Loving The CEO

Aisha

The sound of my alarm clock is the one thing I hate as much as Mondays. Why do we even need alarms? Why do things have to be done with a time limit? Like waking up on a Monday at 6 a.m. because you have to be at work by 7 a.m., and the Lagos traffic might be an issue?

Who starts work at 7?

Employers are monstrous. I feel like they slowly derive pleasure from sucking all the life out of their employees. Work doesn’t need to start so early, but they like to see our faces.

The sound of my phone by my bedside table rings so loudly that my sister Hussaina jolts up from the bed and smacks me dead in the face with one of her pillows.

″Wake up now.″ she groans.

I sit up on the bed and watch her as she sinks back into the bed and snores again. See, that stupid alarm reminded me that I have to get up and face another freaking day of work. There is one thing I hate, and that is having to wake up every morning for work.

I still don’t know why I decided to enter the corporate world. Why didn’t I just start a business like my sister? At least that way, I wouldn’t be confined to a life of suffering.

The fact that I am complaining before I even get to the office is typical of me. I do this every day. Wake up, silently nag in my mind, and then drive to work. It is usual for me, but at the end of it all, I never quit.

Getting ready is a process. I usually spend about an hour in the bathroom. It takes me that long because I like to drag things. The more time I spend getting ready, the later I will be at work. That is how it usually goes for me.

“Get out of the toilet, Jo,″ I hear a knock just as I am coming out of the shower. I share a room with my sister, Hussaina. Even though I have told her that from seven in the morning to eight is my bathroom time, she still always has something to do inside.

“I will soon be out,″ I say, returning the same aggression she used. My voice is usually loud when I am trying to be expressive, and right now, I am trying, but it fails as she enters the bathroom without even the slightest care in the world. Luckily, I have my towel wrapped around me as she pulls down her shorts and sits on the toilet.

“I don’t know why you spend so much time in the toilet. You might as well just move in here and call this your room,″ she accuses me with an eye roll. Her braided hair is up in a bonnet this morning. She can’t talk to me because she will go back to bed and continue sleeping once she is done. I am already late for work, but the fact that I am known as the usual latecomer helps me.

“You could have waited five minutes,″ I hiss at her as I walk out of the bathroom. If there is anyone that I fight with, Hussaina is that person. We have a love-hate relationship. I get angry at the stupid things she does, and she gets defensive about them. It works well for us because, usually, after our fights, we settle by either going to a movie or trying out a new restaurant. There is a scar on my leg from one of our many sister fights. Granted, it was a mistake, and it was for something as stupid as wearing one of my dresses, but the moment she pushed to the glass cupboard, the scar came about.

Even today, I remind her about it whenever I want to guilt-trip her into something. I walk back to the room and stand in front of my closet. I hate dressing corporately. I hate jackets and pants. I hate the kinds of clothes I have to wear. Working for an investment company means I have to stick to those rules. Give me jeans and a pair of sneakers any day, and I will be happy.

“Ugh,″ I run my hands through my curly hair. This week, it is blond. A decision I regret the minute I made it. I don’t know what I was thinking. Dyeing my hair the lightest blonde was an experiment that failed. I can’t even wear it to the office because, to my supervisor, it is unprofessional. My hair is short and thick. I have never been able to tame it, and I am at that point where I don’t even try anymore. I leave it the way it is because, as a black woman, my hair is my pride, and the fact that I can’t even wear it to work has been irritating to me.

“You should just quit,″ Hussaina says, walking into the room and jumping on her bed. “Put off the light. I want to go back to bed.″ he tells me as she covers herself.

I roll my eyes. “How am I supposed to get ready?″

“If you quit, you wouldn’t have to get ready.″ She tells me that quitting is a good idea right now. I am twenty-five years old, and I still live in my family home. I live in a typical Nigerian home with my mother and father. We are not from a very rich family, and in Nigeria, that means you are poor. There is no such thing as the middle class in this country, with a depreciating economy. My father, Danjuma, struggled to take care of us. Growing up, I would barely see him, as he would usually leave the house as early as five in the morning for his journey from the mainland to the island in Lagos State.

When you hear it like that, you think it is far, but the problem is just the traffic. My father is a lawyer, and he worked for a firm until he retired five years ago. I see him, and he is everything I don’t want to be. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in a job I hate. I don’t want to have to suffer and not have anything for it. I look at him, and I know the things I don’t want.

Both my parents aren’t the kind of example I want. I want to be different. I know I have been saying this for a long time. I have thought about leaving the company and starting something. Making a difference in my life. I just hope I get to that point in my life where it will finally happen.

I just hope I find my adventure.

I walk into the office at about thirty minutes past eight, and the receptionist, Beatrice, looks at me with a knowing smile on her face. She is the first person to see me when I come every morning, and even though my lateness has been a problem, it has led me to HR’s office. Nothing has made me change my streak. Just the fact that I don’t even want to be here in the first place is the main reason why I am so rebellious.

