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Urban dictionary states that the slang for Chinese is 'Chink'. In
Sheng they are referred to as Machinku.
How about the fact that these Mao Zedong descendants are taking over the
Kenyan business ventures sphere in a manner never seen before using tactics
that are leaning towards Machiavellian tactics and like their fellow Asian
compatriots, Indians, it can be agonizing working for them. Someone once told
me that working for a Mhindi leaves you in a state where when you
are paid, your wages get exhausted on payday due to many liabilities (bills)
and you find yourself going back to the employer (stereotype, huh!). Ni
kama wanatumia kamote ya kihindi (Just kidding). Take note this
chaps never employ you as they never want obligations with the Kenyan
government.
Some Chinese are the real “mkono gamu” (this maybe
probably limited to the one I am working for). From the way they live to the
general hygiene levels, the concept of capitalism is slowly being entrenched
within their tendency. They are frugal to the core with their wealth in such a
manner that they scare away those who have a prodigal propensity. You are left
to wonder why you are still holding on because all the available signs indicate
an ominous terminal.
Anyone who is jobless usually wants a situation where he can get a
reprieve of working even if it means that it will be a transitory phase as you
steady yourself before looking for better prospects that will be much satiating
and aptly indulging.
You are in a sedentary job, alright. Working for a firm that makes
the maximum use of all the appendable vit and skills you have acquired at
minimal costs; maximize revenue, minimize costs is their maxim. The job is very
involving and mind enervating. You joined the role as a social media strategist
but now have to take up a majority of all the graphic design as they sacked the
skilled graphic designer just like that (callous). You are on this sojourn
pending a real job in the financial world, maybe working for a stocks company
or in a company engaging in hedge funds (need for applying school knowledge
here) or perhaps an investment bank or a stock brokerage company. That is to
say, you are in a frictional kind of unemployment only that your hustling has
not shown any symbiotic relationship to the place you want to be in life.
Ideally, you are allergic to working in squalid conditions, but
the quest for the minimal cash being offered in order not to appear as if you
are idle makes you stick for a while. Just to get six months experience before
you roll down your sleeves and call it a day because you are on wage
employment. The condition of the office in which you work in is filthy. The
ambiance is stuffy and the general outlook deplorable. You are only being a stickler
because you have no other option of making some easy cash.
There is no lie that these Chinku we work for are hell stingy.
They operate on the intuition that Africans have no moral authority to deserve
better. Even after realizing massive profits, they still give you peanuts
because they are recovering back the profits after deducting all the implicit
cost that they are very vague about. You have never seen the financial
statements of the company and that is the reason why you will soon be resigning
from this job even if it means you have no other way of survival.
That a casual employee who had taken up the role of a cleaner was
sacked unceremoniously in a callous manner because the pay she was requesting
for was way above the much they could give was not only heart wrenching but
owing to the fact that you were willing to top up for the little pay that she
was being given and your so called boss refused, you never saw the logic that
it will be some time before you get the pay commensurate to the work you do.
Now you operate in an unclean environment. It’s probably one of
those places that you’re looking around your space and wondering what the heck
you’re doing here with your time. One that is prone to airborne maladies. The
only respite is that you are a paperless office and your files are not
scattered all over, with the trashcan almost being full, or your lunch wrappers
stacked up on the corner of your desk (there is this guy who sells us bhajia at
KSh. 20 that is worth KSh. 250- they look like remnants- its a cost cutting
measure yawa). You feel like a wreck in that situation, don’t you?
You cannot imagine of letting your friends know about this place even though
you have this very expensive computer that is touchsmart and a not so bad
office table but being photo-phobic, you have never taken a snap of yourself
working behind the machine. They posting pictures of their nicely furnished
offices in clean environs is a complete contrast of your current predicament
which won’t last long.
Again, the office has no incentive to provide employees with tea and snacks. That is never in the budget. If that is not provided, even the daily newspapers are like a far-fetched dream only seen on the streets. Engaging in pep talk while in the office is also a banned and a de facto caveat is in place regarding the same.
The worst times are those when the director who we are forced to
call boss slowly starts an argument over the
phone with his wife. It usually starts like a rolling stone, slowly, then his
voice starts rising above the sacred silence that is the office. When you steal
a glance over at his face in his office, there is usually something smoldering
underneath his stony expression. His face usually turns yellow and it gets
shiny, a sign he is sweating. Those are the times he speaks continuously for
more than five minutes in a harsh tone. His rage seems pointless to you,
although you never say so, until it turns into the destruction of valuables.
You wonder how she condones the shouting at the other end of the line.
There was this day he got really mad boiling with anger. The
arguing came right through the walls as loud as any TV show and since the
office is partitioned with glass you virtually thought they would break or
succumb and though he is a small man his voice is unmatched. It attracted guys
from two floors above and below coming to find out who was on the receiving
end. Ideally there are two massage parlours above and below respectively.
With tempers rising, you would think guys were going to come out nude to find
out what was happening. But they could not. The sentries were scared. They
could not surmount enough courage to approach him, though he is a diminutive
man. They feared he could turn on them the way Jet Li or Jacky Chan does and
beat the hell out of them into smithereens. There is also a showroom and that
is the time when shoppers began running out helter skelter thinking they were
next in line. He literally took his laptop and threw it away as he overturned
his table which landed on the laptop when they could not agree.
There was this lady who kept saying that in the event Chatur heard
about this drama, it was an exit for us in the building. He became relieved
once he had also thrown the phone which equally crashed.
You are used to this, if you are a lady though, you will find the easiest route outside. Reason why you are ascribing about it. Luckily, after the small fight, he returns to being sane quickly and even smiles. The best thing is that he has never channeled his anger towards you. The frustrations are usually real.
Then there was this misplaced theory that the reason why he was overturning things and almost running amok was due to the fact that his better-half had called him a "monkey". Why? Is it because monkeys are the beasts that can be savage when provoked? When my guy Poloji intimated to this, we laughed like it was a Profesa Amo hilarious anecdote delivered to break the monotony of working in hushed tones while in the office.
On the flip side, working for the chinks is self-effacing and
though they exploit you to that point you feel you are being used, you take
courage that everything has a reason. These guys are also humane. The only
folly is that like all start-ups, which majority fail, they have high human
resource turnover. Their compensation incentive is quite skewed and subpar.
They make you feel like they don’t need your services while in actual sense,
you are in an oxpecker zebra relationship. Since they push you to the limit and
come up with unending new frontiers of duties, you have given them much in
terms of what you can avail. At least when you leave whether or not you will
have found a better offer, you will rest assured that the much you did was well
worth it. Sometimes pay may not be the only reason why you work hard and smart
even though you are a rookie with no paper qualification in what you do but the
passion outweighs everything else.
When it is said and done, you need to move on. My six months of
having worked hard is coming to a climax soon and I will be looking for new
pastures. Man is to hunting until a woman comes in so that you can adopt a
sedentary lifestyle even if you are paid what someone somewhere makes in an
hour.
PS: Juggling work, classes (which I rarely attend due to work issues), writing and reading is tricky enough without a properly adhered to rota. There is always a trade off in the indifference curves skewed to one dominant force. But compromises have to be made. Everything has its time. Reason why I will be writing very short posts now.
HASTA LA VISTA BABY
[Picture Source: My Own]
