Image is mine
About last year, I had a new colleague transferred to join me. Our relationship started as casual, and then we grew to become friends. He would often tell me about his work experience with his previous employers.
I had often opined that in my country when it comes to oppression especially in the work place, it is usually from our own people and not the foreigners or expatriates as popularly speculated.
You see, this my colleague had worked with one of the leading Asian companies in my country, and I sure did look up to him as a big shot.
In my country, the common knowledge of working with foreign companies is that it’s often disguised enslavement, but then I begged to differ, and my colleague confirmed my stand when he explained how the Nigerian directors and supervisors in his previous employment often short-paid them and shared the excess amongst themselves.
So whenever I discuss oppression in the workplace with my mom, I often chip in my colleagues' experiences as evidence. Then one day, out of curiosity my mom questioned why my colleague would leave a multinational company with many opportunities for ours that is privately owned.
I had defended, stating that it was due to the enslavement culture of the company. But my mom wasn’t having it; she insisted that I do more research on my colleague’s claim, as there is something underneath what he’s telling me.
At this point I was agitated and didn’t like the fact that my mom would dismiss my colleague’s experience as not enough reason to resign. So what I did was to stop talking about my colleague and his work experience with my mom.
So back to my office gist, my colleague and I continued to have a well-grounded work relationship, and everything was going well until it no longer was.
The first to fall apart was when he was contracted to join another colleague at an ongoing project. The project was said to have not gone as planned, and the other colleague managing the project took the fall, which led to his mandatory resignation in place of an employment termination.
When the news of my colleague’s resignation broke, it was a hard chunk to swallow because he was the major frontline of the company, and there was no known fracas between him and the management. I was curious and needed to know exactly what was going on, so I had gone to my colleague that we work together, the one who was contracted to assist the colleague that took the fall.
Upon inquiry, my colleague said a lot of horrible things about our colleague, how he was such a mean person who treated the other workers with disdain, which led to them sabotaging the project.
As much as I wanted to believe such an explanation, it didn’t sound right because I never viewed that our colleague to be of such conduct. But then I just let the whole thing slide.
It wasn’t until after almost a year of working together that this my colleague started exhibiting his snakelike attributes towards me.
I noticed he was constantly trying to sabotage me as incompetent to management. I used to be the only one with access to the office. On days I would be running late I make sure to inform him so that if its needed, he could take the key and come open instead.
But then this colleague of mine would have meetings and not inform me about needing the office key. There was a day I needed to visit the bank, which was just by the way to work but I sure informed my colleague that I would be at the office on or before 9.
Quite unfortunately traffic made me run late as I got to the office by 9:45. I got into the office and checked my phone and then saw several missed call from HR. I called back and it was series of questions on why would I lock my colleague out knowing fully well he has an important meeting to attend by 10:00 am.
The whole situation that played out was quite shocking as even the MD was informed by colleague that I had caused him the meeting. You know what’s even more weird or should I say surprising? This colleague of mine did not come to the office that day until about past 1pm. I started to wonder the rational behind the report he made against me to HR and the MD.
Luckily I was able to defend myself and I wasn’t queried. Unknowingly to me, this my colleague has been known to not meet up with his work duties and in other to save his neck, he would often pin his excesses on any colleague he is being paired with.
In that moment when the intentions of my colleague blew up in the open, my mind immediately flashed back to my mom’s warnings.
Indeed I did not just misjudged my colleague’s character, I had mistaken confidence for competence and victimhood for integrity.
You see this experience taught me one thing measure, and that is the loudest stories are often times the most construed ones.