My three main topics of this blog if you haven’t already noticed are men, smother and my job. Actually I have to admit I’m going to miss smother when she goes. Although she at times drives me up the wall, I love her dearly. She’s off on Sunday, finally, and well I’ve finally got used to having her around, it’s a kind of bitter sweet feeling knowing I’m not going to have her following me around the house just freeing her mind of every thought she has in her head. Bless.

Today though I have to free my mind on the topic of my job. An incident happened recently which I didn’t really want to discuss, but since then I have become quite concerned about the depths of insanity amongst my peers and their blatant disregard for how much their poor judgement reflects poorly on the rest of us black African’s.

So I start with the most recent incident and work my way backwards. Last week there was a new directive that if we want to hire our executive cars or cabs we need to get it approved 24 hours before. At first I was a bit annoyed because, its a cab, its used for company business and I didn’t see why it had to be booked when everyday I see the guys just sitting around cracking jokes. We have a lady who has been gainfully employed as a travel coordinator and I thought maybe it was a way of increasing her portfolio as well I did not see her added value in the first place.

So after coming back from another world it seems, this came about thanks to the antics of an ex-employee. This guy was based in Ivory Coast. He had resigned a month earlier and was here in Accra to hand over to his colleagues. I don’t know why he didn’t have a return ticket or the facts of the case in detail but all I know is that he was denied a ticket on the basis that he has requested it too late. We were recently told that we had to book at least a month before if we need to travel, one assumes that he took a car to Accra as he should have had a return ticket if he flew in.

So my man is stuck in Accra, and his time with the company has expired. What did he do, he got one of the company cars to drive him to the boarder, I guess he was able to find his way home from there. His travel expense had also been signed off by one of the managers, and well due to the first incident to have happened (which I will talk about later), this blunder quickly came to light and we are now all on lock down.

Incident number 2 or number 1 whichever way you want to look at, happened last month. The man in charge of payroll decided to take it upon himself to take cash advances on behalf of the top management. $10,000 here, $20,000 there, he racked up nearly $100,000. Unfortunately it didn’t actually reach top management but instead was used to finance 2 houses and start up a small business. Now I am not so bothered about where he took the money from. If you don’t notice that such a large amount of money is missing from your account then you probably didn’t need it in the first place. I don’t even feel sorry for the people he took a huge chunk of the money from, it was shear coincidence that led to him getting caught, he picked from the right person at the wrong time. I am not even sure that I am bothered that he was already convicted of a similar offence abroad and spent jail time, as when the company found out they not only kept him on, in the same position, they promoted him too. What does get my goat is that I travelled on a plane in coach for 7 hours. I get up sometimes before daylight, sit in the most horrendous traffic, I have to listen to the patronizing sounds of people who have no other qualification except that they are a lighter shade of tan and the fact that they have worked abroad means more than my work experience abroad. I do that, not once using any other salary than the one I work 40 hours a week for, not once thinking of finding dubious means of funding my mortgage, food and alcohol intake.

This guy in seconds has set us all back, well to slavery times. Just because he couldn’t help himself from dipping his hand in the cookie jar. The funny thing in the second story is that the guy was a very simple guy, the last person you would suspect, but it is always the one that you least suspect that surprises you.

When my place got robbed, everyone was a suspect. From the workers to the security men, to the guy that sold the MTN credit at the top of my junction. That’s how it goes. Even though the big boss says that nothing changes, everyone is a suspect. Our expenses will be scrutinized, the way we work, if we work until late it will be a cause for concern but if we leave early it will also raise an eyebrow. These things happen everywhere but the reality is, when an obroni commits a crime the alarm bells don’t ring as loudly as when it is obibini, and when it is a black person, it is not just the individual that suffers, its the whole darn race.

We complain that we never get top managerial positions, even in our own country. Then this happens. Its a bit like the chicken and the egg. Is the result of our actions a self-fulfilling prophecy, do we do it because it is expected of us, or is it that we are not trust worthy in the first place. I really don’t have the answer to that one, I certainly wouldn’t be working for my salary if I did, but what I do know is that we are very making excuses to justify our wrong-doings. It seems to be the repetitive case of each man for himself and God for us all.

Africa oh Africa *sigh*, when will we learn.