Merriam-Webster says:

Main Entry: com·pe·tent
Pronunciation: 'käm-p€-t€nt
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English, suitable, from Middle French & Latin; Middle French, from Latin competent-, competens, from present participle of competere
Date: 15th century
1 : proper or rightly pertinent
2 : having requisite or adequate ability or qualities : FIT (a competent teacher) (a competent piece of work)
3 : legally qualified or adequate (a competent witness)
4 : having the capacity to function or develop in a particular way; specifically : having the capacity to respond (as by producing an antibody) to an antigenic determinant
synonym see SUFFICIENT
- com·pe·tent·ly adverb

I think having this competence, this capacity to function is what gets me in trouble at work. One might wish it took more than that. Alas.

Editor's note: There's no HTML for the schwa character. I reluctantly substituted an euro sign, since it doesn't conflict with other International Phonetic Alphabet characters, yet connotes a certain amount of e-ness. Merriam-Webster uses ampersands, which looked silly to me. They also use a-umlaut instead of the IPA "script a" character. IPA doesn't really work well in HTML. Alas.