When somone mentioned to a 2* the other day that fulfilling his requests might take a little time due to lack of people and too short a deadline, he apparently pointed out that there were "24 hours in a day" and people should "dry their eyes."
Your 2* sounds like a complete cock! At least at my place the 2 and 1*s will turn off taskings and then go in to bat on our behalf. As any good leader and manager should. Unless of course, they are more interested in promotions and knighthoods than unit effectiveness. Doesn't change the fact that morale at our unit is, overall, pretty low and the MO we have on Staff said of the results of a staff survey that if the unit was his patient he would be considering prescribing anti-depressants all round.
Edited to add that despite having grown up leadership in place, it's still all pretty ropey.