My brother rubs salt into office wounds

Things have been somewhat hectic in the office for a number of reasons.

First, we are past the half-year mark but the numbers are yet to improve. We have tried all manner of tricks and incentives to get the customers to book some orders but they are simply not biting.

All of them come up with the same reason “the economy is really doing badly, let us talk after the elections”. This kind of feedback has not been sitting well with our CEO who nowadays has taken to saying, “I cannot share these kind of numbers with the board! You people have to pull up your socks.”

I was tempted to tell him, “Well! That is why they pay you the big bucks so you can deal with both the good and the bad news.” But of course, that would be a career limiting comment.

Somehow this pressure has been creeping across the organisation and there is a certain sense of lethargy and despair amongst the employees. 

Last week, I was feeling particularly depressed by all of this and wondering what we need to do because at this rate, we might not get our much-needed bonus.

I was also looking at the numbers for my kiosk and they too are not looking good. To try getting myself out of the sense of despair, I decided to go online and read about how companies weather such times. My online research was interrupted by my phone ringing — it was my father.

I decided to ignore the calls mainly because I was busy and also because my father likes to call me these days to merely update me on the latest political happenings.

A few minutes later, my phone rung again — this time it was my mother. My mother rarely calls me when I am in the office so I promptly answered the phone. 

She sounded very breathless on the phone and said, “Son! You need to come home.” This had my heart racing and I said,” Why? Is everything okay? Is dad okay?” She said,” We are okay-it is your brother.” I sighed inwardly because the topic of my younger brother really vexes me.

A few years ago, my brother dropped out of the university. This is after I had spent lots of my money paying for his high school and university fees. At the beginning of last year, I decided that I did not want anything more to do with him and since then, I rarely talk to him or engage my mother to enquire about my brother Bob.

This has been a bone of contention between my mother and I, but I have put my foot down and have refused to budge from my position.

My mother quickly gave me an update of what has been going on in the village. It turns out that my brother has become quite the drunkard consuming all manner of funny village liquors.

According to mother, “whenever he drinks, he gets into all kinds of fights, you should see him, he has bruises and marks all over his face.” I let my mother go on with her story because in all honesty I wanted to tell her that I did not care about my brother.

Finally, she got to the end of the story and said, “last night, they had a fight with our neighbour and your brother stabbed him.” This had my alarm bells ringing, “now the entire village is baying for his blood and they want to lynch him so he has gone into hiding.”

The annoyed part of me wanted to say, “let them lynch him” but I knew this would not sit down well with my mum.  So I asked her, “mum you know I have done all I can for Bob, now what more do you think I can do.”

She clearly had spent some time thinking about it and said, “Well you can use your police connections to locate him, then maybe he can come stay with you for a while until the village cools down.” This solution did not sit well with me at all so I said, “let me think about it, I will call you in few minutes.” Now, how do I deal with this?