Is your boss an incompetent lout? Maybe it’s not their fault. They may simply be a victim of the Peter Principle. If you’re not familiar with the concept, or simply need a refresher (as I did today), The Peter Principle (or PP, as some refer to it) states that “In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence.” A classic example would be Michael Brown, the catastrophically incompetent director of FEMA during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, who was promoted by George W. Bush because of his outstanding performance as stewards and judges commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association, and whose famous last words (as Katrina pounded New Orleans) were: “Can I quit now?” Okay, maybe this is more a reflection of George Bush’s incompetence, but GW himself might also serve as an example of the PP. The Peter Principle differs slightly from The Dilbert Principle, which states that “the most ineffective workers are systematically moved to the place where they can do the least damage: management” or, more succinctly: “leadership is nature’s way of removing morons from the productive flow.” Given that there’s no hierarchy here at Dissociated Press, we’re most likely to fall prey to Parkinson’s Law, which suggests that “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion“, though in the comments, we often see people fall prey to Muphry’s Law.