"A manager does not do grunt work. That's what Squidwards are for."
— Eugene H. Krabs, SpongeBob SquarePants
Being in a position of authority comes with a lot of responsibilities. Some people avoid leadership and power because they understand the responsibilities while others perform the responsibilities even if they are hard. However, some people prefer to have it both ways, enjoying the benefits of leadership while neglecting their duties.
These types of leaders can be royalty and nobility, CEOs, managers, elected officials, or even Evil Overlords; despite this, there are a number of common ways they operate. Oftentimes when it comes to doing the actual work that comes with being in charge, they will often simply push their work onto their subordinates or even not bother doing it. These types of bosses will often throw their weight around towards their subordinates, but will rarely do anything to make life easier for said subordinates. These bosses will also sometimes even embezzle money or other resources rather than use them responsibly.
There are multiple ways these types of characters obtain positions of leadership; since royalty and nobility are born into their positions this means that some families will often produce members who care more about enjoying the benefits of their Blue Blood than any sort of obligations demanded of them. People who have relatives in positions of power will sometimes have authority handed to them via nepotism rather than merit. An Ambitious, but Lazy person might scheme their way into positions of power so they can enjoy the benefits of their position. A Myopic Conqueror might work hard to conquer more territory, but be slothful when it comes to actually governing their land.
Naturally, laziness in authority figures usually results in negative outcomes. If a political leader is too lazy to govern their territory, this will often lead to the citizens of the territory suffering from their leader's negligence. Subordinates who are forced to do their leader's jobs in addition to their own will often be overworked. If such a leader commits embezzlement, it will lead to whatever funds and resources that should have been used for important purposes being used for the leader's selfish whims.
See also The Gods Must Be Lazy, where the "boss" of the world (if not the entire cosmos) is lazy and apathetic.
Subtrope of Mean Boss and Lazy Bum. Compare Idle Rich, who may also be one of these if they have actual authority. Also compare The Alleged Boss for other cases in which a person is in charge, but don't act like they're in charge. Compare Professional Slacker, an employee that slacks off while on the job but lacks the authority of a boss. See also Bad Boss, which this may overlap with if the boss is outright evil or abusive.
While these types of leaders have existed throughout history, to avoid any sort of controversy, No Real Life Examples, Please!
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- My-HiME: Shizuru is the Student Council President of the Absurdly Powerful Student Council. Her managerial style could be called, were one being generous, "delegation". More precisely, she's Brilliant, but Lazy, and takes no small pleasure in tricking her rival, Executive Committee head Haruka Suzushiro, into "volunteering" for more duties.
- WORKING!!: Kyoko is the manager of family restaurant Wagnaria. Her managerial duties consist of standing around eating chips and leaving crumbs behind, eating the restaurant's entire supply of materials for making parfaits, giving crushing workloads to people who poke at her sensitivity about her age, assigning a guy Made of Iron to deal with an androphobic waitress who has a Megaton Punch, having her friends from her days as a Former Delinquent beat up rude customers who refuse to pay and take all their money, and generally slacking off.
Audio Plays
- Torchwood (Big Finish): In the 2010s, Jack becomes the leader of Torchwood Three once again after it is rebuilt. However, in comparison to his leadership in the 2000s, which he took seriously even if it was affected by his need to find the Doctor, Jack is not as enthusiastic about the role on account of the traumas he had suffered (including the death of his teammates and his boyfriend), running off for weeks at a time and leaving the others to deal with each crisis on their own. At the end of "The Empty Hand", he is called out for his behaviour by his fellow teammates — he responds to the allegations poorly, calling them sloppy and insisting that he is the only one capable of leading them properly. It is unsurprising that he is kicked out shortly after when Yvonne Hartman, who has seemingly better people skills and a stronger work ethic, arrives on the scene.
Films — Animated
- The Lion King (1994): Scar, after assassinating his brother and becoming the king of the Pride Lands, ends up turning it into a wasteland because he neglects actually doing his job. Specifically, he promised the hyenas that they could eat as much as they wanted, but didn't bother trying to rein them in, which resulted in them overhunting to the point where there is little food left.
Films — Live-Action
- Christopher Robin: Giles Winslow Jr. is placed in charge of Winslow Luggage but quickly shows himself to be a smug Mean Boss and a Corrupt Corporate Executive whose only solution to the company facing hard times is finding ways to do as little work as possible so he can goof off on company time while still looking good for the CEO (his father). Said solution involved decreasing expenditures by 20%, largely by choosing which employees to lay off, uncaring of how this affects the personal lives of his employees. Doesn't help that Giles does nothing to help with the plan, nor does he put any effort into finding other, more balanced solutions, instead spending a weekend playing golf.
