On a Thursday, 12th Nov 2009 some suits sat in a boardroom in Cape Town. The next morning, I lost my job, me and a bunch of other bewildered writers who were writing for a magazine. The day was Friday the 13th. I swear I’m not making this up; the first time I ever lost my job was Friday the 13th. It’s morbid and dark, and so cool. I’m sure you are secretly envious.
Let me illustrate the laughable fickleness of employment.
The previous day (a day before the cats down in Cape Town met) I had requested for cash from accounts office for a travel story I was going to do down in Elementaita. The requisition had been approved by my editor and the publisher. I was to go down, soak in the scenery and bang an 800 word piece about a lodge called Pinklakeman Eco Lodge (a truly enchanting place) owned by one Macharia, a good pal of mine. Decent guy, decent lodge. Think being paid to take a holiday. I had spoken to Macharia two days earlier and he had reserved a cottage for me. It was on.
So Friday I check into the office shortly after 9am (yes, 9am…and you wonder why the company went down!) and I hear there is a meeting in the boardroom at 10am. So the staffs of two magazines (ADAM and TWENDE) check into the boardroom at 10am and there a visibly apologetic and rose cheeked GM breaks the dreadful news; they were pulling the plug. Just like that. Financial recession, he explained. I had left my house employed but I was going to go back in the evening without a job. I had a little two year old girl who I was hoping would ride in one of them cool yellow school buses, at that moment it felt like she was going to have to walk to school for three kilometers like our parents lied to us they did during their time. Life looked uncertain and somewhat grim. The bottom was falling off. Only consolation was the fact that we were writers, not accountants, which means we are corporate whores and we always have something going. Only a stupid writer sleeps hungry…stupid or very lazy.
Why am I writing this now? Is it cathartic in any way? It’s not. I’m writing this now because on Saturday I bumped into an old friend of mine who was scared she was going to lose her job. No, terrified is the word. She asked me how I handled the shock of being stripped of employment (brutally) and I told her; “By drinking my ass out,” She laughed because she thought I was joking, and that’s the problem with people in formal employment, they always think life is a long running joke!
I think it’s better to lose your job on any day but Friday because unless you live in an old people’s home, most likely you will have a plan for Friday…even if it’s going to stand outside Ambassador Hotel and talk politics with those old folks who have refused to go back shags and farm…or die. And so losing your job on a Friday is a cruel twisted joke. I remember calling Macharia to cancel my trip, no need for him to lose money because a writer lost his job.
“Why can’t you make it?” he asked dejectedly.
“Well, how do I put this mate… I lost my job.”
“Oh shucks man, what happened?”
“Well, let’s see, I impregnated the boss’s daughter.”
Deathly silence.
Him: “Well, do you think it will be a boy or girl?”
Ok I’m kidding, that didn’t happen. But the thing is over the next week I got a lot of calls from guys asking what happened, and I would tell them the same thing, “The suits thought the magazine was not viable in the long term, something about recession.” But at some point I got tired of explaining to people, so I tried to have fun with it by giving different ridiculous reasons: “Remember Ethnic Curves, the page where we photographed women in their knickers? Well, the big bosses found out that the editor was using it to run an escort service business.” Or, “It’s because we are black.” I learnt one thing though; people believe most things you tell them.
Back to that alcohol thing though; that evening we got pissed. We all went to the bar and got wasted. I drunk whisky until 3am. I don’t normally partake whisky, but hell I don’t do joblessness very well either, so whisky it was. I had these business cards which I always carried in a fancy silver card holder. I wasn’t going to use them again. My card was written, Jackson Biko, senior features writer. What a mockery, I thought bitterly! So I took a pen and crossed the “features” on the card and replaced it with “jobless” and showed it to some stranger seated on the next table. I found that hilarious. She didn’t. I was running mad you see. Losing my marbles.
But the company was gracious, it organized a session with a psychologist of sort to certify that we weren’t going to jump off a building, or hold the GM hostage. The lady who conducted these sessions was a kindly middle aged lady, with a load of text book croak. And I say this respect. I honestly didn’t see the need, but I don’t like abusing people’s hospitality, so I attended my sessions. It went something like this:
“So Jackson, can I call you Jackson?”
No ma’am, please call me Biko.
