History Literature / Incompetence

* OnlySaneMan: There are a decent amount of them (to different degrees, and in different way) but their widely scattered, and vastly outnumbered by the incompetent ones.

* IAteWhat: Subverted. Upon learning that the broth he was given earlier was made of office workers, Harry just dryly notes that "they're actually good for something".

* AlmightyJanitor: Jonhan, the worlds leading toxicologist, has been stuck as a research assistant for forty two years due to the absurd promotion system.

Set TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture, it takes place in The United States Of Europe, where PoliticalOvercorrectness has reached DystopianEdict levels, and laws have been passed that forbid the discrimination of people based on race, class, gender, creed or competence. Thus, a society has been born where ''everyone'' is bad at their job because employers aren't allowed to use someone's ''actual ability to do the job'' as a reason to hire/fire someone. Most shoes are made of vegetable matter, a hotel room will only have furniture in it if you're lucky (and be completely non-existent if you're not), and signposts rarely agree with each other, let alone point the correct way. As an added joke, one can track how many originally absurd rules from this book were actually realised by European Union between publishing and present.

!!Incompetence contains examples of:

* BlindIdiotTranslation: In universe example with the manual for the central heating in Harry's flat.
* BoomHeadshot: Subverted. Harry [[spoiler: shoots Klingferm in the head, but he appears to survive it. Mostly]].

* ButtMonkey: Papa, who was declared legally dead by the government and couldn’t get it rectified. legal assistant Hinton who is kept locked up for three years by the police due to having been fired while he was visiting the jail. He is kept from leaving because his permit to be there is invalid and denied due process because he was never charged with a crime. And then of course there’s Harry himself, an IronButtMonkey extreme.
* [[CIAEvilFBIGood CIA Evil, Europol Good]]: [[spoiler: Klingferm is a CIA agent trying to subvert Europe.]] Europol is basically the TransatlanticEquivalent to the FBI and, though we only see one agent, he's essentially not a bad guy and is only doing his job.
* CrapsackWorld: In a world where being incapable of actually doing your job will not disqualify you from it, nothing works properly. PoliceAreUseless, public services are full of {{Obstructive Bureaucrat}}s and taking a flight won't even get you to your intended destination without some mishap occurring.

* ClosestThingWeGot: During the Fabrizzi poisoning as the arriving medical personal kept slipping on the vomit and injuring themselves, there was an attempt to get one of the victims, an actor who [[ButIPlayOneOnTV played a doctor on TV]] to help that ended in abject failure.

* CutHisHeartOutWithASpoon: Harry threatens to strangle the mechanic with bubble wrap.
** Shortly afterwards he threatens to castrate the ObstructiveBureaucrat stationmaster with his bare hands and then whip him with the severed organ,

* EvilPlan: The society-hobbling PoliticalOvercorrectness is encouraged [[spoiler: by the American intelligence services, who believe that a cohesive Europe would be a serious rival to the USA's global power.]]

* KentBrockmanNews: In the Euronews chapter, the helicopter reporter utterly freaks out when the gunplay starts and complains that he's a sports reporter supposed to be covering a match. The anchor ends the broadcast by noting that if the dead French Interior Minister who had been occupying Harry's rental car had been on drugs, then he would rot in hell.
** Actually the anchor was reading a speech from the French government, and mostly subverts this trope, along with the reporter interviewing the Cops.

* PukingDetective: Harry spots a cop who looks a bit green around the gills on his way to see Doctor Rutter and notes that while this has never happened to him personally, he's seen plenty of coroners try and invoke this reaction. Of course, given that Rutter takes the faces from cadavers and transplants them to the buttocks of other cadavers, it's understandable why someone would be queasy in his presence.

Set TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture, it takes place in The United States Of Europe, where {{political correctness|GoneMad}} has reached DystopianEdict levels, and laws have been passed that forbid the discrimination of people based on race, class, gender, creed or competence. Thus, a society has been born where ''everyone'' is bad at their job because employers aren't allowed to use someone's ''actual ability to do the job'' as a reason to hire/fire someone. Most shoes are made of vegetable matter, a hotel room will only have furniture in it if you're lucky (and be completely non-existent if you're not), and signposts rarely agree with each other, let alone point the correct way. As an added joke, one can track how many originally absurd rules from this book were actually realised by European Union between publishing and present.

* EvilPlan: The society-hobbling PoliticalCorrectnessGoneMad is encouraged [[spoiler: by the American intelligence services, who believe that a cohesive Europe would be a serious rival to the USA's global power.]]

