I Worked For The Devil For A Year

The Nigerian labour market is rugged like I'd always say and getting and keeping a job is more important than one's mental health. This is the sad reality of a lot of Nigerians and I empathize with anyone currently in this predicament.

We can talk about exiting toxic workplaces from now till eternity but how do people survive when they eventually quit these workplaces? Who exactly do you report to, and do the labour laws actually protect the employees or the employers alone?

People need to survive and would take whatever abuse they get if that's what it takes to feed themselves and their families.

My Horrible Boss Experience

I have posted my job-hunting experiences before, stating the red flags that have made me reject job offers. These are usually tell-tale signs of a horrible work environment and I've had enough of those to last me for a lifetime story-time.

Almost all workplaces in Nigeria are toxic in my opinion. There's always at least one shitty superior in every office that has it out for someone else. It might look like the private sector is the worst but I assure you, some civil servants are going through hell.

The Genesis

During my NYSC, I worked in a hospital and that was such a horrible experience because the doctor-in-charge is one of the worst bosses I've ever experienced. He wasn't horrible to just the corpers alone, the staff also suffered his scorn.

I found it weird that they all feared him because this man wasn't their employer, the government is. Apparently, he was into a lot of politicizing and could make and break as far as they were concerned.

When I was initially posted to this hospital, he made it seem like he was doing me a favour giving me accommodation when in actual fact, every corper working at the hospital is entitled to a room at the hospital lodge.

He assigned me to the admin office just next to his office which was weird because I was supposed to be working in the lab. He gave excuses of me not being an MLS graduate and he painted an ugly picture of the scientist not wanting non-MLS grads in his lab.

I got to find out later that the scientist was a nice person and would have probably given me the chance to work with the other scientists. I also found out the reason the doctor set me up in the admin office was to have me close to him, literally.

The Proposition

He would come into the office randomly just to say hello and he would call me to his office to talk. That's when it dawned on me what his game what. He promised to get me a furnished apartment, change my almost dead phone, and put me on a monthly allowance if I agreed to be his sidepiece.

This was all within a few days of being there and I was overwhelmed because I had never experienced workplace harassment of this magnitude before. I wasn't even settled in yet!

I was in the October batch that year so that meant Christmas break just a few weeks after resuming at my PPA. During the break, this man kept bugging me on the phone about travelling with him to Obudu cattle ranch and making my one year stay comfortable.

When I resumed in January, he agreed to me staying in the lodge and also to me switching to another office. I complained about being idle in the admin office and although he wasn't pleased, he agreed to me moving to medical records because they needed more hands there.

The Devil

I thought my life was back to normal again but no, this man switched up on me. He became extra mindful of my new office and would find every opportunity to scream at me. If he passed and didn't see me on seat, I would get a query. If there was a mistake in a patient's file (not my mistake), I would get queried.

If he saw me talking to another male, he'd call me into his office and find a reason to query me. He'd always end it with, "if only you'd be my girlfriend, I love you but you don't love me".

One time, he reported me to my LGI for no good reason and I had to answer to NYSC query. That was low of him but not as low as the time he locked me in his car. Yep. This was before the Christmas break when he requested I went along with him to a meeting.

On the way back, he asked that I go with him to a hotel for the night and I screamed at him to let me out of the car. He locked the door, continued begging, and let me out when I didn't stop screaming.

I guess that's why he got extra hateful when I resumed in January. Some months in, he decided to kick me out of the accommodation. I checked around the village for somewhere else that I could rent, they were all shitty. At this point, I was ready to throw the whole NYSC away and go back home.

My mum had been the one begging me to persevere all this while but this was the height of it. I wasn't getting paid by the health board like my mates in other hospitals, I was running more shifts than I should have, and out of spite, this man was kicking me out of a shitty room that I was managing.

Survival

I understood why the staff called him the devil. Why didn't I complain to NYSC you might ask? My LGI was his bitch, simple.

He saw that I was ready to go and he changed his mind about the apartment. I eventually stayed there until the end of my service and they had less hold on me when they saw I didn't care about quitting NYSC.

By 'they', I mean this medical director and my immediate boss in my office. That one was steady hitting on me in the office and had some sort of silent war with the medical director about dating me.

It was a lot for me then and meeting and travelling to see my boyfriend (now husband) almost every weekend was what kept me sane the rest of the year.

This long story is only half of it, I can't even remember all of the wickedness I experienced there. My friends there also experienced something similar and our mental health was bad bad.

Back then, I was under obligation to serve in the NYSC and was encouraged by my mum, right now, not even an angel can encourage me to stay in a toxic work environment.

This is not the only horrible boss I've experienced, but he's by far the worse. This was the devil.

What's your horrible boss story? Share in the Hive Naija weekly prompt.

Cover Image - Pexels.

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