Pointy-Haired Boss
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The Pointy-Haired Boss (often abbreviated to just PHB) is Dilbert's boss in the Dilbert comic strip. He is notable for his gross incompetence and unawareness of his surroundings, yet somehow retains power in the workplace. In the Dilbert TV series, in which he is voiced by comedian Larry Miller, the character is notably smarter (although still quite stupid) and more actively evil.
The phrase "pointy-haired boss" has acquired a generic usage to refer to incompetent managers. It is also possible to speak of someone being pointy-haired or having pointy hair metaphorically, meaning that they possess PHB-like traits.
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[edit] In Dilbert
He's every employee's worst nightmare. He wasn't born mean and unscrupulous, he worked hard at it. And succeeded. As for stupidity, well, some things are inborn. His top priorities are the bottom line and looking good in front of his subordinates and superiors (not necessarily in that order). Of absolutely no concern to him is the professional or personal well-being of his employees. The Boss is technologically challenged but he stays current on all the latest business trends, even though he rarely understands them.
The PHB's real name is unknown in the comic, although in one episode of the TV series ("The Return") he signs for a package using his line dancing pseudonym "Eunice." Later in that episode, two other aliases are posted on the "Most Wanted" board in the post office (however, he thinks that is because they like him). In another episode of the series, "Art", the boss signs for another package with his real name, and the delivery man seems shocked when reading it. Creator Scott Adams has said it is easier to imagine the PHB as one's own boss when he is not given a name.
The Pointy-Haired Boss is mostly bald, except for a fringe of hair across the back of the head, and sideburns that rise up in points (hence, the name). Scott Adams has admitted that the Boss's odd hair was inspired by devil horns. He used to have jowls at first because Adams wanted the character to look gruff, but the boss ended up looking dumb instead.
In early strips, when he was simply "balding", the Boss was very cruel and uncaring (shocking people with electric belts or wanting them to work 178 hours a week, although there are only 168 hours in a week — he expected the employees' families to contribute a few hours). He showed few obvious signs of cluelessness. However, when the hair reached its current state of outright pointiness, he became a complete imbecile. The Boss is frequently childish, immature, ignorant, and rude, yet also annoyingly cheerful and oblivious to his own actions. In some strips, however, he displays an above-average intelligence, or at least surprisingly original and cunning (albeit unethical or unscrupulous) thinking. But most of his actions are incredibly stupid, including once in the TV series using Moviefone to check on his IBM stock.
The boss made his most significant change in appearance during one month in the fall of 1991. The last confirmed sighting of the jowly boss was in the strip dated September 20, 1991, although his backside may have been seen in the September 26, 1991 strip. He then went unseen for several weeks during a protracted series about Elbonia, reappearing on October 21, 1991 without the jowls and with the pointed hair.
The Boss's family sometimes makes an appearance in the strips, and are frequently presented as being as incompetent as him. In 1998, the Boss's son, who hid in the attic for four years instead of attending college, was hired for the company and made VP of marketing due to his complete lack of knowledge. Years later, the Boss's wife was hired as a receptionist for the company. Both the Boss's wife and son share his trademark hairstyle, as do many managers in the comic strips. Dilbert was also once asked to interview the PHB's nephew for a position. He listed his work experience as "bowling" (because, although he'd only bowled once, the balls were heavy and it felt like work), and contrary to Dilbert's suggestion (to have him whacked), the PHB made him Dilbert's new boss. The Pointy-Haired Boss finds pointy hair as a positive and attractive feature, and often judges people based on the pointyness of their hair, such as when he promoted an employee named Ted because of a pointy "beard" that was growing on his forehead, or when he became attracted to Alice because she styled her hair like his. The PHB also has a brother named Phil, the ruler of "Heck" (a subsidiary of Hell). In the animated series, The Boss is seen driving an SUV that resembles a third-generation Mitsubishi Pajero.
Within Dilbert's company, the PHB represents middle management. The corporate CEOs and vice presidents of the firm are constantly changing and are usually minor characters without developed personalities. The strip isn't particularly shy about killing members of upper management.
There is an unspoken but subtle running joke in the Dilbert chronicle. While the boss is "clueless", it is the boss who has a social life and family, while the "smart" ones who work for him have no social skills to speak of, and appear destined never to reproduce.
[edit] Traits
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Typical traits of a PHB:
- Does not understand what his employees do for a living.
- Enjoys using buzzwords such as synergy, going forward, leadership, centrex, bandwidth, accountability, blindsided, evangelize, leverage, unified messaging, six sigma, competency, collaboration, empowerment, quality, paradigm, team-enhancing, outside the box, radar screen, memorialize, strategic, from good to great, resource integration, differentiator and culture-shift often to escape having to commit or be precise.
- Pretends to understand technology, but is really clueless; from the strip: "Let's make all our wall outlets digital" or "My PC is warm. I think my firewall is acting up" or "I told you we need multimedia fax machines!". He often shifts towards buzzwords (see above) to compensate or change subject.
- Makes excessive use of spurious statistics to distract the listener from his lack of understanding of what they mean.
- Easily mesmerized by silver-tongued sales people peddling management or technology fads.
- Decisions seem random or capricious.
- Gross failures of logic, such as holding repeated long meetings to discuss why a project is behind schedule.
- Gross failures of accountability: when questioned on sources of his "facts", credits unnamed "consultants" or "studies"
- Likes meetings because he does not know how to use email properly or does not want his bad decisions committed to writing. Occasionally will have several instances of Microsoft Outlook running at the same time and doesn't understand why.
- Uses his employees' ideas and presents them as his own, almost always to the same employees.
- Amazingly, can be awarded Manager of the Year recognition, while being bossy, bullying, spiteful and a thief.
- Appoints unqualified sycophants over competent specialists unconcerned about their torment.
- Openly tells people outside his current target market that they are worthless to him.
- Thinks he is always right.
- When warned about the consequences of not doing something, he ignores it. Later, when the warned consequence inevitably occurs, the person warning is blamed.
- Doesn't seem to remember anything beyond a month's range.
- Rewards employees based on how well they stroke his ego instead of how well they do their job.
- More focused on sounding important than being important.
- Doesn't understand metaphors and thinks they are literal.
- Is 5 minutes away during crisis and 5 hours ahead during success.
- Is a person from whom you are expecting the unexpected.
- Doing things that don't work together (i.e, listening to "English for Managers" tapes while commuting to work, and sometimes getting in a police chase and not knowing it).
[edit] Related acronyms
The usage of PHB to refer to a character type resembles the usage of BOFH and PFY, both also derived from specific fictional characters. Less closely related is the military term REMF, which is descriptive rather than a reference to fiction. The term "suit" in the New Hacker's Dictionary, while not an acronym, also comes from technical culture, predates PHB, but is near synonymous.
[edit] References
- Dilbert.com - The Characters. United Feature Syndicate, Inc. (2008). Retrieved on 2008-02-20.
[edit] External links
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