The Peter Principle (10 page)

CHAPTER 12
Non-Medical Indices of Final Placement

“How can I tell the signals and the signs?”

H. W. L
ONGFELLOW

A Long-Felt Want

It is often useful to know who, in a hierarchy, has and has not achieved final placement. Unfortunately, you cannot always get hold of an employee’s medical record to see whether he is a Final Placement Syndrome case or not. So here are some signs which will guide you.

Abnormal Tabulology

This is an important and significant branch of hierarchiology.

The competent employee normally keeps on his desk just the books, papers and apparatus that he needs for his work. After final placement, an employee is likely to adopt some unusual and highly significant arrangement of his desk.

Phonophilia

The employee rationalizes his incompetence by complaining that he cannot keep in close enough touch with colleagues and subordinates. To remedy this, he installs several telephones on his desk, one or more intercommunication devices with buttons, flashing lights and loudspeakers, plus one or more voice-recording machines. The phonophiliac soon forms the habit of using two or more of these devices at the same time; this is an infallible sign of galloping phonophilia. Such cases degenerate rapidly and are usually considered incurable.

(Phonophilia, by the way, is nowadays increasingly seen among women who have reached their level of incompetence as housewives. Typically, an elaborate microphone-loud-speaker-switchboard-telephone system is installed in the kitchen to enable such a housewife to keep in constant, close, simultaneous contact with her neighbors, her dining nook, her laundry room, her play room, her back porch and her mother.)

Papyrophobia

The papyrophobe cannot tolerate papers or books on his desk or, in extreme cases, anywhere in his office. Probably every such piece of paper is a reminder to him of the work that he is not able to do: no wonder he hates the sight of it!

But he makes a virtue out of his phobia and, by “keeping a clean desk,” as he calls it, hopes to create the impression that he despatches all his business with incredible promptitude.

Papyromania

Papyromania, the exact opposite of papyrophobia, causes the employee to clutter his desk with piles of never-used papers and books. Consciously or unconsciously, he thus tries to mask his incompetence by giving the impression that he has
too much to do
—more than any human being could accomplish.

Fileophilia

Here we see a mania for the precise arrangement and classification of papers, usually combined with a morbid fear of the loss of any document. By keeping himself so busy with rearranging and re-examining bygone business, the fileophiliac prevents other people—and prevents himself—from realizing that he is accomplishing little or nothing of current importance. His preoccupation with records fixes his vision on the past so that he backs reluctantly into the present.

Tabulatory Gigantism

An obsession with having a bigger desk than his colleagues.

Tabulophobia Privata

Complete exclusion of desks from the office. This symptom is observed only at the very highest hierarchal ranks.

Psychological Manifestations

In my researches I spent much time in waiting rooms, interviewing clients and colleagues as they left executive offices. In this way I discovered several interesting psychological manifestations of final placement.

Self-Pity

Many executive conferences consisted of the high-ranking employee telling hard-luck stories about his present condition.

“Nobody really appreciates me.”

“Nobody co-operates with me.”

“Nobody understands how the incessant pressure from above and the incurable incompetence below make it utterly impossible for me to do an adequate job and keep a clean desk.”

This self-pity is usually combined with a strong tendency to reminisce about “good old days” when the complainant was working at a lower rank, at a level of competence.

This complex of emotions—sentimental self-pity, denigration of the present and irrational praise of the past—I call
the Auld Lang Syne Complex.

An interesting feature of the Auld Lang Syne Complex is that although the typical patient claims to be a martyr to his present position, he never on any account suggests that another employee would be better able to fill his place!

Rigor Cartis

In employees at the level of incompetence, I have often observed Rigor Cartis, an abnormal interest in the construction of organization and flow charts, and a stubborn insistence upon routing every scrap of business in strict accordance with the lines and arrows of the chart, no matter what delays or losses may result. The Rigor Cartis patient will often display his charts prominently on the office walls, and may sometimes be seen, his work lying neglected, standing in worshipful contemplation of his icons.

Compulsive Alternation

Some employees, on achieving final placement, try to mask their insecurity by keeping their subordinates always off balance.

An executive of this type is handed a written report; he pushes it aside and says, “I’ve no time to wade through all that garbage. Tell me about it in your own words—and briefly.”

If the subordinate comes in with a verbal suggestion, this man chokes him off in mid-sentence with, “I can’t even begin to think about it until you put it in writing.”

A confident employee will be deflated with a snub; a timid one will be flustered by a display of familiarity. One may at first confuse Compulsive Alternation with Potter’s One-upmanship but they are quite different. Potter’s method is designed to advance the user to his level of incompetence. Compulsive Alternation is primarily a defensive technique employed by a boss who has reached his level.

This man’s subordinates say, “You never know how to take him.”

The Teeter-Totter Syndrome

In the Teeter-Totter Syndrome one sees a complete inability to make the decisions appropriate to the sufferer’s rank. An employee of this type can balance endlessly and minutely the pros and cons of a question, but cannot come down on one side or the other. He will rationalize his immobility with grave allusions to “the democratic process” or “taking the longer view.” He usually deals with the problems that come to him by keeping them in limbo until someone else makes a decision or until it is too late for a solution.

I notice, by the way, that teeter-totter victims are often papyrophobes as well, so they have to find some means of getting rid of the papers.
The Downward, Upward and Outward Buckpasses
are commonly used to effect this.

In the Downward Buckpass the papers are sent to a subordinate with the order, “Don’t bother me with such trifles.” The subordinate is thus bullied into deciding an issue that is really above his level of responsibility.

