I don't know that it's rare, but I've experienced it a number of times. I think the key to it is 'low-level'. To avoid the big step of firing someone, they 'promote' them to a position where they are considered mostly harmless. Of course, they forget that over time things change, people leave, etc., and this low-level person ends up getting to a position where they can wield their stupidity in a damaging way.
ditto, except once they became low-level mgmt instead of letting people work around them they put a chokehold on all information flow for the sake of take the credit / shifting the blame, & eventually the project basically got scrapped because of these narcissistic boobs abusing their power & killing morale. i am thinking this is not so rare in consulting...