“Oh, no problem, what does Biko mean anyway?”
It means he with a black toe.
Really?
No.
Right, I sense a lot of anger in you right now given the recent circumstances.
Why, because I made a cheap joke about black toes?
Yes, it’s a manifestation of sort, are you having sleepless nights Biko?
I sleep like Kibaki. Nothing bothers me enough to lose sleep over.
What does your missus think of your situation, have you guys talked about it?
Well, yes, she thinks it’s a good thing.
Oh yeah, that’s positive thinking, how so if I may ask?
She says finally all my friends will desert me. She hates my friends.
Anyway, back to my friend who was scared she would lose her job. She represented a broad section of people who are in jobs they feel are unstable. The only thing worse than being insecure about your job must be having a boss who wears the same pants every day. But the truth is, one day you shall lose your job. You sit there smug, thinking, “It’s been many months, why is Biko whining about this?” but your day shall come, and when it does you will thank me.
The capitalist is always looking for ways to make you his slave. Like a drug dealer, he gets you hooked on that monthly paycheck which then controls you. He tells you what time to clock in, what time to clock out, he tells you that you need to end your email correspondences with “best regards” and what time you go for your lunch, even if you are hungry at 11am. When you are self employed there is no set time for lunch because there is no lunch to begin with.
The trick largely, then, is not to get attached to anything in the office. Treat the office with unrelenting contempt. Don’t let its comfort fool you for one minute. Which means, don’t put up pictures in your working area. No pictures of dogs, or your daughter, or your boyfriend, or your niece, or your shrink. Don’t even put a screensaver of a white sandy beach on your computer. Don’t have a potted plant on your desk. I remember I got a dart board as a gift from some guy I interviewed and who loved the story and we nailed this board in the editors office, and when we were doing nothing (which was often) we would monkey around by throwing darts at this board. In hindsight I shouldn’t have done this; I should have thrown the darts at the GM instead.
My point is the working space is not your house, you don’t pay rent there so don’t turn it into a home because it’s a sweatshop. So bring down those pictures. I once had a little artifact I bought in a Johannesburg airport, a nice colorful juju-like thingamajig. Girls in the office loved it. I believe they called it “different”. So I had it on my desk, together with a model plane courtesy of Qatar Airline and a picture of my daughter which also was loved by the office girls and a few office guys who hadn’t proved to be capable of putting a woman in the family way. These are the same loud wags who would pass by my desk and say “As as that kid grows older, I’m more convinced that she isn’t yours!” Haha, not!
Anyway these memorabilia defined the landscape of my desk and I can tell you that it is a symptom of complacency. Of lack of ambition. People who are ambitious know that they are on the move, so they don’t try and turn their desk into a museum and so all they have on their desk is a stapler and a chipped coffee mug. When times comes for you to clear your desk, the guy with a stapler will just shut down and leave, while you Mr. I-have-many-photos-on-my-desk will have to lug out a large box full of stuff that didn’t add value to your life at work. And there is no sorrier and pathetic sight than you carrying your kid’s framed picture out the door.
Another thing, try not to get too friendly with your officemates because nobody cares about you. People just care about the man in the mirror. I can count on my hand the number of people I still communicate with from my former workplace. And these were decent people, only life happened and they crawled back into the wood work. Jobs bring us together, and when jobs end, we become strangers. The workplace is not a place to get a wife, husband or make lifelong friendships. Try the bar. So don’t express undue affection at work. Don’t hug people in the office because apart from being overly showy, you might just catch something. Shake hands – then wash them after because you can’t start imagining what people touch when they are lost in thought. The thing with making friends in the office is that when you are fired they will feel sorry for you (some will say you deserved it because you were an ass anyway) then they will forget you. If you are replaced – and yes, you are replaceable- they will make friends with the new guy and you will just be some sappy guy who had a model plane on his desk. So don’t make friends, don’t tell them anything about you, be an enigma because that way when you leave they will have little ammunition to use against you. The closest you can interact with office mates is perhaps passing them the salt at lunch hour, and that’s about it. Office friends will really break your heart because when time comes for you to leave and you have to say your goodbyes, they will avoid looking at you in the eye and instead say dishonest things like, “don’t worry, I’m sure something will come up.”
Indeed something will come up, it’s called rent!