I'll have a new manager, come Monday. Batty knows him, having worked alongside him before retirement. Mentally I call him Slick, though of course, never in public.

The other people in my office, who will also be working under his supervision, are dismayed. I did my best yesterday to remind them that he is new in this position and we should give him the benefit of our best efforts. (No, I won't do his job for him, so he can go golfing or philandering.)

But those of us who have been working here for many years (and have seen managers come and go) know that it is unusual for a person who is promoted beyond his competence not to become both intoxicated by the power and terrified by the knowledge that he (or she) doesn't have the brains or experience for the position.

Fear and power are a bad combination. We know how he managed to climb so high; what we must do is help him to a modicum of success or we'll all suffer. And so he will seem to have been competent after all, and will be promoted some day once again.

And so it goes.