* IncompetenceInc: The whole of Europe has become this after PoliticalCorrectnessGoneMad legislation. In particular, companies are prohibited from discriminating based on competence, so they aren't able to use a potential employee's ability to actually do the job as a hiring criteria.

* PoliticalCorrectnessGoneMad: Article 13199 of the Pan-European constitution states that no person may be excluded from any employment on the grounds of age, race, creed or incompetence. This leads to people holding jobs that they are entirely unsuitable for, such as airline pilots with vertigo, police officers who are either TooDumbToLive or fall under the RabidCop category and an old man holding a job as a PlayboyBunny.

* WithThisHerring

* WriterOnBoard: can come across as an anti-EU screed at times.

* SomethingCompletelyDifferent: The entire book is told in first person by Harry, except for two chapters. One is the USE's version of the Miranda Rights (with a dumbed down version), the other is a Euronews broadcast where German police [[MoreDakka shoot up a car]] with an [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill already dead man behind the wheel]] before launching a rocket at it.....[[ImperialStormtrooperMarksmanshipAcademy and completely missing, instead destroying a nearby tanning factory.]]

* ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill: The German police in the Euronews chapter. Also Superintendant Debary of the Food Crimes squad, who goes to restaurant inspections armed to the teeth.

* ClosestThingWeGot: During the Fabrizzi poisoning as the arriving medical personal kept slipping on the vomit and injuring themselves, there was an attempt to get one of the victims, an actor who played a doctor on Tv to help that ended in abject failure.

* PetTheDog: Harry gets several moments showing that he deserves the audiences sympathy, such as bu giving one of his fake IDs to a man declared legally dead to help him get a fresh start, or advising a fellow prisoner locked up over a technicality on how to get out.

* SuperIdentikit: Averted. Harry gets identikitted and the image is shown on Euronews. Luckily, it looks more like [[Film/PlanetOfTheApes Dr Zaius]] than Harry.

* AlmightyJanitor: Jonhan the worlds leading toxicologist has been stuck as a research assistant for forty two years due to the absurd promotion system.

* OnlySaneMan:
** Salt, Klingferm.

** The fate stewardess Harry uses ObfuscatingStupidity on seems fairly professional and ok at her job, causing Harry to resort to those methods to get past her and driving her crazy.
** The main Euronews reporter and anchor covering the death of the French Minister of Interior also seems to have a fairly accurate grasp of The German cops BlatantLies and do s good job conveying this to the audience.
** Finally, there's Gina, as while she handles her job in an over-sexed way she's one of the only people we meet whose incompetent in some way who ''realizes'' her incompetence and strives to do better.
** AlmightyJanitor Johnan.
** According to the BigBad most of the poisoning victims were this, some of Europe’s best and brightest although it’s more of an InformedAttribute.

* ReasonableAuthorityFigure: While the Hoyle managed in Rome is still fairly dim, after Harry gives him a taste of his own medicine by having him try to call various building services only for all of her to go to a restaurant employee who can’t redirect calls (which Harry suffered through a lot) he seems to understand Harry’s frustration and gives him a new room.

* Shortly afterwards he threatens to castrate the ObstructiveBureaucrat stationmaster with his bare hands and then whip him with the severed organ,

* TheDragon: Wolfie.

* PoliceAreUseless: And damn near everyone else.

* ShesGotLegs: Gina.

* SirSwearsALot: Captain Zuccho.

* UnitedEurope

* GenreSavvy: Harry has devised ways of using the CrapsackWorld to his advantage.

Set TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture, it takes place in The United States Of Europe, where {{political correctness|GoneMad}} has reached DystopianEdict levels, and laws have been passed that forbid the discrimination of people based on race, class, gender, creed or competence. Thus, a society has been born where ''everyone'' is bad at their job because employers aren't allowed to use someone's ''actual ability to do the job'' as a reason to hire/fire someone. Most shoes are made of vegetable matter, a hotel room will only have furniture in it if you're lucky (and be completely non-existent if you're not), and signposts rarely agree with each other, let alone point the correct way. As added joke, one can track how many originally absurd rules from book were actually realised by European Union between publishing and present.

* BrokenPedestal: [[spoiler:Klingferm.]]

* DangerouslyGenreSavvy: [[spoiler: Klingferm, until the end.]]

* NoOSHACompliance: Since Disneyland Austria was shut down, it's been left abandoned until the final confrontation between Harry and "Johnny Appleseed" [[spoiler: aka Dick Klingferm]]. The main attraction is rigged to collapse at a certain point and it's [[spoiler: Klingferm's]] intention to use it to kill Harry.