THEDRYCLEANER: Banker’s bonkers
By THEDRYCLEANER - Wednesday, November 28, 2007 - 13:36:17

THEDRYCLEANER respects — or used to — bankers and rightly so. Bankers, like thedrycleaner, are supposed to have a reputation so assured it could be divine.

What more with the bankers’ cardinal rule being ‘Thou shall not steal’ even if your home doesn’t even have mwamuna aligone, denje, therere or anything that could remotely be consumed. Can anything be more remotely divine than that?

But, somewhere in that bankers’ manual, written in fine print, so small you would need a telescope to read is a rule no less important than the cardinal rule: ‘Thou shall not commit adultery with workmates’.

One big fish — and we are not talking about chambo or chejumo (take your pick); we are talking about the king of the oceans: a shark — transgressed that rule to its base and is now picking up the ruins of his amorous misadventures.

You see, this shark has a reputation so murky it’s the eight wonder of the world he is still arrive to undress more under his command.

And it’s not only two women who are under his command; here we are talking hundreds of helpless women, married women, unmarried women, desperate women, loose women, name it, there are all there. But according to the shark, they are all women, only fit to be undressed and abused, and if they can’t give them marching orders.

A few months ago, he pursued one woman with such verve that it was surprising that the woman was principled enough to spurn his overtures. But the shark, being one who doesn’t take kindly to being rebuffed, had an ace up his sleeve. When the woman had all but forgotten about her boss’s amorous advances, he pounced on her when she least expected it and fired her. Her crime, according to the shark, was that she had violated Rule No. One: Thou shall not steal, which, if you ask her workmates, was just a silly excuse for the boss to get even.

A few weeks ago, the shark swallowed more than he could chew when his better-half, weary of hearing the same stories about his immorality, decided to teach him a lesson so hard and so long it would take him his entire lifetime — the brief that remains of it, anyway — to forget.

The story, according to thedrycleaner’s reliable sources — which have never let the laundry down — the shark picks and dumps women, those who work under him (in both senses of the word) as and when it pleases him.

Recently, he chose for himself one girl who had just joined the organisation, with assets so irresistible that, perhaps with a bit of hindsight, only thedrycleaner’s spiritual father could look away without swallowing hard.

Now, it is not as if the girl was not aware of the shark’s pick-abuse-and-dump policy. In fact, the bank’s human resources department (HRD) has made it somewhat of a clandestine policy that during induction, new female workers are strongly advised off the shark for fear of being undressed without them realising it.

However, she was also too aware of the consequences of turning him down — something that the HRD human never cautioned her against but which the company’s grapevine had strongly warned her about.

Now, here was a poor girl, recently graduated from that cruellest of all institutions, Loafers Institute, to chose between the devil and the deep blue sea: rebuff him and find herself once again enrolled at the institute or play ball and be part of the shameful statistics which the sharks flaunts with reckless abandon.

Poor girl, she had no option but fell victim to the charms — in all senses of the word — of the shark.

Somehow, news filtered to the shark’s better-half about the competition she had on her hands. While as previously she may have dismissed his amorous activities with a wave of the hand owing to the little competition she felt she had, she knew this time around, sitting back and hoping the shark would come back to his, well, loins, would spell her doom.

So, a few weeks ago, she went to his workplace and asked after the girl. The girl haughtily (who wouldn’t if you wine, dine and sleep with the god himself?) walks over to her boss’ wife without suspecting that trouble lay ahead of her nor her identity.

Immediately she was within touching distance, the wronged woman devoured her like a hungry lion would a hopeless prey.

Only a miracle can explain why she’s alive to tell her tale of shame.

As the fracas was going on, the shark quietly used a backdoor, fled on foot from the scene of his ignobility and squeezed in with the likes of thedrycleaner in a ramshackle minibus to wherever the bus was going.

For the next week, the whereabouts of shamed shark were a matter of debate, fears and tears; he was not at home, not at his mistress’ house nor was he at the office, at the mortuary, in the hospital.

He just disappeared from the face of the earth and no one has managed to find out where he went to because he has stopped socialising with colleagues and leaves home before daylight to the office where he locks himself in and only leaves after everyone else has knocked off.

Some prisoner of his loins, he is!

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