Dear Diary,  Workplace Shenanigans – Part 2

June 20, 2020

I stood in my office workplace, speechless!

Blue Face, shey you dey whine me ni? Aye ma ni ka o! Lori system mi? Igi ewedu o ma ni wor pa wa!

This is a classical case of, may we not attract curses to ourselves.

I mustered the courage to ask Blue Face, “what are you doing on my desktop, and in the darkness?” She was swift to respond that she needed a document to carry-out an assigned task, and I had a copy on my desktop.

Really! My eyes quickly scanned my table for anything unusual. With this in mind, I saw her hard drive still connected to my computer, before she could think of disconnecting it, I sprang into action, saying to myself “Toyo, both of us can’t be in this Workplace and not at least draw a line to this madness”.

I grabbed the device, slid into my seat, and put on my desktop computer. Blue Face was a bit confused as the device was already in my hand; the mood at that time was belligerent. I smiled at her, woman to woman. I knew I had to be as calm as a lamb.

How are your kids? Why did you not put on the lights? Are you sure you are okay? You seem a bit blue to me today? I intended to check through the hard drive thoroughly. I honestly couldn’t make any sense of it, and the outrage of the duplicity of documents and folders made me sick. She gave no reply; yet, she mentioned that she had conjunctivitis.

Conjunctivitis? This girl really wants to kill me. I said to myself, ma lo ko apollo ran mi o! (don’t you dare infect me with your apollo eyes!) 

At that moment, the fact that I was making a fuss about the infamous nature of my desktop wiping out documents not even the ICT guys with all their brouhaha could fix, I particularly wanted to know how Blue Face was able to recall saved official documents.

Blue Face made a passing comment that she needed one of those documents that had been saved from the year 2012. She didn’t give me a name. Interesting! 2012! Are we now working in archives? I skimmed through the desktop icons, just to cross-check things. Maybe the 2012 documents would be somewhere on my computer, but noooo! They weren’t there. Nothing of the sort was in existence.

More often than not, I save my documents as Toyosi and the day’s date, so that I never mix them up and I always know which is the most recent, and which was a draft. In that order, I launched my investigation. I opened Blue Face hard drive, and searched for “Toyosi 27.06.2016”. The document not only popped up, but it was also significantly accompanied by a thousand other “Toyosis”. I was spellbound. haaaa! Ayemi temi bami! 

The meticulous care with which Blue Face arranged my documents in folders, had this laborious attention to details. Whattttt!!!! In short, I would never be such a precisionist in nine lifetimes. How can one person be this mean and organized at it?  How na? This is a skill for LinkedIn.

I had to continue our conversation. More like sustain a cold war between two rival nations. I quickly selected one of the Toyosis’ documents in the hard drive, opened file location, and I copied everything back to my desktop computer. To avoid stories that touch the heart, I saved it again in my program files. I emptied the Toyosi folder on my desktop and left it there for decoration with other empty folders to look busy. Copying my video folder of over 100 movies would have been foolish of me, under that circumstance, as a result, I left my video folder for her. I am a generous person.

In the meantime, I also asked Blue Face why she had so many workplace folders of Toyosis on her hard drive. She just stood up without answering me and yanked it off my computer without my ejecting it. The idea of what I openly said was repellent to her. Everywhere was quiet for about one hour. You could hear a pin drop if it did. My heart turned to God to distract me from being angry.

The more I tried to stay calm, the more I could not relate with reality. I put my thoughts to the “restroom test”. To begin with, I transferred all the affected folders to my mobile phone and excused myself. However, to get to the bottom of my detective skills, I left the water of the washbasin running as a ploy, while I took a quick peep through the door. Blue Face left her table to my desktop computer, deleted all folder with my name, and wiped it out from the recycle bin. Lobatan!

Last but not the least, I needed proof. I returned to my desktop computer hoping it was still my mind and nothing of the sort was real. When I got to my seat and glanced through my desktop computer, the folder was gone. That was the most compelling evidence ever. Jesus, this girl is really out of her mind! I had no more words.

While I was deep in thought, Red Face who was the head of chambers, walked into our office at about 8:45 am and not looking at me, asked Blue Face for a previous task submitted. That was not unusual; I was a rejected stone anyways. Blue Face didn’t have it. She had “supposedly” deleted it from my desktop, and I had in-turn deleted it from her hard drive.

Red face stood by Blue Face table to get an immediate print out for a 9:00 am workplace meeting. Blue Face could not produce the document. Red Face being a very efficient human being did not understand why. With great anger, Red Face pronounced everybody in the workplace incompetent. I was unbothered by the workplace shenanigans of that morning; I had greater things to worry about.

Red Face summoned Blue Face to her office as they attended the meeting together. In the absence of Blue Face, I did exactly what she had now taught me to do.

I did an excellent job clearing out everything T-O-Y-O-S-I from her workplace desktop computer, hard drive or flash drive. The least of my concern was caring about the consequences of my action on “Blue Face” work productivity. If it had my name on it, it was my property.

As I was absolutely less busy, I began to look at each document on my mobile phone. Blue Face had submitted all of my tasks as her’s.

Not only was she ever prepared to submit any task given to me, but also got it done within time. To this end, I always thought she was helping me out of a difficult situation; I never knew she was passing off my work as hers. No wonder no matter how I craved to learn from her precedents, she never gave me one. No wonder she preferred to work in ghost mode. In all honesty, as I was deeply hurt. I counted my loss, and had great peace.

The meeting was over by 11: 30am.

Blue Face sat on her table and my handiwork was evident. She stormed out of the office. For fear that maybe I may probably format her desktop computer, she came right back into the office saying Toyosi, you did nonsense! Absolute Nonsense!

I looked at Blue Face from the corner of my eyes, emotionless. I replied in that well-mannered queen’s sarcastic tone: Nonsense? Achcha!

In my mind, I was like, look in the mirror anytime you use that word, nothing defines it better. I faced my monitor, and I continued to listen to my Hillsong playlist. I was not in the mood for any yak, yackety yak, yak-yak, yak! 

Moya look away!

Sincerely,

For previous post on Workplace Shenanigans – Part 1 https://oluwatoyosiabikoye.com/workplace-shenanigans/