The overly perfect colleague who stole our hair.
મનબા [sigh] too perfect colleague who stole our hair. There is a form of manipulation that no one detects because it looks exactly like kindness. A colleague who holds your coffee before it gets cold, who remembers your birthday, who knows exactly what you like and dislike, who is there when things aren’t going well with the right words, the right timing, that way of looking at you that makes you feel like the most important person in the room.
People with that kind of talent are rare, and when you meet one, you realize how lucky you are, that you’re in a good team in [music], that this job isn’t so bad. Ultimately, what we don’t say to ourselves because you’d have to be paranoid to think it, is that this kindness is a tool, [music] that it has an objective that you did not authorize and that you would never have authorized if you had been asked.
that the little things that this man collects around you, [music] your words, your habits, your objects, are not details of benevolent attention, [music] they are materials. I’m Fiona and you’re following my incredible African stories. A quick message before we continue. I’ve gathered all my best stories in my first book.
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I will contact you personally. Now, let’s get to your story of the day. The meeting room on the third floor was empty at that time. 10 p.m. Nadj Sossou [music] remained standing in front of the whiteboard on which she had pinned everything she had found during the last two hours . [music] Photos taken in secret, lists, a map of the open space with [music] routes drawn in red marker.
She looked at everything. The [music] pattern was there. It had taken 3 weeks to see it in its entirety. But now that she saw him, [music] she could no longer understand how she hadn’t seen him sooner. His phone vibrated. A message from her colleague Faisa: ” When are you coming home?” [music] She looked at the painting.
She thought of Kofie, his smiles, his way of being everywhere, the cup of coffee he once retrieved after she absentmindedly put it [music] in the wrong kitchen. She thought about what she had found in the storage room on the 4th floor. She picked up her phone and [music] texted Fa, “I think we have a problem.” And to understand what Nadj had discovered that evening in that empty meeting room [music] and what it meant for each of the 42 employees of the company, it was necessary to go back to the first day when Kofi [music] had appeared in their lives with his
smile and his two coffees in his hands and that way of remembering everyone’s first name from the first meeting. Cofi Amoa had joined the company 18 [music] months ago. A human resources consulting firm of about forty people located on the third and fourth floors [music] of an office building in the city centre.
Not a large company, large enough to have a hierarchy, departments, backroom conflicts, informal alliances, but small enough that everyone knows each other at least by sight. Coffee had arrived as an associate consultant, attached to the organizational development department . 32 years old, a master’s degree in human resources management [music], 4 years of experience in another company in the sector.
His file was clean. His interview, [music] according to the HR manager who had conducted it, had been remarkable [music] not for any particular academic brilliance , but for a way of listening and reformulating [music] that gave the impression that he had understood what you were saying before you had even finished saying it.
Her first week had been noteworthy. Not because he had done anything extraordinary in his job, the first few days in a new position do not allow [music] for any notable feat. But because by the end of that first week, he seemed to know everyone’s first name, not just their first names. Details. He knew that Lucas from the finance department took his coffee without sugar but with a double dose.
He knew [music] that Martine, the accountant, had a daughter who was starting to walk. He knew that the sales manager Bertrand liked MTH [music] sweets and always had a bowl of them on his desk. People liked it. Most people like to be seen, remembered, and remembered. It makes you feel like you matter . Nadh Sosou, in charge of [music] internal communication, had noticed it from the second day.
She was 31 years old, with an analytical [musical] mind that her colleagues sometimes described as slightly suspicious. She preferred to say rigorous. And she had found Cofi impressive in [music] in a way that wasn’t entirely flattering. Too good to be natural. She had talked about it with Faa, [music] her best friend in the club. Fa had shrugged.
You ‘re jealous because he remembers names better than you. Nadj hadn’t responded to that. She wasn’t jealous. She was attentive. Weeks passed. Kofi integrated with a fluidity which, in [music] looking back afterwards, Nadj herself found suspicious, but which at the time seemed simply natural.
He was helpful without being [music] servile. He did not crush people under his good offices. He offered, you could take it or not, and he didn’t insist . This [musical] subtlety made him less visible as someone who was trying to be liked and more visible as someone who was simply [musical] that way. What Nadj began to observe over the weeks was a specific behavior [music] that took her time to name clearly.
