ENTRY # 1: Like Cogs in a Wheel

I suppose there should be a difference between being born with a silver spoon and having to acquire a silver spoon somewhere along the line. Whatever differences exist between the two are of no particular relevance to this entry; except for the fact that keeping a journal is a completely acquired skill to me. You see I used to be among the bandwagon that said ‘my secret and precious moments are safest in my head’. Well good luck y’all because I’ve come to realize that words on paper are the next best thing to Game of Thrones *winks*

So, dear dairy, now that I’ve told you how important you are to the world and so on, maybe be we can move on to more interesting stuffs; and what could be more interesting than my job? I know, I know, you haven’t official met the crew right? Well that because I’m still meeting the crew myself, and as usual, I need to put out feelers on everyone, get my impression on their persona before I can effectively introduce them to you. And don’t you dare say it! I’m not controlling; I’m just being thorough that’s all. Talking about thorough dear dairy, I was thoroughly snitched on last week! Apologies for the harsh word but that’s the most apt description for what happened. And of all the people it was Temi and Sam that hashed the huge conspiracy. I was at my work station battling with a report when the security manning the entrance enthusiastically opened the door. His actions already warned me that whoever was about to come through was pretty high in the hierarchy; but boy, I wasn’t prepared for the sight. As the door opened dear dairy, in came a troop of dark suits and briefcases.
I’ve never seen a group like that in real life before; it was like something out of a James Bond movie. All my senses immediately went into high alert, my smile went into auto drive, spine stiffened into a proper sitting position, voice filtered to a finely pitched English, and peripheral vision broadened to the widest radius possible; and when the main reason for all the show finally entered, I was ready. I flashed my power smile, said a greeting in a perfect tone with the right resonance and sat still and gracious until he was completely out of my view’s coverage; whew! I passed phase one! You see dairy, this ‘he’ I was just talking about is the number one man as far as my organization was concerned. He is the CEO and one man that even my bosses were always gunning to impress, not to talk about me! Thus the conspiracy theory: all things being equal, I should have been pre-informed of the ‘Chief’s’ arrival to the office in order not to be caught unawares as I was. Temi works admin and protocols for the branch so she is the official custodian of such information and responsible (officially or unofficially, I’m not really sure) for sending out the code red alert to everyone when such an important person was showing up at the office. It is not often we get these ‘senior stakeholders’ in the office as they do have a lot of responsibilities and many branches to work out from; depending on the location and the needs of the tasks they were currently working on. The times they show up at the office were isolated one-shot periods to show them in reality what an effective work force they had engaged. Definitely not the time to slouch in your seat, with an earpiece in your ears, frowning at your computer screen like you were trying to scare your day’s workload away; and this was exactly how I was when the dark suits came pouring into the office.

After I narrowly escape phase one (the welcome/ first impression stage) by the skin of my teeth, and Chief had been settled into his office, and the dark suits lounging in their various assigned offices doing whatever dark suits do, and the coast was fairly clear, I crept to Sam’s desk (because it was closest and nothing else. You see, Sam’s notorious for have no idea about anything outside his field)

“Sam, I almost got into trouble oh! What an impromptu appearance, how were you able to wing it and get your acts together on such a short notice?” I asked

“Oh, I knew Chief was going to be in the office today, why do you think I’m putting on my lucky tie when today is neither valentine nor Christmas?” and for the first time that day, I realized that Sam had on his fuchsia silk Charles Tyrwhitt tie; his lucky tie as we fondly call it. Then it struck me, if Sam knew then Temi knew- she must have told him; but I had to hear it from the horse’s mouth

“Sam how come you knew chief was going to be in the office today?”

“How else?” he answered “from the chief information officer herself. She told the entire office; didn’t she tell you?” at that point I stunningly upset if there exists a phrase like that in English. I crept back to my desk and sat there pondering things over for like two seconds, before I decided that I had neither the time nor the patience to ponder on this particular matter; I needed an explanation, no, I demanded an explanation for this error. I garb my water bottle and headed for the water dispenser which happened to be by Temi’s office; but to my utter disappointment, she was not at her work station. Patience, I told myself, all good things…

With that prep talk down my throat, I regained some of my composure, and headed back to my work station only to meet Temi rushing down the corridor “Ari thank God I caught you!” she called out to me “I just realized the air conditioning unit in Chief’s office is not working, the office is as hot as a steam room, and the building’s facility guys are not helping matters, I’ve been calling and calling and no one is giving me any reasonable feedback, my only saving grace is that Chief is leaving for a meeting now but he’d be back by 2 o’clock; that’s four hours from now! What am I going to do before then!” all the residual anger and grudge I had towards Temi evaporated immediately. The young woman standing in front of me right now was so distressed, I thought she’d pass out. In my experience, there’s only one way to deal with this situation expediently, and that involved going down to the facility office and yelling loud enough for someone to quickly move in the required direction; and I knew just the man for the job. 

