This.
I'm not sure if people realize this, but Space Station 13 is really just Work-Simulator in Space. Aurora is a Nanotrasen research facility that has employees, and those employees have bosses and those bosses have bosses.
Although I wouldn't condone Tophat's extreme actions (e.g. killing all animals on the station, drinking to induce vomit), he does add something new to every round which keeps it from feeling like extended 24/7 (i.e. putting the fun back into SS13). I think we've gotten a bit elitist as to what we expect from our heads of staff. Heads of Staff are, well, people. They should have their flaws, same as any other staff member.
I admit, Tophat should choose who he messes around with more carefully, and that his actions (e.g. the bum-pinching of Pond) are in no way justified. But, like it or not, his character James Watson actually makes the Heads of Staff do work. Furthermore, he regularly asks for updates from all departments, or at least from my own experience. Whether it is paperwork (love it or hate it, it's part of the job), having Medbay give check-ups, or any of the other lot, it makes the round interesting and by interesting, I mean not like every other round.
Promoting criminals to head of staff positions:
I agree, this was a no-no, and shouldn't have been allowed to happen. As for the unqualified issue, well, unqualified people are put into positions of superiority all of the time in the real world (think of that one incompetent boss you had while working part-time in high-school).
SSD:
I'm not sure where this came from, to be frank. James Watson is always awake. Perhaps the issue was that he was swamped actually doing something and wasn't able to get back to you on the drop of a dime? Speaking with him on TS, I can personally vouch for the fact that Tophat doesn't exactly go SSD often. To be honest, I've seen your characters (heads of staff included) go SSD more than I've seen Watson, but I digress.
I'm glad that this was solved without nasty name-calling, as Watson was remade into a different character. Although, to be honest, I'll miss one of the only competent Captains we've had recently. He makes things interesting, and well, if I wanted to play Boring Workplace Simulator 2014, I'd go out and get an office job instead of bumming it with the lot of you (Just kidding, I love this community, yadda yadda yadda).