In some strips, when he displays an above-average intelligence, or at least exhibits surprisingly original and cunning (albeit unethical or unscrupulous) thinking, Dilbert calls him a resourceful idiot. But most of his actions are incredibly stupid, including once in the TV series using Moviefone to check on his IBM stock. At one time on the strip, the PHB recognizes that the biggest contribution that his department does to the company is actually the "brown table meetings", and that it is the only asset that prevents them from being outsourced. In another strip the department gives a disastrous presentation to a new VP who decides to cut half the employees, but it is revealed that the Boss, anticipating the department's characteristic poor performance, told the VP that they were the marketing department. The boss made his most significant physical change on October 21, 1991, when his hair began to appear pointed. The last daily strip appearance of the jowly boss was in the strip dated September 20, 1991, although his back may have been seen in the September 26, 1991, strip. Following a protracted series about Elbonia, the boss reappeared on October 21, 1991, without the jowls and with the pointed hair. A version of the boss with slightly pointy hair but with jowls appeared in the December 1, 1991, Sunday strip; this was changed the next time the boss appeared in a Sunday strip, March 22, 1992. A series of flashbacks shown in the April 28, 1995 strip shows the Boss with a full head of hair in 1985, then with his original look in 1990. The Boss's family sometimes makes an appearance in the strips, and are frequently presented as being as incompetent as he is. In 1998, the Boss's son, who hid in the attic for four years instead of attending college, was hired for the company and made VP of marketing due to his complete lack of knowledge. In the July 10, 2003 strip the Boss receives a phone call (presumably from his current or ex-wife) telling him that while he was working his children grew up and moved away, an achievement which the Boss regards as his most successful plan ever. In the December 28, 2003 strip, the Boss's wife was hired as a receptionist for the company. (This would be at least his third wife, as in the May 22, 2001 strip he tells Alice that he got his first and third wives using the "bait-lube-and-switch trick". A wife with hair unlike his appears on April 7, 1994, and a different pointy-haired wife appears on February 13, 2010.)