Kofi did not collect in an ostentatious way, not in a way that would have attracted attention if she had not been looking at him with particular attention [music] , but when someone left a pen, he would pick it up and return it not always immediately, sometimes after a delay which implied that he had kept the object for a while. When he went into the kitchens and there were cups lying around, [music] he washed them and put them away.
Ordinary kindness, but he took care to look at which [music] belonged to whom. There was a meeting where someone had left a sticky note on the table with their writing on it, and Kofi had picked it up and slipped it into his pocket instead of throwing it away. Nadj had noted his observations in a document on his computer, a list.
She knew that taken in isolation, each element was perfectly ordinary. She continued anyway. What made her vigilance shift into something more [music] urgent was the day she entered the third-floor toilets and surprised [music] Kofi in the adjoining corridor. He didn’t see her right away. He was crouching near the communal washroom bin and something in the way he was standing, [music] his shoulders tucked in, the precise and discreet gesture of someone who doesn’t want to be seen, stopped him.
He got up. Life smiles. I was looking for my badge. I think [music] he’s fallen. He showed her the badge. He had it in his hand. Nadj said okay and went into the toilet. She thought back [music] to that gesture, crouching with her hand in or near the washroom bin where people threw papers after [music] wiping their hands sometimes of hair from brushes.
She noted it on her list. Nadj spoke to Fa weeks after the toilet incident. [music] They had lunch together as she did two or three times a week in a restaurant 5 minutes from the office. [music] Nadj placed his phone on the table with the list open. Fa read it. She frowned .
How long have you been keeping an eye on Kofi [music]? Six weeks later, Fa gave him back the phone. She was 28, worked in project management and had a natural trust in people that Nadj found [music] sometimes naive and often useful as a counterweight to his own tendency to look for trouble. Nadèj, what you’re describing is a guy [music] who picks up people’s pens and looks for his badge near a trash can and memorizes the first name and habits of 40 people in 3 days. He is in [music] RH.
Memorizing people is literally his job. Faa, there isn’t a single employee in this company whose [music] hasn’t been touched by a personal item since he arrived. I checked it. Fa looked at her. How to check [music]? Nadj hesitated. I made a list by department. The people from whom he recovered something, pen, [music] badge, mug, anything, versus those from whom he recovered nothing.
And there is no zero case. 42 employees, 42 [music] objects, some multiple times. Fa remained silent for a moment. What do you think he’s doing with it? Nadj looked at [music] his plate. She finally voiced the thought she had refused to voice for several weeks. [music] I think he collects personal items deliberately, methodically, and nobody notices because he does it under the guise of kindness. She looked up.
And I think I need to know why. The 4th floor housed the management offices, the room of the general manager Emmanuel Bedi, the offices of his two deputy directors [music] and a storeroom at the end of the corridor whose door was usually closed [music] and which was used for storing old equipment, a broken printer, [music] paper archives of several years, various supplies. Cofi had access to the 4th floor.
[music] His position regularly required him to work with management on organizational projects. [music] There’s nothing unusual about his being up there. Nadj gained access to the reserve through a credible professional pretext. She [music] was looking for archives for an internal communication project and the administrative manager lent her the badge without asking any questions.
She didn’t have a specific time to go and see. She waited for a Friday evening when she knew Coffee was away for the day. An off-site client meeting noted in the shared calendar. She went up at 7pm when the floor was almost empty. She opened the storeroom. The first few rows [music] were in line with what one would expect from a reserve.
Archive box, old equipment under plastic cover, [music] coiled cables, stacked supplies. She went further towards the bottom. In the back left corner, behind a large cardboard box that had to be moved, there was something else, [music] a small installation, about 2 m² , placed directly on the floor.
Threads, not electrical threads, textile threads of different colors [music] arranged according to a precise pattern stretched between small nails [music] driven into a wooden board. On the wires hung at regular intervals, tiny objects, fragments of paper with [music] words written on them, bits of matter that she did not immediately identify, then she understood hair, small pieces [music] of fabric, strips of plastic of a style that resembled the plastic of a cut-out business card.
At the center of the installation, a handwritten list [music] in tight script, of names. She recognized first names, colleagues. [music] She recognized her own. She took photos, lots of photos. She put the box back in place. She left the reserve. [music] She went down to the third floor, entered the empty meeting room and began to organize what she knew.
