Fudgeling in the Warm Seat of Competence

“This is Ms Dee,” Mandley introduced the woman to the office. “She is the new sales rep and will be starting today on the eastside account list. Please welcome her.”
  After quick but friendly exchanges the office returned to its bustle of activity. Sales reps filed out to call on accounts and support staff steadily cranked out specs and composites. Ms Dee sat in her cubicle and slowly pored over account lists and casework. The afternoon dragged on and the reps returned after a full day of selling in the field.
  “So, you’ve worked in sales before?" asked rep Margo with an air of professional curiosity.
  “I sell myself,” Ms Dee answered bluntly.
  ‘Odd answer,’ Margo frowned to herself. ‘Why would a salesperson say such a thing? Sales professionals aren’t exactly known to conflate themselves with the product being sold.’
  The next day was a repeat. Ms Dee sat at her desk slowly thumbing through files with an exaggerated expression of interest, but little movement.
  One morning Ms Dee handed widget designer Ryden a multiple-carboned work order and asked, “Can you make this for the client?” Ryden looked at the submission.
  “This is incomplete. No size, no run-date. It hasn’t even gone through accounting. You need to set up the account before I do anything.” Ms Dee snatched back the work order and strode to her cubicle in a huff.
  Concerned, Ryden asked other designers and reps if they noticed anything amiss. “She’s been here a month and still doesn’t know how to fill out a work order. She sits at her desk all day and pretends to look busy.”
  “I don’t think she’s even seen anyone on her account list,” Margo remarked. “If so, she hasn’t closed any sales. What does she do all day?”
  The staff wouldn't normally give a damn, except that they themselves were harangued daily by middle management: “Sales, get out and sell! Production, get on it and produce!”
  “What was Mandley thinking when he hired her?” the staff wondered collectively.
  “Maybe the Sneetch has a hidden star we can’t see,” quipped José.
  “Nice try, Dr Seuss,” shot back Travus. “But it’s obvious she’s ‘servicing’ Mandley.”
  “Eww, no!” everyone groaned.
  “The reason is apparent,” Richard said with some elder gravitas. “It’s Box-Ticking 101.”
  Everyone paused to let what was self-evident sink in. Silently, Mandley’s Mandate echoed in each employee’s mind:

“I need to fill those seats with warm bodies!”

  “Whatever the reason,” pointed out Margo, “the numbers won’t add up, sooner or later.”
  And the numbers did not — sooner rather than later.
  So Mandley had to “let go” Ms Dee, something anyone with a working brain could foresee. But the termination did not go without Ms Dee making baseless claims of wrongdoing against Mandley. Which, being baseless, went nowhere.

Distilling the main characters at play, and their motivations:
• Deadweights can easily find employment in bureaucratic sinecures — so why aim for a job that will require necessary brains and drive? And how do you imagine keeping the job, let alone getting hired?
Who do you think you’re trying to fool?
• And from the obverse point of view: Why would such a person be hired? We know, as per Mandley’s ‘warm seat’ dictum, that long-range considerations are thrown out in favour of appearances. But numbers and long-term data will eventually bite you on the arse.
Who do you think you’re trying to fool?

...And the meta-picture:
  Armchair analysts may expain things away by pointing to negative selection, variations of Putt’s Law, and other audits of corporate pathology that have been dissected to death, but for the sake of seeing the even-bigger picture as laymen, let us take a further step back.
  Both parties are complementary but not necessarily opposites — the sum is chaos and negation rather than balance, so rather than yin and yang circling themselves down the proverbial toilet bowl, the philosophical model is closer to matter and anti-matter.
  To paraphrase one wag’s didactical meanderings:

It’s a matter of “people who should know better but don’t” engaging with “people who don’t know better but should.”

  It is left to the reader to decide who is who.