Let me tell you a story, where you'll meet the characters who I'll call Bilal and Brenda. I was working in the most remarkable part of the world.
And one unremarkable morning, a colleague came to see me. She told me that Bilal, one of our senior executives, had been telling everyone I was being removed because I'd been messing with the wrong people.
And now, I was going to face the consequences. I wasn't alarmed, because I knew I had done what I'd been hired to do: my job, dealing with thorny issues head on and leaving no stone unturned.
In fact, in the months prior to this, we'd overturned more than just a few stones. Those details are for another time.
I called my husband, James, to tell him about this bizarre conversation, and with what proved to be great foresight, he said, "Angélique, pack your things and call Brenda, in that order." I called Brenda.
I'd worked with her for a number of years, and I trusted her. She was the person who'd recommended me for that job.
I cut to the chase, because my husband's reaction made me realize this was more than just the usual stuff I'd encountered before. And I say usual, but in that moment of clarity, it dawned on me what James had already recognized: none of this was usual.
These irregularities, part of a pattern I'd failed to notice, were what I now know as open secrets living beneath those proverbial stones I'd had the audacity to overturn. To my shock, I learned that this was happening because I hadn't tried hard enough to operate in the "gray space."
I didn't seem to know when to kick things into the long grass. And I didn't understand that this was how the system worked.
The message, the implied threat, was clear. Over the next few weeks, I was replaced by a convenient yes-man while I was still there.