[music] She spent hours in that meeting room building the diagram on the whiteboard. What she saw before her had a name. She didn’t know it precisely, [music] but she had heard it often enough in her family circle to know what it was essentially about. a web, a linking device, something [music] constructed with personal elements of the people one wanted to influence, fragments of themselves stolen without their consent that created a link between the person and [music] the one who held their fragments.
She was not a believer in the practicing sense of the term. She had never paid much attention to such practices in her personal life. [music] But she had grown up in a family where these things were not legends. [music] They were realities that adults took seriously, that were avoided or protected from with pragmatic efficiency.
[music] And there, in the 4th floor storage room, there were 42 items, one per employee, arranged in a scheme with a [music] list of names in the center. The question was no longer whether it existed? The question was, what was its purpose in this specific context? She reflected on what she had observed [music] over the past 18 months.
The company atmosphere, the conflicts that never really escalated, the salary negotiations that always ended acceptably without anyone really understanding how. The turnover rate is abnormally high for a [music] consulting company. People who complained on Monday morning but returned on Tuesday with a sort of quiet resignation.
She attributed all of this to a good corporate culture and the quality of Emmanuel Bedy’s management. Emmanuel Bedy, she thought [music] of the general manager, of his special relationship with Kofi, not the normal relationship of a director with an associate consultant, [music] something closer. Regular one-on-one meetings whose content was unknown to everyone.
the way Bedy had defended Koffy during a [music] performance evaluation the previous year with a firmness that had seemed. She looked at [music] her whiteboard and a thought came to her that changed the meaning of everything she had built. What if Cofi wasn’t the sponsor ? What if Koffe was just the tool [music]? Fa arrived at the meeting room in twenty minutes.
She had put a coat over her pyjamas and [music] sneakers without lacing them properly. Nadj concluded from this that the message had achieved the desired level of seriousness . She stared [music] at the whiteboard for several minutes without saying anything. She moved in front of the pinned photos, the lists, [music] the map of the open space with its routes traced in red.
She took the time to read. She wasn’t the type to react before understanding [music], which was one of the reasons why Nadj trusted her. Then she said, “Show me the photos of the reserve.” [music] Nadj showed him. Faïsa walked slowly by in silence. [music] She enlarged some images, lingered for a long time on the photo of the installation as a whole, then on the photo of the list of names.
His finger stopped on his own first name. “My name is there.” “Yes.” Fa rendit [musique] le téléphone. She sat down in a meeting chair and remained silent for a moment, both hands flat on the table [music] like someone who needs to feel something solid. What does that do? The question could mean two things. What does it practically change or what [music] does it feel like to know that someone has collected something from you without your knowledge ? Nadj chose to listen to both.
I don’t yet know exactly what that means in a technical sense, but I do know that for the past 18 months, people in this company have been behaving in a way that benefits the company in a way that doesn’t always benefit them individually. [music] Lucas twice refused a competitor’s offer . Martine [music] gave up a raise she deserved after an interview with Beddy from which she emerged convinced she had done the right thing . She paused.
And you, you refused that overseas assignment last year? The mission to the regional office, the one you had said for months that you absolutely wanted to do. Fa looked up. I had my reasons. Do you remember that [music] specifically? Fa is thinking. Her face changed imperceptibly. The way of a person who is looking for a concrete memory and who finds in its [music] place just an impression, a conviction without identifiable foundation.
[music] “The reasons are unclear,” she said softly. “Yes, silence.” Fa said: “And Cofi in all this, he knows what he’s doing.” Nadj looked at his painting. I think [music] he knows that very well. The question is, for whom is he doing it? The weekend allowed them to think separately. Nadj spent Saturday doing almost nothing but thinking.
She spoke to no one other than Fa by message [music] with a caution that would have seemed excessive weeks earlier. She didn’t know if Koffe or Beddy [music] had access to anything in their communication. Probably not. It was not a surveillance company. But the idea that his personal belongings were in a [music] installation somewhere had changed the way he inhabited the space of the box.