Literature
- The Harem Protagonist Was Turned Into A Girl!! And Doesn’t Want To Change Back!!!??: The boss at the game shop clearly doesn't care who shows up for work, just as long as someone does, even if it's an obvious alien robot intent on ambushing another clerk. Once Kevin becomes Svetlana, she's glad that it's going to work out in her favour.
Live-Action TV
- Bar Rescue: Typically, Jon Taffer encounters a Bar owner who is incompetent, having no idea how to run and maintain a bar. There are some owners Jon deals with who once had the energy to lead their business but some outside factor or tragedy had robbed them of their passion. On more rare cases, there are those who were put in charge of the bar or at least played a part in its operation but had no interest in the bar itself.
- The Big Bang Theory: Zigzagged with Sheldon Cooper whenever he is part of a group project of sorts. While the theoretical physicist can do the work necessary for his own job and such, when it comes to actual leadership and putting in physical labor, Sheldon often fails. In the case of the former, Sheldon's arrogance in making himself the self-proclaimed leader tends to make him into a Mean Boss, becoming more insufferable than he already is. For the latter, Sheldon either won't perform physical labor because he feels its beneath him or he simply doesn't have the actual strength to complete the task. As such, his friends and colleagues are, more often than not, forced to put in the extra work.
- The Brittas Empire: Downplayed in "High Noon", which shows that after Brittas was fired, he was replaced by Alan Digby as the Manager of Whitbury New Town Leisure Centre. Digby is capable of directing his staff if needed. However, he has a very hands-off approach to his job, with his policy being to leave the staff be, and it's reflected in his office being a rather unkempt place with unfinished food lying on the table. At first, this seems to be rather beneficial, as he lacks the need to butt into every situation like Brittas had. However, this attitude poses problems when he abandons his post for a few minutes so that he can grab cigarettes for his personal benefit...right during the time the centre suffers from a gas leak, which eventually leads to an explosion.
- Hotel Impossible: Anthony Melchiorri, a hotel consultant, often encounters hotel owners who have problems with their establishment but don't have the energy or willingness to fix them themselves.
- Both of Gordon Ramsay's shows of Kitchen Nightmares and Hotel Hell have him encounter a various number of owners who are struggling with keeping their business establishments afloat. If they aren't a Mean Boss or just downright incompetent, then they are just lazy in certain fields, most common being sanitation.
- A problem frequently encountered on Restaurant: Impossible is business owners who are too passive or too demoralized to properly take charge of their restaurant, which frequently leads to the business failing.
- Seinfeld: George is excited about working at Kruger Industrial Smoothing because "It's a horrible company. There is no management whatsoever. I could go hog wild!" A later episode makes this a Be Careful What You Wish For, as Kruger is so lazy, George is forced to do the work his boss won't.
George: [after catching his boss slacking off again] Have you ever seen anything like this?Jerry: Never.
- Tomorrow: Han Man-sik, the leader of SP Beauty's marketing team from "A Prison without Bars". As well as being a sleazy, misogynistic creep and a smug, hot-tempered bully, he is likewise a lazy man who regularly dumps his responsibilities onto his much more competent deputy Shin Ye-na, preferring to shirk work and go off to play golf. Despite this, he still has the gall to complain about how lazy and ungrateful his employees are.
Tabletop Games
- Pathfinder: Krune was one of the seven Runelords of Thassilon, embodying the deadly sin of sloth. Befitting his sin, Krune was the laziest of the Runelords when it came to governing his lands, pushing his responsibilities onto his subordinates and summoned outsiders while he just indulged in shiftless pleasures or studied magic.
Video Games
- Final Fantasy VII Remake: Zigzagged with Palmer, the Director of the Shinra Electric Power Company's Space and Aeronautics Division. Really a useless buffoon whose incompetence cannot be overstated, its actually not entirely his fault that his division is basically dead. Since Shinra has basically everything it needs thanks to Mako Energy and as Palmer's division's primary purpose was to explore and venture into space to find resources, the division is essentially doing nothing. Nonetheless, Palmer himself does practically nothing to improve that status, mainly just enjoying the luxury of being a director and attending the company's board meetings instead. It's little wonder that Palmer has very little influence to offer within the company nor do the other directors respect him very much. Regardless, in Rebirth, after suffering a various number of humiliations, Palmer is willing to enter the battlefield with his own mech to gain the respect he feels deserved but his general incompetence renders his efforts haphazard at best.