“Temi darling, why don’t you ask Uche to help you talk with the facility guys?” I watched, with a lot of satisfaction too, as Temi’s distressed expression vanished and understanding settled in. “I really do love you Ari!” she cried as she raced down the corridor. I chuckled at her reaction because I couldn’t think of anyone who wouldn’t have reacted the same way. You see, Uche is the Mr. Fix-it of the office; he is a result junkie with an almost mystical power of persuasion (or intimidation? I’m still working on the difference). I made it to my station in time to watch Chief leave for his meeting. The dark suits were on the move again, so organized and cool as though they never broke a sweat. It was all so pleasant to the sight that I silently resolved to work very hard so that one day I could have my own harem of dark suits; would that be just grand?

I went back to my reports after the exit procession and had been concentrating for about 10 minutes when the faint tinkering sounds coming from Chief’s office filtered into my consciousness. I grinned broadly and shook my head in puzzlement; Uche must be a miracle worker. I was still basking in this little victory when Sam peeped into my station “psst! Ari” I rolled my eyes at the rude interruption 

“uhmm, so I’m still working on that connectivity grid illustration for this section of the office, and I can’t find Tel 1, I’m not getting any signal from her; I think you should check her out”.

I considered telling Sam off, but Tel 1 is the station in Chief’s office; I couldn’t risk anything being wrong with her; instead I dashed to Chief’s office. The Facility guys were there alright, I booted up Tel 1 one, and there it was; a most unwanted error massage ghastly displayed across the huge screen. I almost screamed! This was not happening right now I thought miserably, Tel 1 was Uche’s direct responsibility; I couldn’t break this news to him, not after how he helped handle the facility guys. I decided to rope Sam into telling Uche of this latest development. “Sam, Tel 1 has error code 368beta, this is quite serious as the resolution process is really time consuming, Uche needs to know ASAP” I said as returned to Sam’s station. “Whoa! You’d better call him right away, it would be totally inappropriate, not to talk of unethical, to have any time lag between discovery and escalation now that you’ve discovered the error”. I threw Sam my best shot at a dirty look as stalked to my station. I couldn’t help but notice how he’d conveniently pinned the discovery on me; but he was right, I couldn’t afford any time lag here. I dialed Uche’s extension and after several rings, disconnected and dialed his mobile phone. He answered on the second ring; an almost berating “hello?”

“Hi Uche, Tel 1 is down; Error 368beta” I blurted out nervously

“Christ Ari, how is that even possible? I checked her this morning!” he was almost yelling.

“I don’t know Uche but you have to call in the contractors and initiate resolution now.” I replied, feeling every bit like the wicked witch of the east.

“You have to handle this Ari” Uche said with an almost calculated calm
“I can’t Uche, I have a ton of reports to turn in today and-”

“I’m out of the office right now” Uche caught short my whining impatiently “As a matter of fact, I’m on my way to see Egypt, they finally granted me a meeting Ari” he finished quietly. I knew of the Egypt saga; apparently one of the company’s cargo was being denied entry to Egypt until some Ambassador signs some fiat or something like that. Uche had been relentlessly hounding them for weeks as the delay was costing the company, and some really important brows were beginning to frown. I sighed in resignation and disconnected; I would work on Tel 1 but I won’t be doing it alone. I headed for Temi’s office; after all, one good turn…

“Hello Temi, Tel 1 is down, Uche is unavailable, and he needs someone to go to the Contractor’s office to initiate resolution while we interface from this end”

“And naturally you thought I should be that ‘someone’?” Temi retorted with forced annoyance that did very little to conceal her excitement. You see, the owner of the contracted company recently retired back to Florida handing the company over to his very striking son who so happens to be brushing up on his English language and had elected Temi as his official tutor. It took every ounce of will power I possessed to keep a straight face as Temi speedily gathered up her hand bag and headed out, mumbling something about one good turn. Aha young love! I shook my head.

Three hours later, after intense code cracking and cable snapping, with Temi at the contractor’s and Sam, Idris, and I holding fort at the office, Tel 1 sprung back to life. There was a mini celebration when Uche returned to the office with his signed documents, and Temi with a bouquet of white roses, and just enough time to clean up before the doors opened and the dark suits came pouring in again. This time around, we all had little knowing smiles playing on our lips when Chief walked in. it was one of those moments when there exists a certain realization that though our job descriptions were diverse and specialized in several fields requiring serious brains, it is actually our seamless and collective performances that save the day. This is the meaning of efficiency; hell yes, we are an effective team! Just like cogs in a wheel…