PACKAGING GONE BURST
Mrs. Samson and Mrs. John both strolled down from the office to the side of the street where Mrs. John had asked the Uber driver to pick her up from and waited for another five minutes before the driver showed up. Alas, the Uber driver turned out to be Mrs. Samson’s husband, she wished it was a dream that she would wake up from. The daily practice was that Mr. &Mrs. Samson rode together to work every morning as her office and his shop were both on the Island and then park in the staff car park of Mrs. Samson’s organization while he takes a stroll to his shop where he sold second hand clothes (or what those boys who would sexually harass you at Tejuosho to buy from them refer to as bend down select). From all indications, the car belonged to Mrs. Samson as she was in a well-paying job but as oga is a sharp man, he decided to have a second income stream (as the Yorubas would put it, ona kan o woja) to augment.
Mrs. Samson had apparently been someone who bragged a lot in the office about her status and never allowed any of her new acquisitions to go unnoticed that her colleagues got tired of her bragging but had no choice but to keep up with her and massage her ego. Mrs. John was dumbfounded and surprised at the same time trying to connect who she was seeing and the picture his wife had painted before them in the office. Madam wasn’t going to take any of the “disgrace and falling of hand” and took her husband up in an argument that resulted in an unpalatable scene on why he would be engaged in such a side hustle being a driver considering her status. Unknown to her, Mrs. John had sent a chat to a few other colleagues in the office to come see the movie going on downstairs; chaeeeee women sha, they know how to put themselves in their rightful place so that no one oppresses the other. The argument ended and seeing that a few more colleagues had gathered under the pretext of going for lunch break, she knew the bubble had burst and must have been thinking of how to redeem her already battered image that had just been torn to tatters in less than ten minutes.
The consolation I had as a bystander was that madam did not deny that the Uber driver is her husband because that would have been worse and I may have been compelled to act and defend the dignity of my fellow man and hustler (Lol). To finish the “falling of hand”, Mrs. John insisted that oga would still have to drive her to her destination as she was already running late for her appointment.
Back at my desk and ruminating over the short scene I just witnessed, different questions kept running through my mind. What was oga supposed to do in this situation? Should madam have reacted the way she did? What is wrong in being an Uber driver? Was Mrs John supposed to have invited other colleagues? Where is dignity of labour? These are all questions begging for answers
