The complaints form: «¡Vaya director!», the boss who isn't up to it and the scene at reception

Some exclamations need no context. «¡Vaya director!» (Some manager!) is one of them. Hear it and you picture someone rolling their eyes, bag already on their shoulder, patience long gone. It's what you say when the person in charge of something proves, in front of everyone, that the job is too big for them. That's why it seemed the perfect title for this song: three words, an exclamation and a whole story behind them.

The lyrics aren't published yet, and I won't invent them or quote anything that can't be read. What I do have is the cover, which is almost a comic panel, the title with its exclamation marks, the album it belongs to and the date I uploaded its music video to YouTube, 22 May 2026. That's enough to talk about something very much ours: the art of complaining.

Because «¡Vaya director!» sounds like a complaint. Like a counter, a reception bell, «I want to speak to the person in charge». And in Spain, complaining is almost a national sport, with its rules, its forms and its great moments.

A comic panel mid-explosion

The cover leaves no room for doubt. Chandeliers, a marble counter, a golden bell of the kind you ring with your palm. It's the lobby of a luxury hotel, the sort with thick carpet and bellboys in caps. Everything invites you to speak softly. And in the middle of that set, a monumental fury.

On one side, a suited, grey-haired man, hands open in the universal «please calm down» gesture. On the other, me, in a red brocade jacket, finger pointed straight at his face. The title's fat yellow comic-book letters complete the feeling of a panel mid-explosion. If there were sound effects, there'd be a «POW!» in some corner.

I really like that the image picks that exact moment: the raised finger. It isn't the start of the argument, when people are still polite, or the end, when someone storms out slamming the door. It's the climax. The moment the complaint becomes a show and the other guests in the lobby stop pretending they aren't watching.

Complaining in Spain

In Spain, any business that serves the public must have official complaint forms, the «hojas de reclamaciones», and in many places it has to say so on a clearly visible sign. They're regulated by the regional governments, and anyone who has worked with the public knows what the sentence «can I have a complaints form?» means. It's the formal declaration of war. The moment the argument moves from words to paper.

That paper has something liturgical about it. It's filled in in triplicate: one copy for the customer, one for the business, one for the authorities. It's written in cramped, angry handwriting, sometimes with spelling mistakes. And it's almost never sent. Many people ask for the form more for the gesture than the procedure: so the other person knows they mean business.

«¡Vaya director!» sounds to me like the moment just before, when the form hasn't been requested yet but is being considered. When you look at the person in charge and conclude, without further evidence, that they're not up to it. A short sentence, with no appeal.

The job that's too big

There's a very famous idea about bosses that everyone quotes without knowing where it comes from. Laurence J. Peter set it out in a 1969 book, and it's known as the Peter principle: in a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to their level of incompetence. In other words, if you do your job well, you get promoted, and so on until you reach a post you can no longer do. And there you stay.

The book was written half as a joke, but it hit such a recognisable note that it's still alive more than half a century later. We've all met that manager. The one who was a good receptionist and is a bad manager. The one who could sell and can't lead. The one with the office, the nameplate and not the faintest idea of what's happening downstairs.

«¡Vaya director!» is the exclamation that goes with that principle. You don't need to know Peter to say it. You just need to have queued at a counter while the manager on duty demonstrates, with exasperating calm, that he has no solution to anything.

Bosses in my songs

It isn't the first time a superior has turned up in my titles. There's an «Asqueroso coordinador» (Disgusting coordinator), and there's a head of department in another title I'd rather you read yourself, because it says it all on its own. The world of work, with its hierarchies and its petty abuses, is an endless source of songs.

It interests me because it's territory where almost everyone has felt small at some point. The boss who talks down to you in front of others, the coordinator who takes credit for your work, the manager who doesn't answer your emails. They're everyday, low-intensity humiliations that pile up like dust on shelves. And turned into a chorus, they lose some of their power.

Laughing at the boss is one of the oldest forms of popular resistance. Court jesters, Spanish «sainetes», comedies of errors, office comic strips. There's always been someone who, from below, pointed at the one above and said plainly what everyone was thinking. This song's cover does exactly that, finger included.

Hotels in fiction

A luxury hotel is a perfect setting for a row. Television has known it for decades. In the seventies, the British series Fawlty Towers turned a disastrous hotel manager, Basil Fawlty, played by John Cleese, into one of the most memorable comic characters in TV history. He was rude, cowardly, snobbish and clumsy, and every episode was a catastrophe at reception.

Cinema has loved concierges and hotel managers too. Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel, released in 2014, built its whole look around a lobby full of pink, velvet and lifts with bellboys. Hotels are theatres: there's a stage, a backstage, an audience. And when someone makes a scene in the lobby, the whole building becomes the stalls.