The Upward Buckpass calls for ingenuity: the teeter-totter victim must examine the case until he finds some tiny point out of the ordinary which will justify sending it up to a higher level.

The Outward Buckpass merely involves assembling a committee of the victim’s peers and following the decision of the majority. A variant of this is
The John Q. Public Diversion:
sending the papers to someone else who will conduct a survey to find what the average citizen thinks about the matter.

One teeter-totter victim in government service resolved his problem in an original manner. When he got a case that he could not decide, he would simply remove the file from the office at night and throw it away.

A Classical Case

W. Shakespeare describes an interesting manifestation of final placement: an irrational prejudice against subordinates or colleagues because of some point of physical appearance in no way related to the performance of their work. He quotes Julius Caesar as saying:

Let me have men about me that are fat. . . .

Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look;

He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.

It is reliably reported that N. Bonaparte, toward the end of his career, began judging men by the size of their noses, and would give preferment only to men with big noses.

Some victims of this obsession may attach their baseless dislikes to such trifles as the shape of a chin, a regional accent, the cut of a coat or the width of a necktie. Actual competence or incompetence on the job is ignored. This prejudice I call
The Caesarian Transference.

Cachinatory Inertia

A sure mark of final placement is the habit of
telling jokes
instead of getting on with business!

Structurophilia

Structurophilia is an obsessive concern with buildings—their planning, construction, maintenance and reconstruction—and an increasing unconcern with the work that is going on, or is supposed to be going on, inside them. I have observed structurophilia at all hierarchal levels, but it undoubtedly achieves its finest development in politicians and university presidents. In its extreme pathological manifestations (
Gargantuan monumentalis
) it reaches a stage where the victim has a compulsion to build great tombs or memorial statues. Ancient Egyptians and modern Southern Californians appear to have suffered greatly from this malady.

Structurophilia has been referred to, by the uninformed, as the Edifice Complex. We must be precise in differentiating between this simple preoccupation with structures and the Edifice Complex which involves a number of elaborately interrelated, interconnected and complicated attitudes. The Edifice Complex tends to afflict philanthropists wishing to improve education, health services or religious instruction. They consult experts in these fields and discover so many at their respective levels of incompetence that formulation of a positive program is impossible. The only thing they agree on is to have a new building. Frequently the advising educator, doctor or minister suffers from structurophilia and therefore his recommendation to the donor is, “Give me a new building.” Church committees, school trustees and foundation boards find themselves in the same
complex
situation. They see so much incompetence in the professions that they decide to invest in buildings rather than people and programs. As in other psychological complexes, this results in bizarre behaviour.

R
ELIGIOUS
P
ROGRAM
I
MPROVEMENT
F
ILE
#64 The congregational committee of the First Euphoria Church in Excelsior City became concerned with declining church attendance. Various proposals were investigated. One faction recommended a change of minister. They were tired of Reverend Theo Log’s traditional sermons that had little to say about the contemporary human condition. As a result guest clergy were invited. Questions were raised regarding the sexual revolution, generation gap, the futility of war, and the new morality. Some of the more conservative church members threatened to quit if these “far-out” sermons continued. The committee finally agreed that a building drive and new church would be the most acceptable solution. The old minister was retained at his low salary. After completion of the new building it came to the committee’s attention that the small congregation seemed even smaller in the large new church. The recommendation for a more dynamic ministry was reconsidered but was rejected because it was decided that it would be impossible to get a better man for such a low salary. Furthermore, it was concluded, this might seriously hamper the funding of the new organ and the building of the new social centre.

Which Is Which

Usually the structurophilia victim has a pathological need to have a building or monument named in his honor, whereas the Edifice Complex afflicts those who are trying to improve the quality of some human endeavor but end up by only producing another building.

Tics and Odd Habits

Eccentric physical habits and tics often develop soon after final placement has been achieved. A noteworthy example is
Heep’s Palmar Confrication,
so acutely observed and vividly described by C. Dickens.

I would also mention under this head such habits as nail biting, drumming with fingers or tapping with pencils on desks, cracking knuckles, twiddling pens, pencils and paper clips, the purposeless stretching and snapping of rubber bands, and heavy sighing with no apparent cause for grief. Often F.P.S. goes unnoticed because the sufferer adopts the pose of staring off into the middle distance for indefinite lengths of time. Untrained observers are inclined to think he is absorbed in the awesome responsibility of high office. Hierarchiologists know otherwise.

Revealing Speech Habits

Baffling the Listener

Initial and Digital Codophilia
is an obsession for speaking in letters and numbers rather than in words. For example, “F.O.B. is in N.Y. as O.C. for I.M.C. of B.U. on 802.”

By the time, if ever, that the listener realizes that Frederick Orville Blamesworthy is in New York as Operative Co-ordinator for the Instructional Materials Center of Boondock University conducting business concerning Federal Bill 802, he has lost the opportunity to observe that the speaker did not really know much. Codophiliacs manage to make the trivial sound impressive, which is what they want.

Many Words, Few Thoughts

Some employees, on final placement, stop thinking, or at least sharply cut down on their thinking. To mask this, they develop lines of
General Purpose Conversation
or, in the case of public figures,
General Purpose Speeches.
These consist of remarks that sound impressive, yet which are vague enough to apply to all situations, with perhaps a few words changed each time to suit the particular audience.

My Executive Wastebasket and Trash Can Research Project
1
turned up the following notes, obviously fragments from the rough draft of an all-purpose speech. The writer has problems enough without my identifying him. My cause is education, not humiliation. Here are his notes: