‘Look at Me When I’m Talking to You!’ My Line Manager Screamed

I could tell this wasn’t gonna go well.

We had been in some slight disagreement for the past few minutes in our open-planned office. It had started quietly at the line manager’s desk. But now, I had returned to my own workstation to continue the task she had set me, she was still fuming.

“Look at me when I’m talking to you,” she shouted; slamming her fist against a desk and throwing her voice across the office while our junior colleagues sniggered and stared.

I turned to look at her with slow, deliberate contempt that I saw her visibly shiver, while desperately trying to hold it together.

“What?” I said. “I told you I would speak to the client as you’ve asked. But I don’t see the problem. And I’m not going to pretend that I do see a problem when I think you’re clearly wrong.

I brought in new business to the company. I can’t force the client to change their budget constraints because you want them to pay us in December to boost the annual figures you must send to head office in Paris. The client will pay us next month, in January, in the New Year. That’s not my fault. No need to be screaming at me across the office. I brought in new business; a new 30-second commercial, which I sold to the client myself. Wrote the script for myself. And produced on a shoestring budget myself right here in Ghana, without any help from anyone or having to go to South Africa. What more do you want?”

She looked exasperated. Then appeared tongue-tied as if she was thinking of a response in her native Finnish that she somehow couldn’t quite translate into English.

“Have you finished?” I asked, waiting now for permission to look away… to get on with the figures that she had asked me to complete.

She turned away in silence to get on with her own calculations. But I knew it was over. The dream job in Africa had fallen apart at that very moment. We had reached a point of no return. I was sure she had decided there, and then, that I was to be expendable. A woman who revelled in “breaking men’s balls” was about to attempt to break my spirit. She was wrong. She had tried to shame me to the group to disguise the fact that she was wrong. And I had calmly told her to her face that she was wrong, and in front of everyone. Why is it that some female bosses try to be tougher than a man?

She had called me at home later that night to apologise. “We’re both strong-headed,” she quibbled.

I thought, then “Yeah…You may come to Ghana and speak to these people in their own country as if they are ignorant children. But I am nobody’s boy. Both of my parents are now long-deceased. And even today, at nearly 50 years old; I would never dare speak to anyone sixteen years my senior in such a rude and obnoxious way. I wouldn’t speak to my gardener in that tone.” But what I actually said was:

“I don’t mind you having a pop at me since you’re my line manager. If you feel you have something to shout at me about, I’d prefer if you took me aside and said it privately. Like, ‘Look, this is completely out of order, etcetera.’ Not shouting at me from across the office with all the junior colleagues giggling. We’re both senior members of staff, so I don’t appreciate that at all. I’m no child. And I don’t expect to be treated like one. As long as we understand that, then you and I will get on just fine.”

She had flashed another apology and said goodnight. But I knew that my words had been futile. We both knew thenn that the damage had been done. It was already much too late to be patching things up, of course, for I had seen the fear in her eyes.

The new chief executive officer called me into a room a few weeks later.

The clients don’t want to work with you, he said.

“Fair enough,” I replied. I’ve only got the two, and the Vodafone people have already made it clear that I’m too direct for Ghanaians. Which is cool by me. I do like to cut to the chase.”

“You can either leave today, or you can work until the end of the month, which is only next week,” he said.

Here was the new white saviour brought in to replace our beloved Ghanaian MD, and all the creatives called him Count Dracula. This white man could suck blood from a stone and draw all warmth from any room. I had never met a more unpleasant person. His harsh South African accent, and a habit of barking orders, didn’t endear him to anyone.

“If it’s all the same to you,” I said, “there are a few things to finish off on the Mitsubishi campaign. So, I’d prefer to work until the end of the week to complete handover to a couple of the other guys.”

“Fine,” he said, and I went downstairs to tell the others that I’d just been made redundant. It couldn’t have taken me any time at all. They were mostly all shocked. Some were already used to the cutthroat manner in which business was now conducted in our new ‘white-washed’ world. While others, envious of my ex-pat salary, sat smirking in the background in expectation. Within minutes, I was in the back of a taxi heading home.