The cover of «¡Vaya director!» draws on that tradition. The chandeliers, the marble, the golden bell are classic-comedy props. And the red brocade jacket looks as if it came from a theatre wardrobe. Everything is ready for the performance.

There's something very camp about that choice of setting. It isn't a row in the supermarket queue or at the post office counter. It's somewhere with crystal chandeliers, where every gesture is amplified and every word bounces off the marble. If you're going to get angry, get angry with a set.

Making a scene and the right to complain

In Spain we have a wonderful expression for what the cover shows: «montar un pollo», literally «to mount a chicken», which means to kick up a fuss, make a scene, shout where you shouldn't. People also say «montar un numerito» (to put on a little show) or «armar la de Dios es Cristo» (to raise hell). They're usually said reproachfully: don't make a scene, everyone's looking.

But some scenes are necessary. Sometimes the only way to get attention is to stop being polite. Many people have learnt that the hard way, at service windows, hospitals, customer-service desks, after hours of waiting and automated replies. There comes a point when patience becomes complicity with mistreatment, and complaining becomes an act of dignity.

For LGBTI people, knowing how to complain has also historically been a matter of survival. For a long time, if you were treated badly for being who you were, the best thing was to keep quiet and not draw attention. Today the law protects against that treatment. In Spain, Law 15/2022 on equal treatment and non-discrimination protects anyone discriminated against when accessing goods and services, including on grounds of sexual orientation or gender identity. If a hotel makes difficulties because you're two men in a double bed, that has a name and a way to report it.

A couple at reception

I don't know, because the lyrics aren't visible, what happened in the hotel on the cover. It might be a room that wasn't clean, a lost booking, condescending treatment or an absurd misunderstanding. The song keeps the secret until you listen. But the scene at the counter brings to mind an experience many same-sex couples know.

You arrive at the hotel, give your name, and the receptionist hesitates. He looks at the booking, looks at you, looks at your partner. «Two beds, then?». And you, as calmly as can be, explain that no, you booked a double, you're a couple. It's a moment that lasts seconds but is remembered. Sometimes it comes with an awkward smile, sometimes with a sincere apology, and sometimes with something worse.

That little scene says a lot about how other people still assume two men together are friends, colleagues, brothers, anything but what they are. It isn't a tragedy, but it's a constant reminder. And the day the receptionist goes too far, perhaps the raised finger on the cover is the right answer.

The accusing finger

Let's talk about the finger, because it's the star. Pointing is rude, we were told as children. And it's true: an index finger aimed at someone's face is an aggressive gesture, almost a gun. But it's also a gesture of public accusation, of judgement. It's the prosecutor's finger in courtroom films, the finger of the mother who catches you lying, Uncle Sam's finger on the recruitment poster.

On the cover, the finger comes with a red brocade jacket. Red, in theatre and fashion tradition, is the colour of the angry diva. It's the colour of red carpets and the colour of blood. A red jacket pointing a finger doesn't apologise for being angry. Quite the opposite: it has dressed for the occasion.

I like to think that jacket is also an answer. For years, gay men were asked to be discreet: don't draw attention, don't make noise, don't make scenes. The cover does just the opposite. It dresses in the loudest colour, picks the most elegant place and makes a scene in front of everyone.

Second-hand embarrassment

There's another emotion at play on the cover, and it belongs to everyone else who would be in that lobby. «Vergüenza ajena», second-hand embarrassment. That very Spanish feeling, so hard to translate, that floods us when we see someone make a fool of themselves or cause a scene. I wrote about it in «La vergüenza ajena como herramienta para escribir», because I think it's one of the best sources of humour there is.

In a row at reception, the embarrassment is shared out. Some feel it for the customer who's shouting, and some feel it for the manager who doesn't know what to do. The cover seems clear about which side it's on: the grey-haired man, hands open and baffled, is the one shown up. The title confirms it: some manager!

That reversal makes me laugh. Usually whoever makes the scene is the ridiculous one. Here the ridiculous one is whoever should have prevented it. Judging by its cover, the song takes the side of the furious customer and leaves the person in charge looking like a poster.

Counter humour

There's a kind of humour born at counters. Anyone who's worked in a shop, a bar or a reception knows it, and so does anyone who's stood on the other side. The phrases that repeat, the customers who always come back, the managers who are never there. «The manager's just stepped out», «that's not up to me», «you'll have to call customer service». Phrases that could fill a whole stand-up routine.

In my songs I try to make sure that humour doesn't hurt anyone who doesn't deserve it. I explained it in «Hacer humor gay sin hacer daño». Laughing at the manager who isn't up to it isn't the same as laughing at the waiter who earns a pittance and puts up with the unspeakable. The row on the cover is aimed upwards, at the suit and the grey hair, not at whoever cleans the rooms. That direction matters.

