Smart Link Company
“This is to notify you that the entire management team at Smart Link Technologies is proud to award you the Employee of Year Award. Your performance for the last twelve months has, by so far, surpassed the company’s expectations. For this reason, we are proud of you” Ashely closed the Gmail tab on her laptop, smiled at herself and leaned back on her seat, perhaps thinking on how she would spend the hefty voucher and who she would go with on the fully paid trip to a destination of choice as it were the company policy on the Employee of the Year Award. Her stream of thought was interrupted by a message notification tone from her cellphone.
“Dear parent, kindly note that your son, Bright Cole has been expelled from Elite Senior School with immediate effect… Ashley did not read the long message to completion as the weight of the content was too much for her. Unknown to her, the son had been doing drugs! Why all this at a time when she had been recognized for her hard work and dedication to the company? Of all the students at Elite Senior School, why would it be her only son? As she made for the door, it dawned on her that despite her perfectionism at the job, she had failed as parent. Ashely hated failure.
Ever since Smart Link Company won the lucrative tender to develop a payment system for the government’s retirement benefits scheme, Ashley had set out to prove that she was among the company’s best brains. Barely three six in the company, Ashley had realized that most of her colleagues could not match her tech prowess, and this, she took to her advantage. A graduate of the Massachusetts School of Technology and Computing, Ashley quickly became the leading brain at Smart Link Company, largely due to her quick deployment and implementation skills, as well as ability to interpret different network topologies and come up with workable design architectures for implementation. The company’s director appointed her as the team lead for the project and subsequently allowed her freedom to choose the team she would like to work with as well as manage the budget for the same. Motivated but afraid of disappointing her manager, Ashley chose to give the project the best she could to ensure she succeeds. The of the Year Award was a justification that she had done a great job worth the recognition.
Since the project was to run for a whole year, Ashley had opted to take her only child, Bright, to a boarding school. Taking care of Bright, the twelve-year-old son, took most of the time, and she was afraid it could cost her the perfect outcome she expected. Her initial failure, was therefore, inability to manage her time and, hence delegating parental duties. Do parents have substitutes? Two months earlier, and three months after joining Smart Link as a Network Engineer, she had divorced Brook, her husband. According to Ashley, she needed more time to pursue her career. That is how she ended up a single mother to Bright.
Ashley was a perfectionist and feared failure. She wanted to be the best parent to Bright. At the same time, she also wanted to be the best employee at the Smart Link Company. She, therefore, avoided anything that could come up between her and perfectionism. However, as she sat on the sofa, face down, with Bright curled in another sofa in a corner, the truth dawned on her. Although she had won the Employee of the Month, Bright, her only son, was on the verge of becoming an addict at barely twelve years! She feared how her colleagues, people who had always held her in high esteem as a role model could think of her. Another thought of raising her son through a rehabilitant center almost sent her into a comma. As J.K Rowling once said, you never truly know yourself, or the strengths of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. The first happiest day of her life turned into the saddest day in her parenting and her first failure in life.
Ever since that talk with Mary, the nagging neighbor, Ashley realized that success in life is not only about one’s career life. She talked down her son on the effects of bad peer companies and drugs. She reconciled with Brook, and they are now living together and loving every bit of their union. She now doubles up as a counselor at Smart Link, often guiding and counseling colleagues with multiple job-related issues. In one of her talks during the orientation of new recruits at the company, she took over an hour explaining to them the need to prepare for failure regardless of how smart one may be. To Ashley, failure is part of the learning process and preparing for the same eases up most challenges in life.
Next year, Bright will be sitting his twelfth-grade exam, and based on her meticulous scores, he is destined for academic greatness. The employee of the year learned from her failures and turned on a new leaf. It is always said, experience produces the best teachers, Ashley is a typical example.