HR came downstairs the following morning to say the CEO wanted to see me in the boardroom. “What now?” I thought, as I hopped upstairs.

“I hear you went into the creative department blabbering your mouth off yesterday,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“Telling everyone how horrible this place is.”

“Who told you that?”

“That’s not the kind of behaviour I expect from an adult.”

“I had to tell the team that I was made redundant and would be leaving at the end of the week. Whoever told you something different; you can bring them here in front of me, and let them tell me to my face what I am supposed to have said.”

“I can see from your reaction that you never said it,” he went on. “Why would someone tell your line manager that you said that?”

“I wouldn’t know. My line manager will tell you herself that people here will say one thing to your face and another thing behind your back. Go ask her.”

“Sit down!” he ordered.

“I’m fine standing, thank you.”

“Sit down, I said!” he barked again.

“Look, my friend, I don’t know who you think I am or who you think you’re talking to, but we have nothing further to say to each other. So, I don’t need to stand, or even to sit here, listening to any more of your crap. Have a good day!”

So ended the dream job in Africa. I went back downstairs, picked up my jacket, and walked out the door smiling. There were still three months left on my residential rental agreement for the house the company had paid for on my behalf. A severance cheque in my pocket for $15,000 still needed to go in my bank account. At least, I could hang around in Ghana for quite a while longer. I had barely spent any of my monthly salaries so far.

Weeks passed. I was getting to know the corners of Ghana better than many Ghanaians. Then I bumped into my former client one day while out shopping at Accra Mall.

“Where have you been?” he asked.

“I’ve been here, you know. Getting to know the country.”

“We thought you’d gone back home to England.”

“Not if I can help it.”

“What’s happening at the agency?”

“I have absolutely no idea.”

“Your two replacements together aren’t worth half of you.”

“Well, that is nice to know,” said I, a faint smile licking the corners of my lips.

“Maybe you’ll come and see us in the New Year. We may have some work for you.”

“I will. I sure will. It’s nice to see you.”

“And you, too.”

Sometimes it’s the little things in life that can make your day. A brief exchange earned me over $25,000 a year for the next five years from one client alone. Who would have thought that I would be working less hours for more money and that something good would have fallen apart for something better to replace it?

“We don’t like what the multinational ad agency is doing these days,” said the French MD on my visit to their Accra offices in the New Year. “We liked what we were doing with you. Your TV commercial is a big success. We have it syndicated across six African countries. Why don’t you set up your own ad agency? We will be your first clients. You could offer you Mitsubishi, Suzuki, and maybe, even Citroen.”

I had relocated from the dole queues in London for a dream job in Africa with one of the several multinational ad agencies that have descended on the continent. Like Cambridge Analytica, these large multinational corporations earn several million dollars per year from advertising in Africa. Social media, including Facebook and Google, are an essential part of the tools they use to reach growing numbers of African customers, consumers, and expatriates. People like to talk about “Poor Africa” without ever having set foot in a single country on that vast and diverse continent. All they know is the newsfeed and the begging-bowl messages they see.

Even ordinary farmers in Africa today may use their mobile phones to receive crop prices and other industry-related forecasts, pay bills, and much more. Consequently, a majority of people may still only access the Internet on mobile phones, but Google and Facebook are well-aware of the potential value of a billion or so new African users. That’s why these companies are currently investing in the region in no small measure.

At my new digital marketing agency set up from the comfort of my home in Accra, we used Facebook ads to grow customer loyalty for a range of big brands. We helped our clients to translate “likes” into real sales and growth. The number one site in Ghana is still Facebook. The social media giant has millions of page views each day with eyeballs clicking on ads at a much faster rate than surfers do in America or Europe.

Before setting up on my own in Accra, I visited my former employers one last time. The office was deserted. Four more creatives had walked out that December. The place was dead and filled with interns. There was no sign of Count Dracula. He hadn’t appeared for months, they said. Even the Wasp Queen herself was absent. “Not a word to the clients,” the few remaining old staff members said. “Nestlé must never know.” Hadn’t they already guessed that all the brains had left the building a long time ago?

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• You may also like part 1: How Facebook Landed Me a Dream Job in Africa