The shoes with purple bow.....an old story revisited

A couple of weeks ago the following conversation took place between me and my friend S.

S: Do you know that S1 bought N a flip flop for 150 pounds?
Me: I think 150 pounds is too much to spend on a flip flop for a five years old girl.
S: Yes I agree with you, but it seems S1 is spoiling her girl.

This short conversation brought to my mind an old story that I'll never forget as long as I live. Years ago when I was thirteen years old, it was Christmas time and I went shopping with my mum to buy a pair of shoes. We kept moving from one shop to another but nothing attarcted me. Then we stood infront one of the windows where I found my dream shoes, it was an elegant black shoes with purple bow and I thought it would perfectly match the black skirt with purple flowers I was going to wear on Christmas. My mother looked at the price label and told me it was not worth its price and that she would not spend this amount of money on a pair of shoes, she even did not let me go inside the shop and try them on. I was totally convinced that the shoes with purple bow was all I wanted for Christmas. All the way home I kept arguing with my mum asking her to buy these shoes for me and told her I'll not buy any shoes till they wear out. My mum was never convinced so I told her that I would tell daddy the whole story when we got home and see what he would say. Daddy's opinion was the same as mum's, he told me they were not going to buy these shoes for me beacuse they think these shoes were not worth the labeled price. I finally gave up and bought another shoes that I did not like but matched my Christmas outfits.

After the Christmas vacation was over, I went back to school where I found one of my class-mates wearing the expensive black shoes with purple bow. I felt terrible that day, I thought that it was totally unfair of my mum to refuse to buy me the shoes I liked while this girl's mother bought her this expensive pair of shoes and allowed her to wear it to school. I guess I need to mention some information about this girl H. H was the daughter of a man who owned one of those companies that claimed to invest people's money and give them a high interest rate (tawzeef amwal). H's father turned out to be a smuggler and died in prison shortly after he was sentenced. The money was previously transferred to forigen banks and was never returned to the poor people.

I went home back from school and told my mum about H wearing my dream shoes to school and telling her I thought it was unfair of her to refuse buying these shoes for me. She did not get mad at me or anything, istead she told me that there was a big difference between me and H; H's father made his fortune by stealing money from poor people's pockets while my dad worked hard to earn his money and that it was our duty not to waste this money on anything unless we are sure it was worth what we paid.

I guess this was one of my earliest how-to-wisely-spend-your-money lessons. I owe my parents a lot for such precious lessons. They taught me not to buy anything just because I liked it, they also taught how to compare prices and how to make the best bargains. They simply taught me the value of money earned by hard work. I owe them a lot for choosing not to spoil me and preferring to be thought of as the "unfair guys who denied me my dream shoes" instead.

The Black Box and the Female Spider

I guess I'm one of those who enjoy making up and using their special terms . I keep using my special codes in front of my close friends who tell me I'm pretty good at it. For example, when I ask one of my girlfriends to "watch my back" this does not mean that I want her to protect my back beacuse I'm afraid of being shot. I just want her to know that I'll be leaning forward to pick something from the ground and I am asking her to alert me if my back is showing. I sometimes think its funny that friends use their special codes and definitions that nobody else knows.

One of the latest terms I made up is "Black Box". Wikipedia defines a Black Box as follows:

Black Box is a technical term for a device or system or object when it is viewed primarily in terms of its input and output characteristics.

Thus the definition above states that a Black Box is a system whose internal structure is uknown, and whose inputs and outputs are the only concern. Knowing what a black box is from a scientific prespective, I recently started to use the term to refer to a certain type of guys. A Black Box is a guy who plans to get married and who actually does not have a special girl to propose to so he simply asks his parents, siblings, friends, co-workers, relatives and even neighbors to search for a suitable girl for him. Everyone who knows the guy start the searching process in order to set this guy up with a girl. The girl is usually told some information about the guy; his job, how much money he makes a month, his appartment, his car and of course his readiness to get married ASAP. In most cases nothing is mentioned about the guy's personality, nature, .....nothing at all. Similar information about the girl is told to the guy and a meeting is arranged.

