Being Smart

Poor people are often unable to understand the difference between instant gratification and delayed gratification.

Poverty makes it difficult for someone to be smart or to make smart choices.

For example, I had a driver who was getting paid 200,000 naira a month by my organization.

He was covered by an HMO for himself and his family, and he worked only five days a week.

He was driving the MD of the company at the time, and they had a very good working relationship.

This MD started making moves to start her own company.

He was her driver, and he drove her everywhere.

He also overheard her conversations and was there when she got her own office space and started recruiting her own staff members.

He was loyal to the MD.

He never spilled the beans to anyone about the impending move of the MD to leave the company.

On the day the MD was going to resign, she called the HR manager and asked for the first time in five years how much her driver was being paid per month.

The HR told her the driver's pay was 200,000 naira monthly, without tax and other deductions.

The HR also told her the driver and his family were covered by the company's HMO.

The driver was also servicing a loan he took to complete his building project at the time.

The MD couldn't stomach the information, she said to the HR, "How do we make any profit when you pay a driver this much? What exactly does he do to warrant such a wasteful financial commitment?"

To be candid, other drivers were paid slightly less, but this guy was my personal driver when I employed him.

He was diligent in his job, and he had a very poor command of the English language.

This was to my advantage because I make a lot of sensitive calls, and I really didn't want my driver listening in on my calls and divulging information to anyone.

But one day, he left me stranded at the Sheraton Hotel, Ikeja.

I went into the hotel for a very quick meeting (he assumed I would be there for a while, and he took off with the car keys to handle personal business).

When I was done with my meeting, I got to the car park and saw only the car.

I called his phone number over fifty times.

It rang out

I had to order a ride to my next meeting that afternoon.

When I got back to the hotel after my meeting, he lied.

He said he never left the car.

I decided he was not to be trusted from that day, so I chose another driver the next day and asked the HR to deploy him to the MD.

This was why his salary was a little more than the salaries of our other drivers.

The MD knew she could not afford to pay him that much, but she wanted to keep him on as her driver.

She then told him she would be leaving my company soon and would like to take him with her.

That afternoon, as he closed from work, she gave him a cash gift of twenty thousand naira.

He had the option to stay on with the company that had taken care of him and his family for five years or go with the MD, who was just about to start out in business for herself and would most likely struggle financially.

To a smart person, the choice was obvious, but he chose to go with her.

The MD resigned.

He also resigned.

Funny enough, the very day they both resigned, he dropped her off at home in the evening and had an accident on a motorcycle on his way home.

His right leg got broken.

The MD gave her 5000 Naira when she went to visit him at the hospital and got herself another driver.

He and his wife began to call the HR persistently, and later the COO, and then eventually they began to call me relentlessly.

They needed funds to clear his hospital bill and meet other needs.

We were all, however, unavailable.

We must all learn to make smart choices.

I had to sack another staff member recently. He had benefitted so much from the company informally, based on the amount of leeway I gave to him as a person, because I knew he was struggling financially and needed all the help he could get.

I always looked the other way when people close to me gave him gifts and money because he operated more like my liaison officer with branches of our company outside of Nigeria, and also within the country.

The gifts he was getting, however, became more important to him than protecting the interests of the company.

When I noticed that he was hanging around with some characters who went about trying to destroy our interests as a company, I gave him a phone call and asked him if he knew what he was doing.

He said, "You are as important to me as the other person is, sir; I cannot choose a side."

So I sacked him.

It is my company, and I do not have the luxury of pampering disloyal staff members.

People would usually assume that because I am a Christian, I would not do certain things.

Christians have a weakness called compassion and mercy.

I wouldn't have mercy on a cobra that is aiming to strike my family members or me

The Christian thing to do is to kill it.

-GSW-