The Rise and Glory of The Shortcut Money.

An article in the Daily Nation of April 17, 2021 caught my attention. It was titled, “Women tenderpreneurs: The inside story of fast money, sex, bribery and domination.” The report by Simon Mburu ‘opened’ a Pandora box.
I have put the word open in quotes to bring out the aspect of something more than merely the literal meaning of the name. In other words, he didn’t open it for the first time especially given the fact that you and me at least have had a peak into the dirty way of doing things in this country.
Simon had tossed the box one more time. And all the stuff hidden in the box were laid open once again. In fact, if we went on a serious research and investigation, we could realize that there is far too much rotten messes in the whole world of tendering than merely meets the eye.
Sometimes it may look like the process itself is being given due diligence yet what takes place behind the office walls is what counts at the end of the day. It is very prevalent today that it is not about what you know rather who you know.
Interestingly enough, women seem to be at gains more than the men. In a discussion I followed somewhere last week, I was surprised that the looks too count at the end of the day. What you offer as a whole package counts on how things turn out at the end of the day for or against you.
A friend asked me a question which I lacked answers to. Why is it that organization X only recruits yellow girls only? A keen look at the point, and for sure I ascertained that the premise looked true. In trying to be liberal, I decided to look at it objectively. Maybe this organization really banks on general outlook as a marketing tool and thus, only goes for a specific type of girls.
And the inside story reveals it all. Curiosity sometimes drives us to the extremes. In this case we decided to get one of the girls, an insider, tell us who was right amongst us. It ended up that we were both right. There was the aspect of image and also favoritism at play.
In other words, the issue of sex, bribery, favoritism and the like are systematic and perennial issues that have over time grown to be malignant tumors in our corporate and public systems. Things which we are not about see them come to an end.
We have seen very many movies and soap operas where to get something, people went overboard and traded sex for getting that which they wanted. The same metrics have extended to the tendering process where you go with a woman, probably who is less qualified, yet a few months later you find they are employed or they won that tender and you wonder how.
In getting stories from one such case, I was surprised how people can go to very extreme levels to justify the means. In this, a group of young people met in the tendering process at the dropping of documents stage. They interacted and two of them became friends on the basis of common interest.
After a while, the one who narrated this incident to me (a man) reached out to the female acquaintance he had met to ask her how she was fairing. In the process, he inquired if the lady became successful in winning the tender now that he wasn’t so lucky on his side.
The lady invited her for a cup of coffee in one of the sleek joints in town. My guy told me that he was surprised at what he saw. This beautiful damsel was already driving almost 8 months after the exercise. And even on this specific day, the lady showed him a tender she was prospecting.
Curiosity got the better part of him and he decided to be student so that he too could get lucky with this line of venture. He asked the lady how she managed to do it within such a short time. Like, what was he doing wrong the she was doing right that made him miss these opportunities?
The lady told him in a very brief statement that it depended with who he knew. But when they had met in that office eight months back, she had told him that she didn’t know anybody and that she was trying her sheer lucky.
On further inquisition, the lady went ahead to blankly tell him that when you seriously want something, you can go to any length to ensure you get it. In other words, it doesn’t matter as long as at the end of the day, the end justifies the means.
As a teaser, she joked to him of the huge difference between the two of them as at then. He came walking and she came driving. He was being bought coffee by her also. At the end of the day, she didn’t care as long as she could afford the fine things.
So, this story can be said of a number of modern cases of from rags to riches stories. After all it is not a case of working your way right up through the right channels. I hear so many stories where the lady who has ‘made it’ advices the ones in the journey that they don’t need to take the longer route. A single right sex escapade can give them a good boost from misery.
Interestingly enough, the listeners ask the one narrating to them if she can introduce them to this interesting hassle. And as such, a new breed of ‘business ladies are born.’ It now changes from street prostitution to corporate prostitution.
And because men have fewer like alternatives, bribery becomes their savior and as such it becomes a case of everybody with and to their own gods. I don’t know if we have anybody to blame for these unfortunate happenings that seem to have become more common nowadays but at the end of the day we are to blame and we are the ones to make things right.
How to do that is a long story for another day. If we were machines, it was going to be easy since a new code without the vices could go a long way to make things right. But now that we are humans, changing behavior and lifestyles is not as easy as it could look like.
End.
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