Are you living beyond means?

A few days after the Easter holiday, a relative recounted how he arrived at his holiday destination only to find out that his boss had also taken his family there.

It was one of those swanky hotels at the Coast that cost a pretty penny, and so this relative, who is not a millionaire, had had to take a “small” loan, like he put it, from his Sacco, to top up the amount he had managed to save so that he could treat his wife and two children to a holiday of a lifetime.

You can therefore imagine his deep dismay when he spotted his boss at the reception area as he was checking in.

Let’s face it; your boss is what you’d call moto wa kuotewa mbali – an important rule that every discerning employee follows to the letter is the one that states you should never familiarise yourself too much with your boss.

By all means make an effort to be on cordial terms with him or her, politely laugh at his jokes, say good morning, but no matter how many times he insists that you to call him B.O instead of Bruce or Mr Omondi, don’t think, not for one second, that his attempt at being viewed as an easy-going boss gives you the licence to give him the hand clasp and brother hug you give your boys.

But I digress. As this relative stood there at that elegant reception hall pretending that he had not seen the man who had been doing his appraisal for the last three years, his dismay deepened even further when he visualised he and his boss in shorts and nothing else on opposite sides of the pool he had intended to spend most of his three-day expensive holiday in or around.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

He concluded that this was a disaster in the making, and that seeing his boss’s potbelly and hairy chest for three days, even though it was not of his own making, was being too familiar with him.  And pray, how do you manage to completely switch off from model-employee-mode when almost every time you look up, for three days, a period you had intended to be yourself, your eyes meet with the person who has the power to sack you?

The dreaded meeting took place that evening at the dining area. The only empty table that could sit this relative and his family was opposite that of his boss, and since it was impossible to pretend that he hadn’t seen him, he was forced to walk over and say hello.

“Nderitu…” said his boss with surprise.

“You’re here too…”

To cut a long story short, the holiday wasn’t as excruciating, especially since he had to share the pool with his boss just twice, but neither was it fully relaxing.

That encounter was also food for thought, and in fact gave him many sleepless nights long after the holiday was over – going by the various rumours that often did rounds at his office, his boss, being top tier management, was paid a million-and-something every month, money that this relative would consider a windfall, a miracle of the century were he to come into it today without taking a loan.

From this, you can therefore deduce that his salary is nowhere near that of his boss and probably will not be for years to come.

After much introspection, he concluded that he wasn’t very wise, that he was probably living beyond his means if he was paying, cent for cent, what his millionaire boss was paying for a holiday, and yet he did not even have a side hustle.

There are those, of course, who would argue that Nderitu’s boss is a miser, Mr Scrooge, if he frequents places that his juniors can afford. Even if they had to take a loan to afford it.