So it’s you again! I should have known it. You know what really surprises me! You’re perhaps the only one who writes me such disrespectful letters. The words you use are not words staff members write to their bosses. No! And I have been doing a lot of thinking since your last letter. I’ve been asking questions as the level of your disrespect towards me warrant deeper look. That’s what I’ve been doing; digging deeper to get to the source of the whole campaign against me and my reputation. And I didn’t need the services of judge and jury to come to the conclusion that you’re playing the messenger boy role. No, no! ‘Messenger’ is too feeble a term to describe the likes of you. You’re playing the mercenary role. Yes, that is what you are. Your last attempt just blew in the wind and they have sent you again giving you the same old mission of destroying the columns on which me and my reputation rest. I asked myself questions which maybe I should have started asking earlier; because if I had risen to what was going on around me earlier you would have been out in the streets with no employer willing to take you in. Believe me it’d have been the easiest thing for me to do running you not only into an unemployed brute but also an unemployable loser. If you think your puppet masters would have come to your rescue in the event of such a scenario then you have a very twisted picture of yourself. You’re no body! Didn’t anyone tell you about the fable where the frog which tried to get as big as the elephant simply burst into a hundred pieces!
I asked myself “Who are the people or groups behind this guy?” “Who is giving him the orders?” Because it is about orders isn’t it? You were never the real complainant or applicant. You’re nothing but the mule willing to be loaded with whatever as long as they keep throwing the crumbs your way. You are just of their many tools with which they think they can bring me down for good. You think I don’t know they probably have promised you one thing or another? Maybe some job where you’ll be paid twice you’re getting now! You’d even do anything for that opportunity, wouldn’t you? Well I’m sorry to tell you the sad news that doesn’t always work.
What kind of person do you think I am to just sit idle while you people trying to deepen the hole you’re digging for me? You wouldn’t want me to brush the dust off and climb up again, would you? That would be a whole lot of a different story the Hollywood bigwigs would have paid a cool million or to lay their hands on. I even suspect they have decided who they want to take my place. Did I say ‘suspect?’ No, it isn’t only about suspicion. It has been decided and the talk about the one who has been promised my position is making the rounds. In fact his friends are already bragging about it every time they have a drink too much. He’s so sure he will get my place that they tell me he has started drinking whiskey!
Coming back to you, I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry reading about what you said how your wife looked without makeup! You said it yourself and I’m not making this up! You must be a very terrible husband and I really feel sorry for the woman! How can you throw your wife out to the wolves just to make me look bad! Shouldn’t you have been her protector! Also the thing you wrote about your family of six is suffering. Well, if there is any blame here it on you. You should have tried to limit your family within your means. And you try to accuse me for having such a large family when you know there’s no way you can give them the lives they deserve. Maybe you should have slowed down on this stuff of making children, as they say. So believe me I don’t even blink that you are having fewer pieces of bread on your table because it has nothing to do with me.
Then there is this thing about other employees getting raises and promotions you were passed over a couple of years. What can I say! That’s one thing you have been itching to get out into the open, isn’t it? Now that you’ve done so do you think it would make any difference? You don’t choose the best and the worst of employees, I do. If that hasn’t entered your brain until now I don’t think it would ever find its way in because your brain is filled with too much of the wrong stuff. Maybe an extended time away from all work would give you time to feed your brain some of the facts it should have already been fed; just as a sort of simple refresher, take care of the stones on which you step because you don’t know which one would give way and send you all the way to the bottom of the pit.
You also wrote about rules. I laughed and laughed out loud. Who do you think you are and what the hell do you about rules and books to tell me what I should and shouldn’t have done? Let me tell you about rules; As long as I’m in the position I hold I am the rules! Does that ring loud enough? However bitter the taste, swallow it!
So what should we do about the letter? (Or is it a sort of ultimatum!) Look, I’m not any guy. I wouldn’t rush into your office and kick you out the nearest window to the nearest tej bet because that is going to be your usual hangout when I throw the employment termination letter in your face. Are you shocked? You know your biggest problem is that you tried to punch above your weight; and see what happens!
So as you’ll be kicked out unceremoniously a little bit of advice from me wouldn’t hurt; “Don’t ever try to punch above your weight!”
Hmmm…
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD SUNDAY EDITION 22 OCTOBER 2023