I had a manager who once wrote me up for insubordination and put me on 90 days probation because I said in a fit of frustration "You could come out and help for once". Never mattered how busy or understaffed we were, he'd just sit behind his desk all day. He'd even have people work overtime when short staffed so that he wouldn't have to help out. He was salary and that often means more than 40 hours a week, not less, but he'd frequently role in late and leave early. 6 months after he wrote me up he got shit canned because he wasn't doing his job either. We have no clue what he was actually doing because the manager who replaced him said his job was cake with many down hours with nothing to do. In that position an extremely busy day is probably less than 4 hours of actual work.
I turned the tables on a guy like that once. He was lackadaisical even during my interview with him. I was interested in having some meetings with the person I'd be working for or taking direction from, and I made that very clear to him. He knew damn well at that time that that guy was on vacation, but since he was interested in getting me on board he just lied and said "Well you'll be getting your work from me."
Right so after some walk-throughs to meet managers in other areas like networking and tech support etc., I decided to take the job, giving three weeks notice to my then current employer.
So I show up to the new job and fill out the paperwork at HR and get back up to my desk and there's a note from my new boss to call him when I'm done with all that stuff. I phone and he says oh good come on over to my office.
So I step in there and he says hey good to see you,
this here is Dave and he'll be giving you your work.
Jesus Christ. I'm furious but I politely say hello and then after a walkaround to meet a few people, ol' Dave says well I got some things on my plate this morning so let's get together after lunch and meanwhile you can just settle in.
I went down to HR and said cut me a check for today, I quit, you're in breach of contract, hash it out with my headhunter but I'm gone at 5pm. They said wait, what? and I explained and they called up to the boss and asked him did he promise to give me my work himself and he said ( as I only learned later!) "yeah but what's the difference?"
So HR referred that issue to the VP of my department and then said to me ok what if he assigns your work and oversees it himself, will you stay? I said yes. So the VP told my boss ok you have to give her the project assignments and review her work, you agreed to that so we have to make good on it.
So turns out my boss, Don, is just burnt out or has exceeded his own competence or has god knows what sort of problem but anyway he's a closed-door dude doing nothing all day every day and I'd phone and say I'm done with this project can you review it and what's next? And he'd say well how about if I come up with something by Friday? or he'd say oh hell I don't know what's next, ask Dave why don't you?
And Dave would say ha ha yeah just buy a couple paperbacks it's good money you're making so don't worry about it everything's cool and eventually someone from some department will show up with some work we can do, we don't even have to bother with Don (the boss).
A couple more weeks of that and I went back to HR and said I'm out and explained why and they said no wait we see what's happening here, give us a day to iron this out. Next afternoon the VP calls me in and says here's the deal we're sorry about all this, your boss is gone and I'm hiring his replacement but you'll interview them for me, here's the HR contact, they'll be sending people up starting Thursday.
Yee hah! Sometimes stuff works out way better than you think at the time. I got to hire my own boss.