She felt she was being watched from within, [music] scrutinized through the objects that had belonged to her, touched from a distance by something she did not control . She tried to recall in her own memory [music] decisions from the last 18 months that had seemed freely made and that she could no longer recall so clearly. [music] There had been a job offer at another company a year earlier, which she [music] had declined with a certainty that now seemed unfounded, and an argument with a colleague that had resolved too easily in a direction that had
favoured her less than the other. At the time, [music] seemed reasonable to him. Now she was looking for the reason and couldn’t find it. On Sunday, she did something [musical] that would have seemed absurd to her three weeks earlier. She called her aunt Agnes who lived in a nearby town and had practical knowledge of this sort of thing [music] passed down from mother to daughter over several generations.
She described what she had found without going into too much professional detail. [music] Her aunt listened. She said, “The thread? How is it arranged?” Nadj sent him a photo. Her aunt was silent for a moment. Then she said, “Who did this? This is [music] what he does. It’s clean work. It’s serious, it’s effective.
What you’re describing is a web of compliance. Not to hurt people, [music] to make them docile, cooperative, unable to leave or resist. The principle, [music] is that each personal item creates a link between the person and the one holding the web. With enough links, the person becomes difficult to move, like someone with invisible ties.
They don’t know [music] they’re being held. They think they’re free. But every time they really try to leave, something inside them resists without [music] understanding why.” Nadezhda said, “Can it be undone?” Her aunt said yes, but first the items must be removed from the web and retrieved. If the items remain, the link remains.
Nadezhda said, “If I remove the web without the items?” [Music] Auntie said, “Then you just broke the setup. He or whoever he [music] works for can build another one .” Nadj hung up and stared at her ceiling. She arrived at the office Monday morning with a [music] plan. She needed to go into the stockroom a second time to retrieve the items.
She needed Cofi to be out [music], and if possible, Beddy too. And she needed someone to be in the loop, a witness, someone [music] she could send the photos to if anything went wrong . Fa [music] was that witness. They had agreed on a simple protocol. Nadj would text her at regular intervals. If she stopped responding, Fa would call [music] someone.
The opportunity presented itself on Wednesday. Coffei had external training across town, confirmed on the calendar. Bedy was away for two days, a client trip he had announced the previous [music] week. Nadj waited until the end morning. She went up to the 4th floor. [music] What she didn’t know was that she wasn’t the only one keeping watch.
The storage room was open when she arrived. Not just unlocked, [music] the door was ajar, a few centimeters, like someone had just passed by or was waiting for them. She stopped in the hallway, didn’t listen. She pushed [music] the door open, the storage room was there, the boxes, the equipment [music] in covers, and in the back, the installation still there.
But something had changed. The list of names in the center was no longer [music] alone. There was an additional piece of paper lying on top of it. She approached. The paper was [music] blank. On it, in printed script, were a few words. I knew you were looking. It’s part of the plan. Nadj [music] stood motionless in front of the paper.
She reread it two times, three times. She was looking for the ambiguity, the [music] way which could mean something other than what it seemed to say. There wasn’t. Someone knew she was looking. [music] From the beginning or only recently, she couldn’t know, and it was [music] part of a plan. Her investigation wasn’t a surprise. It was [music] anticipated, perhaps even intentional.
She felt something shift in her understanding of the situation. The floorboards were giving way slightly beneath a logic she thought she had controlled. She took out her phone to send a message to Fa [music] in protocol. Reserve. Message in 10x minutes, or call. [music] The reserve door closed behind her, not abruptly, with the quiet click of a door [music] closing normally.
She turned around. The key wasn’t in the lock. There was a combination lock she hadn’t noticed, built into the handle. She tried the handle closed. She looked at her phone, one bar of signal. She sent the message to Faa, delivered. She waited for the read confirmation. [music] She waited. 5 minutes 10. The network bar disappeared, reappeared, disappeared again.
She sat [music] on a piece of cardboard and waited. The door opened 10 minutes later. Emmanuel Bediy [music] was there, the CEO who had been away for two days, apparently returning early. [music] He looked at her with an expression she had known for two years. Calm, composed, [music] slightly amused. The look of someone who is always one step ahead and makes no secret of it.
That look, [music] she had always found reassuring in ordinary professional settings. In that corridor at that hour, he was something else. He said, “Nadège, we can talk in my office.” His office overlooked the street through a large bay window, the city in the background, [music] that frame that CEOs consciously construct to reinforce a certain impression of power.
