I have been checking my personal emails every half an hour hoping against hope that I will hear something from the recruitment agency.
One month after meeting the smooth-talking recruitment agent, I am yet to hear about any tangible leads for jobs.
I called him a couple of times and his response is always the same, “give it time, the economy has not been doing well.”
Amisi, my life coach and Shiro have not made things easier because they keep calling and asks me, “have you heard anything?”
This is despite the fact that a few weeks ago, they advised against calling the recruiter for it would make me appear desperate.
As a result, on a number of occasions, I have been tempted to respond to them by “don’t you think if I had, I would have told you by now?” This pressure is too much.
I am feeling pressure from many sources and some rather strange.
One source has been Linda who is married to a Tito, my former college mate.
I revived my relationship with them towards the end of last year when Tito called me.
I did not recognise his name or voice and it took a few false starts before I placed a face to the name — turns out he is quite active in our university alumni group.
He chatted me up as if I were a long lost friend while all along I was waiting for him to come up with his query. He said, “I have been looking at some jobs in your organisation and I am interested in the procurement role.”
Maybe I felt some sense of comradeship with Tito but I helped him prepare for the interview, so it was no surprise when he called me towards the end of December and said, “Josphat, I owe you one, I start in January.” I felt some sense of satisfaction that I had helped someone secure a job.
To be honest, I seemed to see little of Tito after the first week. I assumed that he must have been caught up in doing the hard work of clearing the backlog of work.
However, one month after Tito’s joining, the HR manager walked into the office and closed the office.
She said, “Josphat, I need to chat with you.” I always get alarmed when anyone from HR says that. For the next half hour, she told me about how “I need to help my friend —Tito.”
It turns out that Tito has not been faring well and had not been as she said, “bonding with employees and delivering as expected”. I had to tell her, surely, cut him some slack, he is only one month old.”
She said, “well you better talk to him, things are not good.”
One week later, I had lunch with Tito in the canteen.
I told him the concerns about his ‘settling in’ and gave him tips on ensuring he survived.
Tito seemed to accept my feedback even though he said his boss makes “unrealistic demands and is indecisive”.
I forgot about Tito because I also had issues that I was dealing with —including my father’s illness and the CEO’s weird requests.
So, imagine my shock when last week Linda, Tito’s wife called me. She was crying on the phone and saying, “how could you?” I was taken aback and said, “do what?”
She was crying uncontrollably but I was able to pick out what her issue was. It turns out that after the mandatory six months Tito was not confirmed and was asked to leave the company.
She told me, “he had told me you are his boy but did not protect him.”
This was news to me and the only words that came from my mouth were, “are you crazy!?” She then hung up on me.
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