An alternate POV...

It's a perfectly reasonable question. It shows that management is open to change and really is interested in making things better.

When a manager gets that kind of response from his crew it leads me to believe that something else is going on. Perhaps the crew is paranoid about their jobs (I admit something is wrong and I am shuffled out the door with a "why didn't you fix it" annotated to my pink slip), or perhaps they are moribund (If I say something is wrong then I will have to fix it--more work for me--bad thing) or perhaps they have a god complex (nothing I ever do is bad--management is just a bunch of idiots) or a number of other ailments that keep a company from changing.

Or the problem could be on the side of management. Perhaps requests for critique like this invite the respondent to become personal enemies of some member of the upper management, which could amount to job loss or worse.

Or it could be, as portrayed by the problem's resolution; the PM has no personality to speak of, or is perhaps like Milton from Office Space. Or Bill Lumbergh from the same movie.

The bottom line is that my first guess is that pilot fish does not work in what I would consider a very healthy work environment. He should look for another job.

So, what do you think is wrong with this?

The simple answer would be to reply, "Nothing. What do you think is wrong with it?"

Cloud chamber

Obviously, the PM is operating in a cloud chamber.
We got one of that kind once. The first spreadsheet he sent us had had numerous complaints from the field that it would not run. He said that it ran just fine on his computer.
Sure it did. On his computer.
He had packed all the RAM into it he could find, and had a T-1 link to the source.
The field? The standard mini-RAM set and dial-up. the spreadsheet size was in multi-megabytes.
Knowing the PM didn't have a comparison copy on hand, we got a competing, look-alike (and compatible) shareware spreadsheet application, copied it over, cleaned it up, and sent it back with the notation that the spreadsheet was a non-conforming version.
Our suggestion was to keep the spreadsheets for field use at 10K or less.
The PM never did figure out what we did and never had any more field complaints on non-operating spreadsheets.

CAPTCHA: safes with
-- your secret is safes with me

Take Credit when You can

I once worked for a new manager who after one week on the job started to email to his supervisors a procedure from our Procedures manual and ask if we could improve on it. We, the supervisors, made comments and suggestions and emailed them to him. At a staff meeting the CTO praised the new manager for improving procedures. The new manger stood up, thanked the CTO, and proceded to tell the staff how he was looking forward to 'improving the way we do business'. No mention of the contribution by the supervisors. After that his email with a procedure for the supervisors to 'improve' went straight into the bit bucket. It didn't take him long to figure out we were'nt going to do the work he was getting credit for. He had a meet and sort of apologize for next giving us credit for the updated procedures. Too late!

F L U Finator

This sounds like a solid manager, minus the lack of violence. We do something similar here are Chateau F L U F.

The F L U Finator procedure for passing tickets along to my programmers?

Email my programmers "If you can't see the issue with this page you programmed, come see me."

They show up.

I grab them by the back of the head and smash their face into my 46 inch HD LCD hi-res monitor.

"YOU SEE NOW?!?! DOES SEEING IT AT 1920x1080 RESOLUTION CLEAR THINGS UP FOR YOU!?!"

I yell.

I had one complaint, but before it went to the board, I canceled his work visa and had him deported back to Kazakhstan. Since putting this policy in place, coders get the email and look real REAL hard before coming to me.