Becky sat down dejected, she couldn’t finish the task at hand, she couldn’t continue either, they all had to work on it together and all three of her colleagues had given excuses or reasons why they cannot be in the office that Thursday morning. Time was running out, so was Becky’s patience…. and sanity.
Mr Panse was feared by all and sundry at the office because of his no-nonsense attitude to work. Always keeping a straight face and hardly ever laughing, his mantra is “customer’s satisfaction is our priority” and he would nudge his subordinates until a job is done and is done well. Hardly did any of his employees ever tell him that there is a Chinese maxim that says “a person without a smile should never open a shop”. Who would even want to?! Nobody is willing to hear that Mr Panse’s sinister laughter, no staffs of his has ever heard it and survived its repercussions. He was a demigod in the office: respected for his doggedness and attitude to work —he always delivered. He was feared for his strictness and authoritarianism. To him, work time is work time, no space to dally on anything concerning office work.
It all came as a surprise when Mr Panse gave permission to the staffs that they can pursue some of their personal issues using the office time that week. He only made room for this to enable those who haven’t collected the Permanent Voter’s Card (PVC) and those who hadn’t had the chance to change their old currency notes to do so. All things were put in place to still achieve efficiency in the workplace while all these was going on. Seeing that the current time-bound project was important to the office and to his client just as their National duties and citizenship obligations was important to his staffs, Mr Panse gave the work to some of the most competent hands in the office and Becky was to oversee its progress and report back to him.
The week was running to an end and hardly is there anything to show for the work. Becky was perturbed, none of her colleagues could wriggle out of their current engagements to attend to the task at hand. Dotun was at one of INEC’s centres to collect his PVC, the queue there was too long and that was his only chance seeing that the beginning of the next week was the deadline. Nothing was going to stop him from exercising his franchise this year, he had been too politically apathetic the previous years, he would participate actively in this election. Musa was in the bank on a long queue struggling to get the new Naira notes. He had been depositing the old ones in the banks but whenever he goes to the ATM to withdraw, he would still withdraw the old cash he had deposited in the bank. He was tired of this vicious cycle and needed to get rid of all old cash from his hand before the deadline. He also needed new cash to carry out transactions as the same people who were refusing to collect the old cash were not willing to collect transfers neither do they have POS machines. Chiemerie has been at the fuel station all day waiting for his turn to reach so that he could buy some fuel for the car. The long queue at the filling station didn’t seem to be moving and Chiemerie’s car was in a position where he couldn’t reverse and go anywhere else. So he’s just sitting tight till he gets the fuel.
On Friday morning, Becky had the complete work submitted at Mr Panse’s desk. He was a bit surprised because he too has been monitoring the situation on ground. So he asked her “how were you able to achieve this in spite of the crisis?” She replied “the Chinese word for crisis has two characters, one meant trouble or danger and the other, change point or opportunity. Indeed it was a crisis and I would be so damned if I only concentrated on the troubled part, so I looked at the other side of it which was a change point, an opportunity and I explored it to the fullest. Apart from the big three, you have many other competent staffs in this office, you’ve trained them yourself and they are good enough”. For the first time in the office’s recorded history, Mr Panse laughed. He laughed not out of derision, it was a laughter of satisfaction for a job well done.
Becky saw another side of him he hadn’t shown since she started working with him. He may have been all strict with his employees, but he had established his business on some ancient oriental principles. He understood what a smile meant in a business, only his clients has seen that, now his staffs would too.
Friday afternoon, Dotun is yet to collect his PVC. Musa is yet to get hold of the new currency, only Chiemerie has gotten the fuel but he’s been held by traffic officials for using his phone while driving.
Cover Image:
Lagos, Nigeria. Photo: Flickr | Departure Lounge
Joshua Imoikor is a geographer, environmental enthusiast, writer, satirist and a social scientist. He is concerned with human activities and their impact on the environment. A lover of history, natural sciences and the arts. A graduate of Geography and Environmental Management from the University of Abuja, Nigeria. Contact: imoikorjoshua@gmail.com
Be First to Comment