17th February 2023. Cold morning in a Matatu heading to the office. The journey is a long one and uncomfortable as it comes. My mind is all over, but especially concentrating on how some people can be inhumane when they get into power. I take out my phone and write this: Exploits of a mad man, the title for a story. And then it just stews for ten or so months – basically it has been quite a busy season for me and I couldn’t get time to write the story. (Maybe it was important for me to face PTSD head-on). Now that I have some time by my side, let me try to recall what I wanted to say………….
Disclaimer: All characters and events in this story are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Office set up.
Sunday evening.
You’ve tucked your children in bed, maybe you struggled to convince one of them to get into bed. What with him having taken a huge piece of the birthday cake which had remained from the party. All that sugar – sugar rush! Too much energy just when you don’t want to entertain it. The birthday was celebrated yesterday, the youngest was turning five – so much funfare but your mind was not participating in this celebration. You are constantly checking your office email. Your phone has been your companion since you logged off your laptop on Friday.
Your boss requested (not really: came to your desk and said: “si utani-do-ia hivyo?”, a corrupted sheng meaning you are to do something for him) that you put a full stop on the 8th sentence in a report you had spent two days preparing. Also, the title had many capital letters, and this did not sit well with his liver, or whatever. You sit back and wonder – what pettiness! So, since you were not created by a lesser god, you ignore this, log off at the exact time that you are supposed to leave office and step out without a care. That’s why you have a running stomach on Sunday evening.
Every week, you will have crying sessions in your office, courtesy of your boss; and this takes a toll on your mental and physical health. You are constantly looking for a way out, and because of this you are putting in the bare minimum – just enough to see you survive to the next end month without getting the “show-cause-why” letter. You have tried reporting this to management, but all in vain, strangely they think you are the problem. When the employee reaches the end, what you notice is their quietness, never interested in discussions and they will keep to themselves even when they have bright ideas. The boss ultimately kills the enthusiasm of the staff, and in so doing negatively impacts the operations (and profitability) of the company.
“If you want to know a dictator, give a person some little power”, Hon. Kalonzo Musyoka.
In the 21st Century, one of the misgivings of technology, though it has made our living better, is that you never know somebody’s inherent values through the physical CV until you employ them and discover what a moron of a person the individual is.
Monday Morning
You arrive early in the office.
From previous confrontations, you understand that getting into the office a minute late will be met with emails to explain your lateness. This, you are aware, may go down the slippery slope towards your termination. You have become wise with time – give what the boss wants; time. It does not matter if there are urgent tasks, once the clock ticks 5:00pm, it’s time to leave the office.
You see your boss already arrived, and your mood changes immediately. You immediately start looking forward to the end of the week, even before you open your office. You have no time to settle – all the vouchers/documents you had prepared are back on your desk with yellow stickers popping out of almost every page, requesting you to put a full stop here and there, remove capital letters, explain why the overall boss signed before your boss’ review, . You are tired even before the day starts! Every day in the office is like navigating a battlefield, dodging bullets from your enemy while avoiding to step on landmines on the ground.
The emails pop up on your screen. It’s a dreadful moment for you. You fear opening the emails from your boss. You never know what has been said by them and copied to management. You quickly scan through all of them and notice that you will indeed have a very long week. Every process in the office must go through your boss. Name them – from recruiting office assistants to procurement of military equipment, from purchase of tissue paper to onboarding staff, from purchase of a pencil to review of grantees vouchers, from purchase requisitions to petty cash vouchers, from how the office is cleaned to the length of the curtains. In between, the established SOPs are being questioned, the process is added bureaucratic layers of review, such that to start and end any process is treated like rocket science – unnecessary delays all over the place.
By the time the clock ticks 5:00pm, you are ready for a beer! Repeat.
My way or no way
The greatest discovery you can ever make and accept is that no one under the sun has the monopoly of knowledge. You cannot purport to know everything.
You find that there is no room for professional discussions in the office. Good ideas never surface because they will never be supported. How now? Anything to be done has to come from the boss, whether it is positive or not. And you have to support it whether you like it or not (or as they say: upende usipende). The tragedy with this is that your foot soldiers keep off from talking or contributing to the decisions in the company – you are left all alone to shoulder the blame in case something goes wrong. Eventually the axe falls on you as the boss and sole owner of the mistakes. And that is what the highly professional staff like: let the incompetent boss die alone and never drag the rest to their grave/dismissal.
At one point, there will be the issue of influencing the hiring of staff in order to bring in their friends. And they will succeed. And that will be the moment all the respect remaining will be shed off.
The Illusion of Indispensability
Nothing happens in the office without the support of management; especially the misbehaviors of the supervisors and their incompetence. Survival means that either there is bootlicking or there are relations ongoing behind the scenes.
Tragedy comes when the big boss leaves or retires and a new one comes in who is not easily fooled. Eventually the person is badly exposed and later is let go – unceremoniously.
None is indispensable. Respect everyone and treat them well.
Ps. This is a snippet of what some people have gone through, and what others are going through (or worse). The author empathizes with you, and encourages you to keep hope alive. The tide will eventually turn.
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