‘I’m convinced there’s less oxygen at the top’: Woman requests answers when boss, who makes 3x her salary, can’t do her job and endangers her safety

If you’ve never once looked around at those who rank higher than you in whatever field you work in and either a quiet or loud voice in your head asked “how the heck does that idiot earn more money than me?” then feel free to stop reading. For everyone else, which I highly suspect is literally everyone who’s ever lived, the following TikTok video might hit a little close to home.

TikToker @emily_the_petty_gemini lived up to her name when she decided to out the one-two punch of shocking incompetence displayed by a corporate exec at her work. With the dead-eyed stare and high-speed deadpan delivery of April Ludgate, Emily asked her followers an alarming question: “Can someone explain to me why someone who makes three times my salary just asked me how to open a PDF document and then coughed in my face without covering their mouth?”

As Emily put it in her caption, “Corporate America is truly a lawless land.”

Going by the environment behind Emily in her video, this was no doubt taken just moments after the incident in question happened, and you can tell that Emily is fuming behind her emotionless facade. And rightly so. Having no idea how to work a PDF file would be bad enough for someone who, by rights, should deal with such documents all day long but then failing to maintain basic social health standards and even kindergarten-level manners is the straw that broke the incompetent camel’s back.

Unsurprisingly, the comments were full of sympathy from those who know this kind of person all too well. “I’m convinced there’s less oxygen at the top,” quipped one. Others tried to come up with actual answers to Emily’s question. “In a nutshell? Ronald Reagan,” summarized someone who knows their stuff. Another went for a more practical explanation which is no less accurate: “They don’t promote the competent ones because they have to keep the ones that know how to do things in the position to do those things.”

Others vented about their own experiences of working for bosses with low IQs but high salaries. “I’ve worked with attorneys who couldn’t figure out how to load a stapler. I’ll take street smarts over book smarts every day,” voiced one. “A coworker I used to have who made more than me despite having less experience and seniority than me literally farted on me while I was explaining how to use teams and outlook,” added another. This might be the worst, though: “Guuuuurl!!! Years ago my boss, an ATTORNEY, came into my office, leaned down so close I could smell her breath on my face & said, ‘I don’t know why I keep throwing up?’ The disrespect is real.”

Emily’s question, while likely intended to be rhetorical, is one that some experts have attempted to answer. Dr. Glenn Agung Hole, Professor in Entrepreneurship, wrote an essay in which he explored the question of why “incompetent people” rise up the corporate ladder so frequently. He determined that too many companies operate under a “failure to understand actual leadership and the tendency to ignore the science of leadership at the expense of flawed leadership models.”

Alternatively, maybe there’s a more cosmic explanation for it all. Personally, I’m inclined to agree with one commenter on Emily’s video who has either figured out the meaning of life or has just watched too much Netflix: “I like t[o] think working in corporate America is actually purgatory/hell and if I do my time now when I die I’ll get to chill in the good place.”