Climbing the Corporate Ladder

“Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday sugar mummy, happy birthday to you….” The voices of our departmental team rung through the office as we contined our conversation. “For 24 years of being alive I have come to realise that the metaphor of climbing the corporate ladder applied to everything and place that involved working with people. Just as we joined Inside-Out as interns and others as entry level personnels and eventually worked their way to becoming contract staff, permanent staff and then heads of teams and so on, the same principle applies when you want to be accepted by a group. You should have something that they find useful, which in our case is our skill of creative vision and technical accuracy, the next thing is to be able to use those skills we say we have to their advantage, like the workload we are able to relieve our superiors off, which you actually do more of since i do more of running errands, and finally be servicable or as you put it, be willing to make yourslf look small so they can fuel their ego, which is more of my specialty than yours.” She said convincingly as though this is some script she had played countlessly. “Aba, this doesn’t make sense. Also, how are you 24 years and in level 300. Is that not a little too old?” I asked, looking at her in confusion. ” Sika, you are right but not entirely. Life may bring you to this realisation soon or hopefully not, but people do not always do things because they make sense. Most of the time, discisions and actions are taken to please the powers that be. He who pays the piper calls the tune.” “Who calls what tune?…..” I retorted. ” Aba laughed so mcuh she had to literally fight to avoid rolling on the floor. Struggling to catch her breathe she said “Do your research, Sika, I cant spoon feed you everything about life.” . I nodded in understanding with a shy smirk. “Also 24 might be late for level 300 but that depends on what you think as an individual and better late than never, right?” said Aba.

I proceeded to as more questions but she signaled me to pay attention to the ongoing celebration and promised to continue on Monday.