- Hogwarts Legacy: Phineas Nigellus Black is the Headmaster of Hogwarts during the 19th century. While a prestigious post, Professor Black doesn't care for the responsibilities his position as Headmaster comes with, only the perks and prestige. Thanks to his It's All About Me attitude, Phineas skirts his duties to do whatever it is he pleases, leaving his Deputy Headmistress, Matilda Weasley, the one who really keeps Hogwarts running smoothly. It's little wonder that Professor Black is widely disliked by almost everyone in the school and would go down as one of the worst headmasters in the school's history.
- Yakuza: Like a Dragon: Oddly invoked by Ryo Aoki in regards to Sota Kume, who he supports in the local election for the National Diet Representative seat. Aoki is fully aware that Kume is at best a Rabble Rouser who can't or won't do much on his own without Bleach Japan legbreakers and is under no illusion he'll do anything well, but sees him as an effective prop: after all, if his word is enough to give someone so obviously useless as Kume power and help him keep it, then he'll be an undisputed kingmaker.
Web Animation
- ATTACK on MIKA Toxic boss brags about fights, how he's a badass and gets put to the test...👁 Image
: Mr. Shinamoto is a manager who forces his employees to do his work while he plays on his phone. To make matters worse, he even has the audacity to claim that his employees are successful because of his tutoring and that the company is prosperous because of him. - Helluva Boss: Zigzagged with Blitzø, the founder and manager of I.M.P. (Immediate Murder Professionals), a hitman startup company that involves its members traveling from Hell to Earth for Sinner clients to settle grudges via assassination. While Blitzø partakes in the team's missions to take out their targets, and is a deadly combatant in his own right, Blitzø has a bad habit of skirting certain aspects of his job, mainly any form of paperwork. As such, Blitzø just shoves that form of work to his coworkers, mainly Moxxie. It also doesn't help that Blitzø has terrible money management skills, as he tends to use their payments to buy whatever catches his fancy, once again forcing his coworkers to pick up the slack and keep the company in order.
- Manga-Waido: My daughter was avoiding me…But then… 👁 Image
: Fukawa is a lazy assistant manager who dumps all of his work on his subordinates while he secretly watches porn on the company computers. He ends up getting fired when it's discovered that a virus that infected the company's systems was caused by him browsing porn sites. - Trouble Busters: Noah from the episode "My younger sister bragged about stealing my husband..."👁 Image
is a CEO, but he hates working and spends most of his time at the casino rather than doing his job, to the point where he's in debt to loan sharks due to borrowing money.
Web Videos
- Played for Laughs in the Harry Potter parodies by Chanwills 0. Dumbledore is portrayed as a bumbling Cloud Cuckoolander who pushes most of his work onto McGonagall (portrayed as Hogwarts' Only Sane Man), not out of malice, but out of disinterest and immaturity. For instance, in the Encanto parody "Hogwarts Pressure👁 Image
", there are lines about Minerva being stuck with all his work:Deputy head? No, more like co-captain / 'Cuz Albus Dumbledore's constantly slackingEvery single day a million jobs and they're on repeat / Mark a ton of essays, while Albus fills up on sweetsI really have to keep my eye on the ball... 'cuz he does bugger all
Western Animation
- Big City Greens: In “Boss Life”, when Gloria and Alice become obsessed with finding the author of a bad review, Cricket is left in charge of the cafe by default. He’s at first excited to be the one ordering everyone around, but quickly finds out that as the only employee, he has to do all the work. To avoid this, he hires Remy, but soon realizes that Remy has no idea what he’s doing and has to be trained, which means even more work for him. He then hires the rest of his friends to handle all the other work, but once again, none of them have any training or any interest in doing their job. Frustrated, Cricket reorganizes the cafe so that the chain of command is a circle, and each kid will answer to the next one in the circle and leave him alone. Of course, no work gets done, and by the time Gloria and Alice return from their storyline, the cafe is a shambles and Cricket has learned a valuable lesson that there’s more to being a boss than having others do the work while you sit back and do nothing.
- Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: Downplayed with Commander Nebula. Though a tough-as-nails and experienced leader, the one aspect of his job he detests the most is the bureaucratic paperwork. The commander avoids the paperwork whenever possible while preferring to do "real work" but his robotic desk hounds him relentlessly to complete his paperwork. Nonetheless, Nebula tends to be days behind on his paperwork, and he wants to be done with it as fast as possible, leading Nebula to quickly sign the documents without actually reading them. This actually led Nebula to sign the authorization form for the LGMs to develop the robotic Space Ranger, XR, as the LGMs slipped in the form with their vacation request forms.