Some girls don't like this old fashioned way and think it worked fine with their parents two or three decades ago but it is not good enough for them. Some girls think its okay to meet guys this way and have no problem to get engaged a few months after their first date. Well, I can't say I'm totally against this Black Box thing, if a girl wants to meet guys this way that's fine. What I don't agree with is the way girls behave after the first two or three dates with the Black Box. Many girls make the mistake of believing they have finally met their prince charming. They simply close their eyes and ignore everything they might dislike about the guy. Finally the girl marries the Balck Box and shortly after the honeymoon is over problems start and the number of unhappy marriages increases by one.

Another term I've been lately using is the "Female Spider". A female spider usually kills the male after mating as the male is of no further use to the female. That's the reason I use this term to refer to girls who want to marry a guy just for the sake of being a wife and having kids. My sister has just told me about one of her friends who I call a typical Female Spider. This girl was engaged to one of her friends for a year and a half now and they are getting married in a few months. Immediately after their engagement the girl started to bad-mouth her fiance. She started telling everyone including their common friends that his character was weak, he was sort of a shaken person and that this engagement thing happened so suddenly that she was not sure of her feelings towards the guy (she has known him for five years before they got engaged!!!!!!!). I really felt sorry for the guy after hearing this, its totally unethical of the girl to do this to her fiance. Nobody is perfect and if she can't accept her fiance the way he is I think she should break up this engagement. What this girl does not know that mutual respect is a key issue to a successful relationship and talking badly about fiance is an obvious proof to her disrespect to the guy. I guess she simply does not care to have a healthy relationship with her fiance, all what she cares about is getting married and having kids. Actually she is acting as a typical egyptian girl who think she is an uncomplete person till she gets married.

An odd situation

Last week was a very eventful week at work. It was the last week of June and my team showed a noticeably good performance after a three-months turnover period. Being the lead of this team, I was very satisfied with my team's progress. I have been frustrated for the last three months and this was the first time I taste satisfaction since I got the team lead position.

This feeling of content was strong enough for me to last for weeks but unfortunately this was not meant to be. The following days brought three events that disturbed my peace of mind and put me in one of those bitter situations where I have to make difficult decisions and choices.

First event: I have a girl in my team who has not been showing self discipline and respect for the last few months. She had personal problems and used to disappear for days without calling me or the HR admin. She simply did not show up when she was having an argument with her husband or facing any personal problem, and when she finally comes to work she acts as if nothing happened. She never apologized to me for vanishing for a week, and never tried to explain the reason for her unexcused and unannounced absence. I have complained to my supervisors about this girl's attitude and made it clear for everyone including the girl that her irresponsible behaviour is totally unaccepted. The company CEO arrived from USA last week and one of his visit's goals was to put and end to this girl's behavior. He met with me the first day he arrived and told me that he was done with this girl and that he would fire her. He also told me that I will be having a salary raise starting July and assured me that I will be very happy with this raise. Although he did not tell me how much the arise is, I felt relieved after this conversation. I got the feeling that I was doing a great job and that the CEO is appreciating this. Two days later, he asked me if this girl has come today or not, I told him that she hasn't come yet. He then asked me if she would come today and I said I had no idea (this was the case with this girl for three months, everyday I wondered if she would come today or not, she sometimes came at 11:30 am, 1:30 pm, sent an sms to one of her mates informing them that she will not come for a couple of days or simply did not show up at all. Everybody in the company knew I was fed up with this girl and expected that she would be fired soon). The CEO asked me to call her to see if she would come that day or not, I called her and she said she was on the way. Thirty minutes after her arrival, the CEO came to our room and said he wanted to meet with the girl and me. He started the meeting by asking her to evaluate her performance as an employee for the last three months and she replied that she had been a bad employee. The CEO then told her that he would let her go for this reason. She did not seem to be surprised but she started to tell the CEO that she was having problems with her husband, she almost got divorced and that her husband wanted her to leave her job but she refused......etc. She asked the CEO to give her another chance and promised that she would have more self discipline but the CEO refused. She kept arguing and arguing and told the CEO that if she lost her job her husband won't let her search for another and that she liked and needed her job. Nothing she said made the CEO change his mind and he insisted on firing her. He told her that she did not respect her supervisor and that HE STOOD FOR HIS SUPERVISORS. Knowing that this girl's disrespect for me was the one of the reasons for firing her, I felt a bit guilty. Although I was sure that this was the right thing to do, part of me felt sorry for the girl. This whole bitter situation was very hard for me, seeing this girl in trouble without being able to help her really annoyed me. I've warned her before and she promised she will change her attitude but she never did. I could have asked the CEO to give her another chance, but I was sure that this would never work. The girl finally gave up arguing and the meeting was over. She went to our room, collected the few personal things she had on her desk, told me goodbye and left. She did not even say goodbye to the rest of the team in the next room. I will always remeber this moment as one of the worst moments in my life. It was hard for me to see someone broken like that and although she was the only one to blame for this, I could not stop blaming myself for not giving her another chance. I guess this was one of the few times where I could do something to save someone a trouble but I decided not to.

