The Impersonation That Led To A Tough Time

"You must have read the memo from the staff WhatsApp group inviting all the engineers for the urgent meeting scheduled to hold tomorrow by 10 a.m., but I am sorry to inform you that your presence is not needed in the meeting".

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This was a message my husband received from the MD of the engineering firm he works with, and immediately he got so broken. A lot of questions were running through his head; he became so uncomfortable that he couldn't stop asking himself what he must have done to warrant such a message from the MD, even as the head of engineering. The MD kept him under suspense; he never said what he did but later asked him to stop coming to work for a while. It would have been better if he invited him to confront him for whatever he feels he did and then suspended him officially instead of taking that route that got him emotionally down. Meanwhile, it was almost month-end when all these were happening, so apparently there was no salary for him that month.

Days became weeks, and yet we didn't hear any feedback from the MD or HR, as he promised to get back to him. This was also happening when my husband lost a lot of money through a business investment he made, so he was running on a bank loan to sustain him until he bounced back. He used his salary to obtain the loan, whereas the bank takes a certain percentage of his salary each month. He was at home still waiting for the MDs feedback, but obviously not in a good state of mind considering his financial status at that time. I was trying my best to sustain the family, but my best wasn't enough to fill the vacuum. When it was exactly one month since he received the unofficial suspension, I advised him to meet the MD instead of waiting for his feedback without success. He bought the idea and met him; on getting there, the MD instructed HR to prepare his termination letter immediately. According to my husband, he felt so sad that he is leaving the company without knowing what he did, which prompted that. All his efforts to find out from the MD proved abortive, but time unfolded the impersonator.

Before we found out the reason behind the sudden termination of the appointment, which was just recently, we experienced a high degree of tough times considering the circumstances surrounding the loss of hubby's job. There was a time that we couldn't even foot the hospital bill for my child; there were times we couldn't feed well. Subscribing to the DStv channel became a forgotten issue. What about paying school fees? I had to visit the kids school to explain the situation to the head of the school, and fortunately, we were given the grace to pay for the next term. The experience within those moments wasn't pleasant, but I didn't stop working hard and talking to God in prayer for him to come through for us. Hubby was attending interviews and hustling for a personal contract; luckily, he got one after some months.

However, the MD later called him back recently to uncover the truth he discovered, and that's about the impersonator. It happened to be my husband's closest friend in the company. The MD doesn't like the staffs are to do their personal outside projects other than the company's. So what the friend did was to answer my husband's name when he got a personal project. Somehow, the MD found out about the project and the name of the staff handling it. Of course they told him my husband's name; he confronted my husband, and he denied it because he didn't know anything about the project, not knowing that his good friend was deliberately using his name to cover up. The MD hated my husband for lying, and that made him not trust him anymore, and thus,the termination of his appointment with the company.

Somehow the MD realized the truth after a long time, he called my husband to apologize, and even awarded him a big project outside the state. Meanwhile, my husband's close friend, the impersonator, isn't aware that we have already found out the truth. Currently, we are still brainstorming on how best to handle him for his evil deed, but whatever action we later decide to take, I have learned to be careful of who I call my friend and know the kind of secret I reveal to some kind of friend, which was the root cause of the issue hubby had with the impersonator who was supposed to be a good friend.

This post is in response to the #hivelearners community contest on the topic titled One Tough Time.