In the African context, there’s often a little mystical cherry on top… How about your best enemy who’s decided to put an end to your race by casting a spell on you? Yes, the one who has looked into your marital status, the names of your parents and grandparents, who you’ve been with, your favorite color and blood type, who has conducted an in-depth investigation into your dog, your cat and your culinary tastes. He’s also consulted the who-is-who-toxique to unearth the ultimate fetishist who’ll set you straight. Of course, neighbors and customers call him Grand Marabout, but a marabout helps you grow in spirituality and piety, doesn’t he? On the other hand, anyone who works overtime to get rid of the guys who get in your way (for no other reason than that they get in your way), we’d call a sorcerer… And there’s not a bush where your toxic colleague doesn’t go looking for the charlatan who’s going to crush your nerdy face. And he’ll pay the price – all his salary, alas – but he’ll throw shells, bombs and missiles at you, just like in ’40. Because you’re worth it…
To be or not to be, toxic?
So why not secrete our own toxic weapons 20 years late, to defend ourselves in business? Why not buy a machine gun and simply seek out a marabout, even late in life? Because GOODNESS is so BEAUTIFUL that once you’ve met it, it becomes an inseparable friend and an indispensable viaticum. You never want to let it out of your sight. You can’t go to the other side. You can’t allow yourself to become toxic! And I once said to one of my CEOs (a to-xi-que toxic person), I said to him when I resigned “I am leaving this company to Save my Soul”! (I am leaving this company to save my soul!)
And specifically in the second example with the burglars, we need to understand that toxic colleagues can (1) take over our work and ideas (steal our possessions) or (2) damage our relationships with others, damage our reputation (steal electronic devices) but (3) they can NOT take away our personal qualities (that’s heavy furniture!). When we’re pushed out, we leave with our intrinsic qualities to bounce back and start something new somewhere else! We often leave behind some of our good buddies, whose acute socio-professional constraints legitimately prevent them from leaving. Chilled, turned off, disillusioned, placarded or necrotized by the low maneuvers and high-handed schemes they’ve been subjected to, the company drags around like a ball and chain people who have all the potential to be its lifeblood.
So, almost every two years, I leave the chair of an obtuse and somewhat innocent hard-worker to make way for a vampire with a state-of-the-art machine gun. And who comes to reap what he didn’t sow.
And when it comes to finding the next job, I’m inevitably faced with an interview with a multi-vitamin HR manager with a string of fancy degrees, who knows my life better than I do, having looked at my CV for five minutes at breakfast, between two slices of toast. And who decides, peremptorily and confident in his own brilliant conclusions, that “this gentleman is too INSTABLE, he doesn’t know what he’s looking for, he doesn’t know what he wants”. Reassured of his superior intelligence, he can stretch out in his orthopedic Super-Manager-Enlightened armchair and move on to the next candidate, alas without sticking the Post-it he should have put on my CV on the way to his “not toxic enough to survive in my company” chrome garbage can. NEXT! Another HR manager who hasn’t understood that his job isn’t to publish the Code of Ethics, it’s to promote it, and to start with, to live it!
So naive little guys like me often only find work when there’s a fire somewhere and nobody wants to go and get burned. Since expert submarine commanders are often viscerally incompetent, they’ll miss no opportunity to start fires. We’re immediately recruited and sent to the front to put everything back in order, and as soon as Verdun turns green again, “shoo, get out, we’re taking the buddies with us”, again. I’m a sort of android update of the Senegalese Rifleman in Corporate…
And of course, the personal solution is to end up trying your hand at entrepreneurship, in search of control over your own destiny. Exchanging the peace of job security for the Peace of Heart, an adventure, epic, the search for one’s own path, aerial, on a tightrope in the void, with a tiny pendulum called Ethics, a free diploma called Consultant, trying out survival techniques in the parallel multiverse known as “business”.
Like an aftertaste of piss in steerco
In the end, as Mum says, “it takes all kinds to make a world”, so even if this text may seem bitter, it has no moralizing pretensions. The world is what it is. People are what they are. And I am what I am. By divine providence and immanent justice, we all end up receiving the explicit wages of our good deeds and the detailed bill for our bad ones. Because life always finds a way to settle accounts with everyone, sooner or later. Life gives us moments of intense happiness to recharge our batteries and keep fighting for our families. And all in all, life is beautiful!
No remorse, no regrets, just choices to be made at every crossroads, in order to move forward!
Like so many others in corporate life, I’m certainly not a victim, far from it. I’m more of an editor of a book in which I’m the hero… Instead of cashing in on B series written by hicks, I’ve chosen the joy of writing the script myself. My chaotic path is a life choice. And in that I’m unshakeably STABLE in my value system and my life principles. So, to my toxic former colleagues, I say “Good morning”… Thank you for helping to give me self-respect!
