This morning, the new head of our IT Department, with its twitchy, inept little hands, managed to wipe out the entire operating system on my computer. I tried to tell him to quit messing with my machine, but he insisted he knew what he was doing and continued to “fix” it. My computer, which is essentially my lifeline here at the office, fully crashed.

The damage took me more than four hours to repair, with unflagging assistance from my coworker. My boss was patient and sweet during this tense recovery period, asking me at one point in a very small voice, “Do you feel better, Mommy?” Meanwhile, the IT staff, in its typical fashion, was absolved of this disaster and went off to take a nap.