A few months before the pandemic restrictions were announced this fellow joins a new enterprise after a decade and some in one place. The new job comes with quite a significant pay hike. Being an accountant of sorts his job was about the numbers and he tries to keep his distance from other activities like…politics! He got where he was after many tortuous years and he was trying to make up for it all through decent, trouble-free life. While the pay at the new place was mildly mouthwatering the reception he got from much of the staff had nothing mouthwatering about it. The way he retold his initial experience you wouldn’t know if you should feel happy or sorry for him. With every Birr coming the hard way these days your guts tell you should be happy for him for the four-digit check he’ll be getting. On the other hand with him feeling that no one at the new place seems to like him, you know fat checks only don’t make that Cinderella story.
“It is as if I was their enemy!” That was he put it.
Of course, it only took him a few days to find out that all the hostility had its roots in his identity. He wasn’t ‘one of them!’ Not being ‘one of them’ these days is a sin in only that ‘Forbidden Apple’ story would match. He said that the place looked like some fraternity of blood relatives. He is already knocking other doors. This time the main issue is not about bagging a still bigger pay, but about preventing his mental health. “They’d send you to a mental institution!”
Look, you join any agency to use your skills to the best of your ability in accordance with your employment contract sing your way to the bank every month. No strings attached; that’s our motto; much easier said than done. The conventional wisdom is that in many places professions are being pushed to second place, with identity politics taking the top spot. Listening to those who were unlucky enough to face such experiences you’d be pardoned to be worried about tomorrow. When your employers give precedence to your birthplace over your professional skills, you know the smiles are all about hiding the razor-sharp claws armed and ready for emergencies.
Well you’re not going to have that. The problem is even if you try to deal the neutral card the mud balls would soon start flying. You are target-practice material. That’s not how the game is played. You might be an accountant the World Bank brass could be envious about and not a single eyebrow would blink! You’re with us or else…! The playbook has been rewritten.
Your refusal to play by their rules might make an engaging chapter for your bio book. But when it comes to earning your daily bread things are not that easy.
Confident of your skills and professional ethics you refuse to take things lying down; when you come across something off the tracks you challenge whoever is concerned; “Look, I don’t know how you came up with these numbers; but I don’t know where a hundred and twenty five thousand Birr went! Can you explain that to me?”
You see the response in the guy’s eyes. What he wants to do right then is pump the oxygen out of your lungs. He glares at you;
“Are you accusing me?”
That’s a very tough challenge for a new guy on the block! The guy didn’t glare at you for nothing. He was ‘one of them!’
“I’m not accusing you. I’m saying there must be some mistake in the process of balancing the books.”
The guy then turns into some sort of ‘clear and present danger. “Are you saying that I am not qualified for the position? Are you accusing me of being unfit? Are you…” kind of ‘Guns of Navaron’ pounding you like hell! Your every word, your every gesture would be prosecution material. Your only sin, if there is any, is that you’re the new guy in the office and you don’t happen to be ‘one of them!’ They make it personal; while things should have been about principles, they become about identity. No one is going to tell you that in your face. Never! The silent weapons come in the form corridor gossip, and ‘coffee break’ character assassination.
So whenever one finds oneself in ‘the new guy in the office’ position one has to pay attention not only to what is being said, but also to what is being left unsaid; because that is where the coded messages are! So you decide to keep the middle ground.
The Ethiopian Herald June 26, 2020
