Heritage

I join secret team to probe former CEO

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I join secret team to probe former CEO. PHOTO | NMG

I received a call from my mother this morning as I was driving to work. I quickly responded since she rarely calls me in the morning.

‘‘Is all okay? Is everyone okay?” I asked. “We are all fine,” she said, though I could tell that her voice sounded a bit heavy. So I told her, ‘‘you do not sound okay. What is going on?”

She hesitated as usual before finally saying; ‘‘My blood pressure has been rising in the last one week and I have not been sleeping well.” So I asked her; ‘‘Why is that?” She said, ‘‘since I came back from your wedding I have had a lot on my mind and so I have been restless.”

I hate it when my mother talks in coded language. ‘‘You need to tell me what happened because I am approaching the office and I do not have much time to talk,” I said. After a few loud sighs she said; ‘‘It is about your wedding and Shiro’’. This stunned me because I thought mother and Shiro had a great time during the wedding. Since this was clearly not the truth, I decided to let her vent — and boy, did she vent! She had many issues which included the fact that Shiro’s mother wore a better dress than her, which annoyed her.

‘‘I know you paid for all our dresses so I noticed she spent more on her mother’s than on my dress.” At this point I dared not tell her that I was not in any way involved with the selection and payment for dresses.

‘‘Our side of the family had fewer guests compared to Shiro’s side,” she added. I found her complaints petty considering that the wedding was over. So I let her rant and rave for quite a while.

However, I had to step in when at the end she said; ‘‘I am not pleased that you did not have a church wedding. You need to organise another wedding.” I had to stop her and told her, “There is no way I am having another wedding, that one was already too much trouble.” This did not please my mother who spent the next 10 minutes raising more complaints regarding the wedding.

I had to get off my phone because the CEO was calling. Every time the CEO calls me my heart skips a beat and this time it was no different.

“Hallo sir,” I said as calmly as possible. ‘‘You need to stop calling me sir,” he barked. I laughed because I have no intention of changing that reference. 

‘‘Are you in the office? I need you to come up to my office,” he got straight to the point.

I made my way to his office and was shocked to find three other managers seated. ‘‘Before we can start, I need you to sign a confidentiality agreement,” he said.

This was clearly a shocker but I acted calmly.

He spent the next 40 minutes telling us about integrity breaches in the company.

I could not muster the courage to say anything so I waited for him to go on.

Finally he said, ‘‘I suspect that the former CEO and HR manager are deeply involved in this and I need your help to get to the bottom of it.” The long and short of it was that I had become part of a secret team to investigate two former colleagues. This will not be interesting.