When Help is no help at all

Not an original title, but it seemed appropriate.

I have fired Von.


The straw that broke the proverbial camel's back was last Saturday, when he took Amber and I to one of the craft markets. I saw someone I knew, and I asked him to stop so that I could get out and talk to him. In Von's normal way, he didn't listen, and he tried to do what seemed to him like a good idea, which was just to put the van in reverse, and drive backwards without turning arouond until he caught up to this person I wanted to talk to. Unfortunately, the parking lot had a few pedestrians, all of which he avoided, but he didn't miss the car behind us. We didn't hit them very hard, thankfully.

Von, I'm sure, knew he was in big trouble, and jumped out of the car to make sure that the other driver was okay and wasn't going to try to extract a bunch of money from us. However, this is exactly the wrong thing to do, since it's normally very dangerous. I wasn't too worried since we were in a hotel parking lot with lots of security, and I was mostly wondering if the other driver was going to beat the crap out of Von when I refused to pay for damages. But Von came back, and I asked if the other car was okay, and he said that they were and drove off. I didn't say anything the rest of the way home, and I think that Von thought that he had dodged another bullet.

When we got home, we went upstairs, and we pulled all of Von's documents, i.e. his pay records, his loan records, and his "infractions" list, which we hardly ever update because there are so many. It took about an hour, which I wasn't happy about because Amber was supposed to help Rachel at a birthday party.

I wrote out a letter explaining to Von why he was being fired (causing an accident) with an explanation of the money that I was giving him (the whole month's pay for April, of which he had worked almost none, his whole bonus pay, which is one month's pay and is due in August and is supposed to be for good performance, minus the loan that he has with us which was 21k Naira). Clearly, he hadn't earned any of this money and actually owed us $70 USD, but I just wanted to get rid of him in as efficient a way possible. The two months pay were approximately $800USD. The letter also said that he was satisfied that I did not owe him any more money.

Amber and I went outside and called him over to where the car was parked. I didn't want to fire him in our house and give him the advantage, so we wanted to do it in front of security and the other drivers so that he wouldn't make a big commotion. (This is actually the second time I've fired staff. I fired a maid when I was in Brazil.) I told him that if he would sign the sheet that explained why he was fired and that I didn't owe him any money, and if he would sign the sheet explaining all of his "behavior violations", and if he would give me his security badge, I would give him the $600 USD ($800USD - $200USD that he owed us for a loan we gave him).

He wouldn't do it. He said that he had to take the letter to his wife and ask her what to do. (The strategy here is that he buys time until I calm down.) I told him that if he didn't meet all three conditions, that he wouldn't get the money, because I didn't owe any of it to him. I was just giving it to him to help him out. He didn't want to sign the letters to me, but it was important to me that he sign it and that he not get a copy because there have been numerous incidences of staff going to the police and claiming that they were owed so much money, and then you have to worry about the police harrassing you and the security at the front gate. (We don't want to start a gun battle in front of the compound.)

He wanted to take it to his wife and get a copy, but I told him no, so I took the money and went upstairs. I called Security and told him that I had fired Von and that he wouldn't give his badget back. They thought that he had left and were very worried about the badge.

A few minute later, they called me and said that they were detaining him in the office and asked if I could come down. I wasn't happy about this either, because I had just spent an hour pulling together the paperwork to fire Von, plus an hour to try to convince him to sign my papers and now I had to go down to security.

I should probably take a few minutes to explain why I wanted to fire Von. I'd actually been waiting for awhile to fire him, but I didn't have a good reason, other than that he was a terrible driver, was never where he was supposed to be, and irritated the heck out of me. I think that it's hard to be a driver, especially for an American family, because a driver provides no real service. I can drive myself, but I can't cook and clean for myself, (well, we can, but it's easier to let Nicholas do it). We also hardly ever use Von. I don't need him to get to work, so he really only drives us one place per day, on average. Last week, the kids missed the bus and so we called him to pick Amber and the kids up in front to take them to school. Of course, his response was, "I'm still down by the Ecko hotel." That's about twenty minutes away. And it was 7:20, which means that he was already twenty minutes late for work. This is typical for Von, he doesn't like to come in on time because we usually don't need him to take the kids to school, so we usually don't catch him. I gave him another stern but uneffective talking to. The following Saturday, Amber needed him to go buy a phone card, then come right back. It should take about 2 minutes to buy a phone card, walk out the front gate, grab one of the four or five vendors out front selling phone cards, then walk back in the gate. But Von hears, "Go buy Amber some phone cards at your leisure. Take the car, so you car drive around and impress your friends while you buy lunch a few miles away at your favorite rice stand, then come back when it's convenient for you." So Von took the car and left. Amber ran upstairs, and then came back down and couldn't find the car. She couldn't get a hold of Von because she didn't have minutes on her phone, so she asked one of the other drivers to grab her a phone card. He comes back in about 30 seconds, gives her phone card, only to find that Von is out having lunch with the car. Amber was livid because he made her late. Of course, we told him he was going to get fired, and he just smiled as if to say, "Stupid Americans. You can't fire me. I'm a driver. I have status."

