History Main / OutrankingYourJob

* Seen a couple of times in ''Series/BandOfBrothers'':
** During "Day of Days", Lt. Winters is in command of Easy Company, but the unit is scattered and no more than a squad's worth of troopers are available for the Brecourt Manor assault. It would be days before Easy Company was reassembled.
** In "The Breaking Point", the first instinct of now Captain Winters when Easy Company's attack stalls is to rush into the field and personally lead the attack. He is quickly stopped by Colonel Sink, who reminds him that he is the [=XO=] (2nd in command) of the entire battalion and that it isn't appropriate for his position to rush in and bully his way into command regardless of the circumstances; he has other officers for that now. With great reluctance, he snags another lieutenant and sends him out to assume command of the attack force. This is actually a subverted example in that as a captain, Winters is actually ''underranked'' for his position in the battalion, but of appropriate rank to command a company.
** In "The Last Patrol", [[NewMeat newly arrived]] Lt. Jones repeatedly asks to be assigned to the titular patrol. Winters agrees, but he is placed under the command of an experienced sergeant, who gives him minimal responsibilities.

* On ''Series/McMillanAndWife'', Stewart McMillan is the Police Commissioner of San Francisco, who solves murders with the help of only one sergeant and his civilian wife.

* In ''Anime/GallForce: Earth Chapter'', Sandy (whose rank is not mentioned, and may in fact be a civilian) commands a unit consisting of a dozen or so named characters and at least several unnamed ones, three light tanks, and an armored personnel carrier. Nominally that would make her a lieutenant. However, her subordinates include Lamidia (A major in the Mars Defense Force) and Captain Varji of the MDF Navy, the latter of whom commands a single 2-man tank. {{Justified}} in that the resistance forces are fighting a desperate battle, and one could make the arguement Lamidia and Varji are [=POWs=] recruited via an EnemyMine situation.

* ''Series/TheWire'': Ellis Carver in season 2, despite having passed the Sergeant's test and gotten promoted, finds himself and Herc relegated to doing menial work for the Sobotka investigation detail. Feeling Daniels doesn't have any respect for them, the two transfer out to Major Colvin's drug enforcement unit in the Western District at the first opportunity.

** In season 5A, Merkert is forced to resign due to his affiliation with Gus Fring. Hank is offered the post of ASAC and Marie talks him into taking the post. The trope comes into play when Hank personally participates in serving a search warrant on Mike Ehrmantraut. This leads to Hank being chewed out by his SAC Ramey for knocking down doors and serving warrants when the post of ASAC is primarily a desk job.

[[folder: Anime & Manga]]

* Similarly, Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt Jr. (yes, President UsefulNotes/TheodoreRoosevelt's son) insisted on going with the troops landing on Utah Beach, feeling that in the chaos that was going to ensue, ''someone'' had to be on the scene who could take control and make the necessary strategic decisions. His superiors felt that the initial invasion plans had been nailed down already and that the first beach battles would be strictly small unit action, that there would be little need for flag officers to expose themselves to unnecessary danger until the army's presence was established. Roosevelt repeatedly requested to be allowed to join, since if something major did go wrong, there may be a score of colonels on the beach trying to decide things and that would bog down decisionmaking, until finally his superiors acquiesced, thinking they'd just signed his death warrant. [[OldSoldier At 56 years of age]], and [[{{Determinator}} while suffering from arthritis and heart trouble]], he led his troops on the beach using his cane to signal with. The problem was: when he went ashore with the first wave of soldiers, they found they were on the wrong beach. A quick reconoitter and they fact that they weren't dead yet told them that this beach was less defended than the original, with serviceable access over the bluffs into the interior. When asked by his men what they should do, Roosevelt replied, [[BadassBoast "We'll start the war from right here."]] He radioed the oncoming waves and had them redirected to his position, spending the entire day as invasion traffic cop, keeping men and vehicles from bogging down, under gunfire all the while. In this, he turned out to be ''exactly'' the right rank for the job, as a lesser officer wouldn't have had the weight to change war plans on the fly. He would be promoted and awarded the Medal of Honor. He ended up dying of a heart attack the following month.

WesternAnimation/StarComTheUSSpaceForce: Dash, Slim, and Crowbar are all colonels, and as such should probably be flying a desk most of the time. However, they are always out flying active combat missions, and very rarely are they seen commanding lower-ranked personnel. What's more, they frequently fly together in the same Star Max, which if they were ever shot down[[note]](which they won't be, because it's a kids show)[[/note]] then [=StarCom=] might end up with a DecapitatedArmy.

-->-- '''Major General Maxwell Taylor''' (finding himself on D-Day commanding a group of many high-ranking officers, but only three enlisted men)

* In ''Film/ThePeacemaker'', while Lt. Col. [=DeVoe=] is of appropriate rank for a Pentagon staff officer assigned to head a special investigation, most of his screen time is spent running and gunning as though he was a far more junior officer, rather than commanding the search.

** Also seen in the 2009 film, where the chief engineer is sent on an away mission to destroy the drill, when he probably should've stayed on the already-damaged ship to supervise repairs. And it was all for nothing in the end anyway, as he didn't survive the jump.

** Played straight with Samantha Traynor, your communications specialist. Due to the presence of the ArtificialIntelligence EDI on-board the ''Normandy'', her job amounts to an extremely over-qualified secretary. Justified, as [[FantasticRacism anti-AI sentiment]] meant EDI was pretending to be nothing more than a VI during the ''Normandy'''s retrofitting to avoid getting shut down, and if that were true, Traynor would definitely be needed. Also her job quickly grows into being in charge of cryptography and signal tracking for the Normandy and much of the fleet.

*** Wedge Antilles, the commander of both Rogue and Wraith Squadrons for most of the series, spends most of it DecliningPromotion so he can keep flying (he's ranked commander, which in ''Franchise/StarWars'''s rank system is apparently higher than captain but below general). In ''Isard's Revenge'' Admiral Ackbar finally guilts him into accepting his long-delayed general's pips on grounds that his subordinates are following his example. This results in a unit in which half the pilots outrank the ''commanders'' of other squadrons. Somewhat {{justified}} in that Rogue Squadron is an elite unit, and also {{deconstructed}} in that once these promotion cycles happen, Rogue Squadron tends to break up, with them going to command other squadrons, and only reforming in special instances, or leaving Rogue Squadron proper to the next generation.

* Armies in ''VideoGame/FireEmblem'' seem to consist entirely of rank-and-file soldiers being led by generals, with nothing in between, and they're usually seen leading forces between twenty and eighty men each. There may be some interstitial ranking system insofar as some of your enemy's leaders often answer directly to TheDragon, but they too are almost invariably referred to as "General".
** "General" is also the promoted version of the MightyGlacier "Knight" class. This means you can have multiple generals with ''very'' little leadership skills barging headfirst into the fray at the speed of smell.