It’s Thursday. It’s September. It’s hot and it has to be the slowest day of the year here at Acme Coaster Brake and Bike Bell.

The phone hasn’t rung in an hour. Half the staff is on vacation and the air conditioner died two days ago.

All your customers are on vacation and there’s a recession on.

Even the boss is gone, his office dark.

The boss. Man, is that guy is a piece of work, you think as you twiddle your pencil. Yells, swears, cheats on his wife — the works.

How did that guy get that job in the first place?

Well, if you’ve ever wondered that about your boss — or how so many other prominent bosses from corporate titans to national political figures get to be such nasty people — wonder no longer.

The Wall Street Journal asked the same question recently after the sudden resignation of Hewlett-Packard CEO Mark Hurd.

He was undone after putting a one-time actress on the payroll and taking her on some steamy business trips.

The WSJ noted how there is a long and sordid history of business people and politicians working hard to acquire power, money and reputation and then squandering it all in really stupid ways.

Witness one Rod Blagojevich. Or John Edwards. Or Eliot Spitzer. Or Bill Clinton. Or, for that matter, Tiger Woods.

“Psychologists refer to this as the paradox of power,” according to the WSJ article. The traits that help people obtain power — like being nice and considerate to other people — seem to often disappear when they obtain that power.

The good news is that Niccolo Machiavelli was dead wrong in his advice to the Prince.

In just about all cases, people only give power to other people that they genuinely like, according to researcher Dacher Keltner, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley.

The most popular people tend to become the most powerful because other people put them in positions of authority.

The bad news? Once people get to the top, those people often morph into somebody else.

“It’s an incredibly consistent effect, Keltner told the Journal. “When you give people power, they basically start acting like fools. “They flirt inappropriately, tease in a hostile fashion and become totally impulsive.”

They become less sympathetic to the concerns of others and are more likely to rely on stereotypes and generalizations when judging other people.

Worse, research shows they often feel the rules that govern the behavior of other people do not apply to them. Their sense of power and importance makes it easier for them to rationalize what they would consider bad or unethical behavior by others.

For instance, according to the WSJ, important people may “conclude that they had a good reason for speeding — they are important people with important things to do — but everyone else should follow the posted signs.”

The same people tend to “reliably overestimate their moral virtue,” leading them to resist or evade authority and oversight and take ethical shortcuts.

All of which may explain a lot about your boss … or explain nothing at all.

Some people actually remain thoughtful, humble and grounded, even when they occupy the corner office.

Really?

Really.

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