Second event: a few hours after the girl was fired, I got a call from the recruitment coordinator of one of the biggest software houses in Egypt, telling me that I have applied for a certain vacancy and wanted to make sure I was still interested in this vacancy. I hate being required to give an instant answer over the phone, I was confused and was not sure what to say. I did not want to say I was not interested and then regret it afterwards, so I just said I was still interested. The lady then told me that she would send me an assignment and I have to complete this assignment and send it back to her in a week. I guess I have to mention how and why I applied to this vacancy. A couple of weeks before I got this call, I was really frustrated from my current job, the team's performance, their attitude really pissed me off. I was also wondering if that was the type of work I really want to do right now. My best friend S, who knows everything about my current job situation told me about this vacancy and asked me to send her my resume which she later sent to someone she knew who worked at this well known company. I thought for a while whether I should work on the assignment or not. The vacancy sounds interesting; a good position that requires travelling abroad, large company famous for a friendly environment was so tempting for me. I finally decided to work on the assignment. Last week I did nothing but this assignment; everyday I returned from work, had a quick lunch and started working. I was happy with the assignment because it reminded me of the time when I was still a student and had to finish lots of things in a short time. In spite of this happiness I felt a bit guilty, I had the feeling that I'm betraying my company and the CEO who just given me a raise and said that he stood for his supervisors. I had the feeling that I was dating two guys at the same time. I kept thinking how I would tell him that I got another offer and will leave his company after all what he did for me. I really had a bad time feeling guilty and after thinking for while I decided wait and see if I'll get a reply from the other company. Maybe I won't hear anything back from them and save myself this struggle. Again I hoped that I would keep this state of peace of mind till I hear back from the other company but it turned out that I was mistaken.


Third event: A member of my team informed me that she got another offer which she accepted and that she signed a contract. She told me that she will be leaving in three weeks. WOW, I've been in this closed circle for almost four months. Someone informs that she (yes its a girls-only team) is leaving, I start filtering resumes, conduct interviews, select one or two, start training, reassign projects and when I start to believe that my team is becoming stable it all starts over again. What annoyed me the most was the HR Admin. reaction when she knew that this girl is leaving. She started telling me that she was disappointed in this girl because she did not give us a heads up instead of just informing us after she had already signed a contract. What the HR Admin said really made me feel a bit guilty. I just got the feeling that working on that assignment was sort of being disloyal to my company. I felt that every word she said about this girl was meant to be said about me.


Did I make the right decision about not supporting the careless girl and sparing her the trouble of being fired? Did I make the right decision by working on this assignment? I will keep asking myself these questions.