Recently, I have been blogging about jobs, its beauty, its
wackiness and its satisfaction. Like anyone who is fund of reading my blog posts, you would always find me telling a story or two out of everything that happens in that place called OFFICE. My last post (on jobs) was about busters and lickers. I pray you read it, and you have been following up too. This revolution of mine started on Monday, 13
th June, 2011, when I woke up and felt like staying at home. Maybe I was still feeling the June 12 rebellious fever. I felt like foraging my library, looking for a blank sheet, and I felt like penning down words, as little as I imagined them.
Hello Boss,
Good morning. I don’t have the strength to write more than a line, but I’ll try my best. I wish to inform you that I am resigning from this day. Thanks, and I won’t lie, I never loved it working with your firm.
Regards,
D’Ink
But thank Jesus I never did such a silly thing. Hunger for kill me well well. I was only lazy that morning, like everyone else.
Today, I wish to bring to your notice what happens in most firms (both publicly and secretly). It is called Cartel. Who ever found this word and sent it to the dictionary was certain he had produced a word that would finally destroy the whole world. Hhhmmm...Cartel! It simply means an interest group, lobby, alliance, association, union and league. It means everything that brotherhood depicts. It is by its authority that world leaders are made, and they embezzle all our federal revenues. Obama only needed a cartel to create the characters and myth guiding the death of Osama. I believe Obama oh, before you derail me from my track. And what was George Bush doing looking for a nuclear weapon? No one told him, anyway, that there must be a cartel before a weapon is built. Destroy the cartel, and you’ll mute the sound of bullets.
I want to talk about cartels in offices. And it exists, from top to bottom.
I am yet to meet this guy I’m about to tell you his story. I only saw him in my imaginations, and i named him Franklin. Franklin gets a new job. It has been more than four years, after his graduation, after NYSC, and after losing hope. He has just been employed in one of those new generation banks, and is booked to resume almost immediately. His mother, Abigail, loves fashion. She smirks at Franklin’s fashion behaviour and colour confusion. He ignores the different shades of colour and wears just anything, maybe because he doesn’t have many colours to wear. Abigail, a middle aged woman, goes shopping for her son. She plans to buy him a banker’s grey Italian one-piece suit, leather shoes and some English ties. Shirts are not excluded in her list.
“I need just the best for him,” she tells the lady at the boutique. “He must make a grand entrance.” Franklin smiles shyly at how his mother demonstrates every word she utters.
It is the first morning of Franklin’s first day in the office. Abigail forces him to walk before her, gracefully rehearsing every bit of the swaggering step she tutored him. Franklin catwalks before Abigail, many times, before he finally gets her approval. He knows it’s what boys that are only children face under their mothers. Then, Abigail serves him a three course breakfast before he kisses her on her cheeks and leaves for work in a hired taxi.
At work, everything is different, Franklin thinks. He observes every single person that walks pass him. He knows those who work with the bank. He has seen them many times, with their well made and designed jackets, and glossy shoes. Well seated behind the teller counter, he takes a brief glance at his well polished leather shoes. Franklin is not sure of what to be happy of, his new job or his new shoes. It takes the whole of his first day, counting a few notes and wiping off dust from the face of his shoes.
“You must be a big dude,” the branch manager tells him. They’re in the convenience together. Franklin, to be frank, thinks he has been trailed. “Why do you prefer the teller?”
“Not that I do Sire,” he responds in the same tone Abigail had thought him, exposing his newly bought baritone. “It’s always good for a young man of my status, not considering his family financial status and buoyancy, to start from the scratch. I decided to join the teller because I really need to learn a lot.”
“Oh yes, you really need to.”
Work is over, the first day, and Franklin is offered a ride home. He declines, saying someone was coming over the drive him home. The branch manager is disappointed, but lingers in his steps.
“Oh no, don’t worry Sire,” Franklin says to him. “He’ll be here in a jiffy.”
In a jiffy, before the branch manager, Franklin spots a grey Audi 800 parked at the lot. It’s his private cab, he is sure his manager hears him.
“Nine o’clock, I’ll call you,” the branch manager says. “There’s a party up-town. I’ll want you to meet the people that matter.”
“Okay!” Franklin shouts before rushing to catch the cab. The skyscrapers of Victoria Island that nearly touch the clouds outline the streets, like streetlights, as they drive home.
(to be continued...)