And then there's the chorus, which in a song like this is usually the title repeated until the listener makes it theirs. I explain it in «Cómo se escribe un estribillo que se ríe de ti y contigo». A good complaint chorus is one you can shout in the shower after a terrible day at work.

«You don't know who you're talking to»

There's a phrase that has become, in Spain, the symbol of the badly made complaint: «usted no sabe con quién está hablando», you don't know who you're talking to. It's the phrase of someone who thinks they're important, who wants to jump the queue, who expects their position, surname or money to buy special treatment. Every so often it turns up in a viral video and the reaction is always the same: equal parts outrage and laughter.

I want to separate that complaint from the one on the cover. «You don't know who you're talking to» points downwards: the powerful crushing the employee. «¡Vaya director!» points upwards: the customer calling out the person in charge. The difference seems small, but it changes everything. One is abuse; the other, sometimes, is justice.

Of course the border isn't always clear. Some customers confuse complaining with humiliating, and some managers confuse asking for calm with contempt. The cover, with its comic-book look, doesn't go into those nuances. But the title does leave a clue: the problem, here, is the manager. And the manager is the one with power in that lobby.

On the other side of the counter

It's worth remembering who's on the other side as well. Hospitality and tourism employ a huge number of people in Spain, and many of them work long hours on tight wages with infinite patience towards customers who unload frustrations that come from far away. Receptionists, housekeepers, bellboys, kitchen staff. They're the ones who take the scenes that aren't theirs to take.

That's why aim matters. Pointing at the manager who makes the decisions isn't the same as shouting at the twenty-year-old covering the night shift who can't do anything. A good complaint looks for whoever can fix things, not whoever is nearest. And a good complaint song, I think, does too.

Many gay men have worked with the public at some point, in bars, shops or receptions. We know what it's like to get an unfair telling-off and smile anyway. Maybe that's why the finger on the cover points so clearly at the suit and the grey hair: it's a row from someone who knows the job.

From the first album, how could it be otherwise

The song belongs to *Descubierto un nuevo planeta llamado Gayfolk*, the trilogy's first album. It's the album of arrival, of the newcomer who meets the world's rules and isn't willing to swallow them all. It has a lot of clashing with authority: with neighbours, with exes, with bosses, with those in charge.

It makes perfect sense for an overwhelmed hotel manager to appear on that album. The inhabitant of planet Gayfolk arrives somewhere elegant, expects to be treated well and finds someone in charge who isn't up to it. And instead of lowering his head, he raises his finger.

Complaints that look after us

I want to end on a more serious note. Complaining has a bad reputation. It's associated with bitter people, those who are never happy, who always find a problem. But learning to complain well is an important skill. Being able to say «this isn't right» without sinking yourself or the other person, claiming what you're owed, recognising an unfair situation and naming it: all of that is part of looking after yourself.

Many people, especially those who grew up feeling they had no right to take up space, find it hard to complain. They put up with things, smile, apologise for bothering anyone. And that habit, in the long run, weighs on you. You don't need to make a scene at every reception desk, but it's worth knowing you can. That your needs count, that the customer, the patient, the citizen or the employee has rights, and that pointing at the person in charge isn't rude when the person in charge fails.

Who this song is for

For anyone who has ever asked for the complaints form and felt a tingle of power filling it in. For anyone who has waited half an hour at a counter while the manager chatted on the phone about his holidays. For anyone who had a boss too small for the job and couldn't tell him.

For couples who have been asked if they'd like two beds. For anyone who made a scene and doesn't regret it. And for anyone who never dared, and who perhaps, listening to this song, will feel up to raising a finger next time.

I'm sure a manager who deserves this song comes to mind for you too. The lyrics will be published in my lyrics section and on gayfolkplanet.com. Meanwhile, you can listen on Spotify.

Frequently asked questions

What is «¡Vaya director!» about?

The lyrics aren't published yet. The title and the cover show a row at the reception of a luxury hotel with a manager who isn't up to the job, and this post reads it as a song about complaining and about bosses.

What's on the cover?

A lobby with chandeliers, a marble counter and a golden bell. A grey-haired man in a suit asks for calm with open hands while Mike, in a red brocade jacket, points at him. The title is in yellow comic-book letters.

Which album is it on?

On Descubierto un nuevo planeta llamado Gayfolk, the first album of the Planeta Gayfolk trilogy. The music video was published on YouTube on 22 May 2026.

What is the Peter principle?

An idea by Laurence J. Peter, published in 1969: in a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to their level of incompetence. It explains many managers like the one in the title.

Who makes the music and the vocals?

The lyrics, composition and production are by Mike Sain't Louis, the first AI songwriter. The music and the vocals are generated with artificial intelligence.