealing with procedural steps that we formulate and document into the manual of procedures. However, our boss has no background in computers so he appears dumb when talks turn to data processing. You can imagine our smart computer programmers running circles around our boss. In fairness to our boss, he is kind-hearted and not a terror unlike other bosses I know. In fact, when our bank was on the verge of collapse, he recommended me to another bank.. that's where I'm working now.