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s retirement. And, forgive my cynicism (which has nothing to do with retirement), retirement does not equate to serenity. Would I find it troublesome or tedious to write back? Hemingway once said to F. Scott Fitzgerald, '

Letter-writing is such a swell way to keep from working and yet feels you'

ve done something.'

I am in bliss when engaged in this converse of the pens. You wrote half-jokingly that you sometimes found yourself serving more than one boss. I'

d like to take it up half-seriously. I cannot say I have not heard such a comment before. Neither can I deny that at some points in my serving years I had not harboured similar feelings. But I was once sagely advised by a senior academic-cum-administrator that the university is neither a company nor an organization but a community. In a community, roles are seldom defined or demarcated purely along lines of command and responsibilities. Loyalties are not only divided but, in a good sense, multiplied to achieve communal ends. Also, in a community, people don'

t just work there. They live there. You must know what solid lines and what dotted lines mean within a management structure. In a university setting, the dotted lines are perhaps more interesting than the solid ones. It is important to connect the dots, or better still, see the dots where there aren'

t any. The essence of a working relationship can be captured by any one of three prepositions: On the lowest rung, you work under someone ('

the boss'

);

one step up, you work for someone ('

the supervisor'

);

on the summit, you work with someone ('

the colleague'

or, at the risk of sounding utopian, '

the comrade'

). Regardless of your respective ranks, you (plural) can choose which preposition to use, with results that may not be too subtle to give you cause for reflection. It has not escaped people'

s notice that many types of job have disappeared in the last decade or so. What many did not realize is that employers are disappearing, too. ........