Employee complies with manager’s bad instruction, then manager comes back to consult with employee about what to do when his instructions don’t work out

Sometimes I wonder what exactly managers do and why they are managers in the first place. 

Many times, they don’t seem to make much sense. They rarely ever know what really goes on in the office, their instructions are confusing, and their qualifications are, at the very least, questionable. Oftentimes, they seem to be working for a different company and are not caught up with what’s going on in the one they actually work at. They end up giving instructions that are out of touch with reality and that only make the work all the more difficult. Other than that, when they don’t catch the mistakes someone else made and the project fails, they will always find someone to blame except themselves. 

On rare occasions, managers do come around and start taking responsibility for what is supposed to be their job. It doesn’t happen all the time, but it’s also not impossible. And in this case, something like that happened. The manager had told his employee to stop correcting other people’s mistakes in files, and so the employee did. When things stopped working the way they were supposed to, the manager complained, and the employee told him that he was just following instructions. Even though he wasn’t thrilled with the answer, the manager started asking for the employee’s opinion afterwards, before making decisions. Not a usual thing to see, but refreshing nonetheless. It shows that anyone can correct their train of thought with the right push.