My nonchalant attitude is known to everyone. They know me in the office as a stubborn and rebellious employee. I keep hoping for something better—anything that will make me stop hating myself when I wake up each morning.

“Good morning,″ I greet my colleagues as I walk into the open office that we call a classroom. They all look up from their computers at me as I take my seat at my desk. I know what they are thinking. They are wondering why I am so loud and proud about my entrance. It is already late. The least I can do is just walk in quietly and start my work.

“Madam latecomer,” Ada, my colleague and best friend in the office, points out with a smile on her face. We are like night and day. She is the complete opposite of me. Unlike me, she takes her job seriously. Even though she hopes for better, she accepts this one. She is grateful to have a job. The difference between me and Ada is that she is married to an amazing man, and they have two children. We are the same age, but she has her life figured out already.

“What is your own?″ I glare at her as I press the power button to turn on my computer. The screen blares up as she chuckles loudly.

“You live a couple of minutes away from the office, and you always end up coming later than the people on the mainland,″ she breathes out. I close my eyes for a breather because she is just teasing me, as she usually does. Ada lives an hour away from the office on a good day with traffic; it could take about two hours.

“You know I don’t even want to be here,″ I tell her.

She laughs again because it is almost like she knew I was going to say that. Almost like she knows what I am going to say before I do, “You are so predictable.″

We start our work for the day, and as I start to respond to emails from customers, I hate my job even more with the responses I get from them.

After a couple of hours, I walk down the stairs with Ada, clutching my lunch bag. “There are rumours that there will be an international retreat this time,″ She tells me as we get into the kitchen. I walk over to one of the empty chairs and put my lunch box on it. Today, I packed a chicken sandwich. I sit down immediately, and she joins me. Lunchtime is our usual gossip time. We talk about the people in the office—the gossip, or gist, as we like to call it. Ada is the only one that I relate to in this place. She is the only one who understands me and accepts me for who I am. I have been with Synergy Trust for four years. Fresh out of college, I got a job here. It wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be, and my father had to speak to one of his colleagues, an old friend who knew someone. That is how it is in Nigeria, everything is a struggle, even finding a job. I graduated with a 4.0 GPA. It didn’t matter; no one was hiring unless you had connections. After a couple of months of looking for a job, I finally gave up, and that is when my father took the reins. He was worried that I was going to end up staying at home for more than a year, so he went ahead to beg.

Unlike me, this is not Ada’s first job. She worked at a bank before she came here. Which gave her more experience than me.

“They always say that. The last time we had a retreat, they took us to a dead hotel. I had to share a room with Mary. It was pure torture for me,’’ I remind her of the last one we had.

She laughs because we both wanted to share a room. The head of HR, Linda, thought it would be a good idea to shuffle us all. A way for us to get to know each other. I hated the idea because it was a whole week, and I didn’t want to spend it with someone that I didn’t get along with. At the end of it, they put me with one of the marketers, Mary. Mary and I have never gotten along.

“Mary wasn’t as bad as Nneka. You know how bad she smells. I had to share a fucking bed with her,’’ she laughs. To her, it was an adventure. To me, it was just pure torture.

The door to the kitchen opens, and Salam walks in. Salam is a family friend and colleague. I have known him since I was a kid. His father and my father are friends from university. His eyes roam around until they stop at me. He smiles and walks over to us. Ada nudges me as she takes a bite of her peanut butter and jelly sandwich. “Your man is here,’’ she smiles widely as he stops in front of us.

I shake my head immediately, but I don’t get the chance to reject it. Salam is not my man; we had a thing when I was in university, but it never really amounted to anything. At the end of it all, I realized that I didn’t like him like that. I only saw him as a friend, and I wish he would see that too. The fact that our parents have basically put us together in their heads just makes this even harder.

“Hey,’’ he waves, his hand still standing over us.

“Hi Sal,’’ I call him by the nickname I gave him when we were younger. Just because I don’t feel the same way he does, doesn’t mean I don’t care for him. He is a big part of my life, and I will always love him like a brother. He will always have a special place in my heart. He smiles and waves at Ada. “How far?’’ he greets her too.

She smiles and takes another bite of her sandwich. “I am okay o, just trying to get through lunch,’’ she winks at me, almost like a silent you are welcome. I roll my eyes and face him again. “Do you need something?’’

He nods. “I want to talk to you; can you come out with me for a second?’’ he asks with this hopeful expression. One that makes it really hard for me to say no to. Salam is a very handsome man. He has a dark chocolate complexion, with brown eyes. He is tall and well-built. Hussaina My sister can’t understand why I haven’t just married him already. She seems to think that he is a catch, and everyone else does too, but I don’t want to marry for comfort. I want the adventure of exploring love. I want my heart to beat for the man that I will spend the rest of my life with. I know love only happens in fairytales, but I am the one percent that still believes it exists.

“Sure,’’ I manage, and he rests his hand on the small of my back as he leads me out of the kitchen.