The Peter Principle

The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong was a slim, 167-page management self-help book that became a best seller.
It is a book by Laurence J. Peter (a former teacher) and Raymond Hull (a playwright). The root of the entire book, the condition of incompetence that Peter called “Final Placement Syndrome,” leads some to develop “Abnormal Tabulology” (an “unusual and highly significant arrangement of his desk”). This pathology is manifested, for example, in “Tabulatory Gigantism” (an obsession with having a bigger desk than his colleagues). The “Teeter-Totter Syndrome” refers to “a complete inability to make decisions” and “Cachinatory Inertia” means “the habit of telling jokes instead of getting on with business”. Later some aspects of the theory were revived in the 1990s by the cynical business cartoon Dilbert by Scott Adams.