If you are not a particularly valuable employee either because you lack valuable skills or a work ethic or both, the only way to ensure job security is sycophancy.
Of course there is always the danger that you might end up ingesting too much shoe polish with all that bootlicking; but the last time I checked cans of shoe polish don’t carry health warnings yet so there’s no harm!
After I discovered that the landlord’s daughter was trying to prevent me from serving two masters or five if you add alcohol, cigarettes and miraa, at a go, I concluded I had to do everything possible to be in the landlord’s good books, if I was to keep my caretaker job while still moonlighting at the day care centre.
Part of that involved calling him ‘sir’ and even offering to clean his pickup. I also renamed him in my address book since I had previously put him in the category of canines! So as long as my job was on the line, there was nothing he could do that could inconvenience me, including knocking on my door too early on Father’s Day morning.
“Jack am in (sic) chit!” he began once I let him in. I had never heard the landlord utter those words but I heaved a sigh of relief anyway since this meant he was not here to fire me. Then he proceeded to show me a text message he had received. It read: “HAPI FATHA’S DEI!”
I asked him whether his problem with the message was the spelling. He almost slapped me as he explained that it was from a stranger and it could mean that his past was catching up with him. He had tried calling the number but it was switched off.
“If you could find who it is for me...” he pleaded. “I will even pay you!”
And as he walked out he added: “And keep this between us...” This was easy money. He was panicking for nothing. Clearly it was an SMS sent to his number by mistake. I found it impossible to believe the landlord had a wild childhood. Besides what kind of a bastard crawls out of the woodwork before the supposed father has been pronounced dead?
The local custom is to go public during the funeral-arrangements phase and promise the public high drama! Unless of course the bastard was not Kenyan. Hours later I called the landlord and assured him I had done a thorough investigation and I had actually been to the offices of the network provider and had been assured that the source of the message was Kamiti Maximum Prison. From the other end I could tell he was elated.
It therefore came as a shock to me to hear the landlord knocking angrily again later that evening. “Am still in chit!” he said as he looked over his shoulder to ensure no one had seen him. Then he took out his phone and showed me another message. It read: “HAPI FATHA’S DEI AGEN! SORI MY BATARI DAID. WIL COL U 2MORO. LOVE YOU DAD!”
“I paid you!” the landlord screamed. “You either solve this or you give me my money back you piece of *&!%^!” At that moment I wanted to suggest vasectomy as the solution but then... just because my life is useless doesn’t mean I don’t value it!