Those are just the most recent examples. Von is a never-ending series of excuses of being late, not answering his phone, letting his own phone run out of minutes, and doing what he wants instead of just driving. That doesn't even begin to mention his annoying habit of telling us what to do. Everytime we want to do something, he tells us that that's not how it's done. We have to do it a different, Nigerian way. (He told me this many times while I was trying to fire him, but I happen to know the Nigerian way for firing staff. First, you don't pay them for a month or two, then you just tell them that they have been fired and if they come back or ask for more money, you will have them beat up. You don't really need to bother with separation pay or giving a reason.

Anyway, I went down to the Security office. Security was happy to see me, because Von wouldn't give them his badge and I don't think that they wanted to beat him up over it. So I went through the whole story that I was firing him because he had an accident. I told him that I had offered to Von a substantial amount of money if he would sign the papers and give the badget but he refused. Apparently, this did not match what Von had already told them, because they turned on Von. Von kept saying that he wanted to talk to his wife and he would just hold on to the badget until Monday. He couldn't explain why he needed the badge until Monday (does anybody let you keep your security badge after you've been fired?). The security guys were really leaning on Von pretty heavily, when I told Von that I would still give him the money if he would sign the papers and give back the badge.

The only reason that I can think he wanted the badge for was that either he planned to come back and steal stuff or he had already stolen stuff and had it stashed and needed to pick it up. He started saying that it was to get a new job, but I wasn't sure what he was going to do. Knock on all the doors and ask for a job? Security would get called after the he knocked on the first door. "Hello, Security, why are you letting some driver knock on my door? Do I need to call Julian [the expat head of security]"

Anyway, I went through and re-explained to Von why he was being fired, and I added in the story of his first accident, which I didn't cite as a reason for me firing him in the letter. The guards thought that it was pretty funny that he had been in two wrecks. Then I told them about his loan, which I had deducted from his pay. Von had a loan because he got arrested for driving the wrong way down a one way street right after he started working for us. Amber had to pay a bribe to keep them from towing the car and throwing Von in jail. The guards thought that this was hilarious, and were now laughing out loud. (I didn't even tell about the time Von took us to a party a month or so ago and got into a lot of trouble by the police for cutting in the exiting row and then when we were trying to exit the party, he couldn't figure out how to get the car turned around, so I had to drive for him.

So finally Von agreed to sign the letters, so I told him that I would go get the money. Now, all this time while Security had been trying to persuade him to give up his badge because I would give him the $600, he kept saying that the money meant nothing to him, and that he was an honest person, and that he just wanted to keep the badge until Monday.

But when I got back, he said that since I was such a good man, perhaps I could forgive his loan, just to help him out a little. I replied, "A minute ago money meant nothing to you. What happened?" The guards were laughing their heads off. But the guards did ask me to go ahead and forgive the loan, since they knew I was such a kind, generous person, and I agreed to. I had sort of expected to have to do that, but I figured that I would hold onto it as my final bargaining chip. So I went upstairs and got the money (which was already laid out) and gave it to him. I assume that the guards got a portion of it for their "assistance" in helping Von get. Anyway, after that, Von and all the guards told me how they knew that I was the kindest man they had ever met and that God would have many blessings in store for me. (This is the standard Nigerian way of saying thanks.)

Anyway, just like Von was a lot of trouble to have work for us, he was a lot of trouble to fire. I told him that I would not give him a recommendation to be an expat driver because he was a terrible driver, but I would give him a recommendation for any other kind of work,so hopefully, I never have to see him again. (I don't think that he can see. We paid for him to go see an optometrist, but they said that he was fine.)

Amber points out that we'll still see him at church since he got baptized, but I'm not holding my breath. By the way, the maid never came back either.

While we're on the topic, I haven't been home teaching for awhile. I home teach two families that live in the compound staff quarters. One of them was fired awhile ago for stealing groceries and grocery money from our friends, Roger and Rose. So I'm not quite sure how that home teaching discussion would go. And last time I went to see the other family, who is the former bishop, he invited himself to my house for dinner. So it was easy to rationalize to myself that I didn't need to go hometeaching.