- Common Side Effects: Rick Kruger leans towards this as the CEO of Reutical Pharmaceuticals, as he generally spends whatever time he doesn't use trying to assure the shareholders through the company's numerous legal and PR crises and revenue shortfalls by foisting most of his workload on Frances, his assistant. To make matters worse, he generally spends his time playing mobile games. It's only when Frances presents him with the Blue Angel mushroom and showcases its value as a panacea does he actually start being a stronger advocate for the mushroom and its effects.
- DuckTales (2017): At the end of "GlomTales", Louie manages to gain legal ownership of both McDuck Enterprises and Glomgold Industries. In "The Richest Duck in the World!", Louie doesn't bother actually running the company and just wastes money on frivolous pleasures, even cutting the funding to the magical defenses. Unfortunately for Louie, his decisions bite him in the ass when he his chased by the Bombie, a zombie that hunts down the richest person in the world unless they express humility. While Louie manages to learn humility in time, his actions inadvertently lead to Lunaris being able to invade Earth thanks to disabling the satellite defenses during his brief ownership.
- Ed, Edd n Eddy: As the leader of the Eds, Eddy is the one to conceive the scams, but leaves the heavy lifting of making them a reality to Double D and Ed, while he uses his sleazy salesman routine once they're ready. And more often than not, it's his impatience and wanting to make a quick quarter that hinders the scam from being successful.
- Hazbin Hotel: Zigzagged; Lucifer Morningstar is the King of Hell, or as he has described himself, "the big boss of hell himself". While his power makes him the top dog in Hell's hierarchy, Lucifer cares very little for his responsibilities, often letting his subjects do as they please. It was his wife Lilith, who really thrived in being Queen before she disappeared. As a result, Lucifer isn't all that respected, his name carrying little weight. However, it has less to do with Lucifer being lazy and more along with him being depressed with being separated from his wife and his general apathy towards his own realm and people. Nonetheless, since his wife's departure, Lucifer spends his days making various rubber ducks as a hobby. It was only through his daughter Charlie that he regains his sense of spirit and actually defends Hell from the Exorcist Angels on an early Extermination Day. Nonetheless, Lucifer is shown to be out of touch in regards to his subjects as he doesn't even know the names of most of the Overlords who basically run the Pride Ring. To compound this, Lucifer's secret is that he can't harm Sinners, as part of his divine punishment, meaning that since he can't punish them and already wants little to do with them, the King of Hell basically just ignores his subjects. Worse, if Lucifer actually wants his subjects to do something, he has to use a strong show of force to intimidate them into complying but if they call his bluff, then the King of Hell has nothing to fall back on as he doesn't have their full respect or admiration as his wife did.
- The effects of Lucifer's lack of presence as ruler of Hell are further shown in the spin-off Helluva Boss, where Lucifer is the lead member of the Seven Deadly Sins, basically the most powerful figures in Hell behind Lucifer himself. Due to Lucifer's depression and overall lack of attention towards his subjects, Sinner and Hellborn, he hasn't appeared in any of the Seven's meetings in years, leaving only a "Be Right Back in Five" note and a rubber duck on his cobweb-covered throne. As a result, the Sin of Wrath, Satan, has become the de facto ruler of Hell in Lucifer's absence. The Sins even attempt to bribe Lucifer with gifts as incentives to bring him back into the fold.
- King of the Hill: Buck Strickland, owner and general manager of Strickland Propane, tends to zig-zag on this trope. While he's fairly hands-on with running the company, he seems to prefer wheeling and dealing on the golf course and at the local strip club, and leaves the actual business to his assistant manager Hank Hill. When Buck DOES get fully involved in situations, he tends to screw them up or behave unethically; it's often implied that he was a much better businessman before he got more interested in drinking, gambling, and philandering.
- SpongeBob SquarePants:
- In the episode "Squid's Day Off", Squidward Tentacles is temporarily made the boss of the Krusty Krab after Mr. Krabs is injured. Squidward, being a Lazy Bum even as an employee, tells SpongeBob that he has errands to run and leaves SpongeBob in charge so he can relax. However, Squidward is so paranoid that SpongeBob will screw up that he keeps checking in on him, resulting in Squidward not being able to enjoy his day off.
- On occasion, even Mr. Krabs himself can be this. For example, in the episode, "Graveyard Shift", he makes SpongeBob and Squidward work at the Krusty Krab while he goes home to relax.
- SWAT Kats: Mayor Manx is the mayor of Megakat City, but leaves all of the actual work to his secretary Callie Briggs, doing nothing but playing golf and campaigning for re-elections.