Here is another anecdote that helps to describe that "DBA from Hell" that we all have met (been?) at one time or another (Chris, I think you were at this meeting):

When working at that large financial institution, the DBA staff would get together for regular staff meetings to keep everyone up to date on their projects. The manager, an affable and likable guy who had more patience than I could ever have, asked the biggest curmudgeon in the group for an update on his project. This was back in the "old days" and his task was to implement DBRC for the IMS systems that were in use. It was an important project and he had supposedly been working on it for months.

Our manager had asked the curmudgeon for updates before and all he'd get were non-committal grunts or non-updates, like "it's coming along." So he had asked the week before for the curmudgeon to develop an implementation plan. When he asked him at the meeting where the plan was, the curmudgeon never uttered a word, he just smirked and tapped the side of his head (meaning, I guess, that he had it all figured out in his head). The manager's mistake, I suppose, was not explicitly telling him that the plan had to be in writing...

This was a guy to learn from - that is, to learn what NOT to do!