adminFredrick Qaphelani Mabhikwa Successful Solutions
Ihave been focusing more on the workplace in my articles of late. After all has been said, all I was trying to put across was that we must perform at our workplaces and above all guard those jobs jealously. In this article I will just remind us about valuing our employment.
In Zimbabwe our unemployment rate is very high, some estimates place it to well over 80 percent and this is really an alarming figure. With such an unemployment rate those of us who are employed should consider ourselves lucky. We are actually an elite group. I have sadly seen, given this scenario, those who are privileged to have a job, fooling around with their jobs during these times when jobs must be valued and guarded jealously.
Maybe the ideal in terms of making a living is business, self employment. However, we cannot all be self employed. My friend who is a very successful businessman told me that business is all about creating vision of what you want to do and getting committed to do it through hard work. However, he was quick to say there is also a big element of luck in business and also it being a gift. Some people are just gifted in line of business, they don’t put a lot of effort in the business, but things just happen.
Now I just want to tell readers of this column that it is very important, especially at this point in time in Zimbabwe to guard our jobs jealously, to respect our jobs and handle them like “eggs” as the old African adage says. I have seen people playing “Mickey Mouse” with their jobs. People fooling around with their jobs and I have wondered if they know how it is out there in the in the “unemployment world”. Some of us who have tasted unemployment from what I could safely say were fairly good contracts in the NGO world will testify that it is very difficult out there, especially if you have once tasted good employment. Given the scarcity of jobs, you still find people coming to work late, leaving anytime, you find people coming to work drunk, disobeying orders from bosses and just being deliberately difficult.
I have seen people deliberately cultivating a culture of laziness in the workplace. Someone is given a task by their boss, they think it’s abuse and you find their nose is in their mouth with anger saying, “it’s not on my job description”. If some task is way out of your job description why not engage your supervisor politely and use the right channels.
Why start kicking dust bins and shouting that you are being oppressed. You can easily be charged with insubordination, fired and get the next bus to your rural home. In fact I have some simple advice for us the employed DON’T FIGHT YOUR BOSS”. Chances of winning such a battle are close to zero. It’s like when you advance to your enemy with a button stick and they have a gun. You throw many small stones (pebbles) at your boss and one day they just throw one big boulder and you are gone. Only fight your boss when it’s an open fight, justified and many employees are involved. If it’s a war between the two of you, there is no way you can win that war against your boss, even with “prayers” from these new prophets who are making headlines in the country.
I want to repeat that some of us who have tasted unemployment know that it’s very hot out there. Some of us don’t know it because we are in employment and have never tasted unemployment. We are busy with the so called “deals” at work. Money from deals is very “sweet” but the results can be very bitter. Yes you might have been doing deals for a very long time but there is one “stupid day” as an old friend of mine would say. You can enjoy the so-called deals for 10 years but “there is one stupid day” when hell breaks loose and you are exposed. I have seen big men who were very high ranking company executives who have fallen from grace. Falling from hero to zero. A man who was driving a company car is today without even a bicycle because of the deals, because of lack of respect for employment.
The irony I have seen with most of these people who mess around with their jobs is that, most of them are not even qualified to be in the positions they are in. They got there because of long service to the organisation or because their uncle is a big man in the organisation. Now that they are up there they forget where they came from. When they are up there, they forget they are not even educated enough to be where they are and they become big headed and start stealing and harassing other employees.
Now when you lose your job through a dismissal, the damage to your CV is permanent. You find some people steal so much money and they tell themselves and every one that they have stolen enough to go into business. Business is not about stolen money, it’s all about good planning and clean money. They try one or two things and those businesses collapse, why because as I said there is an element of talent and being gifted in business. Our good Lord doesn’t bless businesses made from dirty money.
You find adults teaming up into small groups to be a nuisance in the workplace. They don’t work, all they do is complain. They turn themselves into a complaining brigade. I did say in one of my articles that such people’s occupation is being ‘monitors” of senior management. They will complain about everything in the workplace. When their mouth opens, a complaint comes out. I am in no way saying people should not complain when things go wrong in the workplace, but you find this lazy group behaving as if they were employed to complain. Some are very gifted in peddling rumours and gossip in the workplace as if that is their key result area. Some people forget that some of these people, whom they team up with to be a nuisance in the workplace, got their employment through their relatives in top posts. They are from the same rural areas with top management and when things go wrong they are protected and you, without any protection you go home.
One day I found a security guard on weekend duty with four boxes of “shake shake” (opaque beer).When I asked why he was drinking on duty, he told me it’s a weekend. I have seen some guards at workplaces, half the time they are not at their points, they are up and down the workplace, what they are looking for noone knows. A secretary is hardly at her desk, phones go unanswered, until clients complain. If they are at their desk they are busy with personal calls and the business calls cannot go through. You find a teacher/lecturer bunking lessons like the students. Assignments and books are not marked on time. If books are marked it’s in pencil, peer marking — where students marks each other’s work. Marks are not recorded. Planning is not done, schemes of work are not up to date, there are no lesson evaluations and no marks for the students recorded. When the HOD asks for these things the teacher feigns illness and disappears. When they come back they say the HOD hates them. You enter a classroom; there isn’t even a sitting order. The students are sitting like they are at a rally. The disorganisation in the sitting arrangement of the students is reflecting the disorganisation in the teacher’s head.
You find people abusing workplace vehicles. Carrying building material to their stands, driving to their rural homes. As for vehicles if they could talk, a lot of us would today lose our jobs.
Those who must wear uniforms, you find the uniform is dirty on a Monday because it’s also worn during the weekend. You find in banking halls the queues aren’t moving.Tellers are serving clients as if they are on go slow. They are very unfriendly and very impatient.
They will not even greet you. It’s like you have come to borrow money from them. You are referred to a desk, there is no one there. The good lady is moving right round the bank hall in high heeled shoes as though they are doing an inspection.
Some of the workers have the privilege to leave their stations to spend time at their workmates’ stations. You find a group of workers laughing like hyenas and they will not even notice that you want to be served. They will continue laughing and eating while you wait.
There is someone out there waiting for that job you are fooling around with. Some one more qualified than you. We have so many university graduates who are unemployed. Some of these young people have been forced to work as temporary teachers. Some are literally sitting at home and you are there in your job playing “monkey”. It’s a matter of time before events catch up with you. Let us value our jobs, especially at this time in Zimbabwe, those jobs are precious.
Online Reporter