Bedy sat down [music] behind his desk. Nadj remained standing. He said, “Sit down!” She sat down. [music] He folded his hands on the desk. He wasn’t taking notes, he wasn’t looking at a screen. [music] He was watching her with that quiet concentration which, in another circumstance [music] would have seemed attentive and in this one seemed simply calculated.
He said [music], “Did you find Kofi’s installation?” Not a question. “Yes.” [music] “And you’ve more or less figured out what it’s about?” ” Yes,” he nodded slowly. You’re faster than I thought. I would have thought it would take you a few more weeks. [music] Nadj looked at him. Were you aware of this from the beginning? I was the one who recruited Kofi.
Specifically for that. She waited. Bedy got up and went to the window. He looked at the street for a moment before turning around . This company has been in existence for 16 years. [music] In the first five years, I lost three key collaborators who [music] left for competitors, taking clients with them.
I had two internal conflicts that almost cost me the [music] company and a strike that paralyzed the entire fourth quarter of a year. He went back to sit down. I tried the classic methods, [music] loyalty bonuses, career plans, benefits. It helps, but it’s not enough. People are leaving. People are resisting.
People organize against you when it suits their interests . He looked at her. Kofice [music] is much simpler. It creates attachment, loyalty, not fear. That creates resistance, attachment. People don’t know why they stay. They feel good here. They are unable to leave. Nadj said [music] in a voice she controlled: “You manipulate 42 people without their knowledge.
” Bed said, “I run a company. It’s not the same thing.” He gave a very slight smile. “To your knowledge, has anyone in this company been mistreated? [music] Is anyone suffering?” Nadj thought of Lucas who had refused two better offers [music], of Martine and her raise. to Faisa and the mission abroad. She said, “You took away their ability to choose freely.
I gave them a stable company, [music] a secure job, a team that operates without their consent.” He looked at her. Something changed slightly in his expression. Not embarrassment, but evaluation. “Why do you think I’m receiving you in this office instead of simply telling you that you haven’t [music] seen anything?” Nadj understood before he finished his sentence.
She said, “You want me to join the operation?” Bed said, “You ‘re the best [music] observer I have in this company.” You found something that no one else has found in 18 months, and you found it methodically, documented, [music] without telling anyone other than a friend who can’t do much on her own.” He placed his [music] hands flat on the desk.
“I’m looking for someone who can work with Kofi on the observational aspect.” [music] Someone who sees people, who understands the dynamics, who can identify when a bond weakens or when [music] someone starts to develop resistance. Nadj speaks and we exchange ideas. You stay, [music] you’re fine, you go upstairs and you don’t talk about anything to anyone.
The silence in the executive office [music] was different from the silence in the common rooms, thicker, more self-aware [music]. Nadèj looked through the bay window at the city, at the people in the street below walking without knowing. She thought of Faa, [music] of the message that had been delivered but had gone unanswered for 20 minutes.
She thought of her aunt Agnes and what she had told her. If the objects remain there, the connection remains. [music] She thought of the list of names in the center of the installation, her own name on it. She says [music] “I need to think.” Bedid, of course, take until tomorrow morning. She left the office.
She went down to the third floor. Fa was waiting for him in the corridor. Pale, arms crossed. They entered an empty meeting room . Nadj told him everything. The reserve, the word B. The proposal. Fa listened without interrupting, her eyes widening. [music] When Nadj had finished, Fa said: “What are you going to do?” Nadèj had been thinking in the elevator.
A minute and a half is not much time to make [music] a decision of this importance. But she had a way of thinking that was quick when pressure demanded it. She said, “I’m going to say yes.” Fa looked at it to gain access to the facility to retrieve our items. Fa [music] said softly. And then Nadèch said, “Do you remember that you told me 2 years ago that you wanted to launch your own business?” “Yes, do you still want to?” Fa looked at her.
Then she said slowly, [music] “You want to dismantle the web and leave, taking customers with you? I want to reclaim our freedom of choice for everyone here. And if after that people decide to stay, that’s their real choice. If some decide to come with us to a new structure, [music] that’s their real choice too. Fa said Beddy isn’t going to like this.
Nadj [music] said Beddy gave me the key to his device. She stood up. It wasn’t very smart of her. The next [music] morning, she knocked on Emmanuel Béi’s door and told him she accepted. He smiled that knowing smile. [music] He gave her access to the storeroom and introduced her to Kofi, whom he received with his usual neutrality [music], the neutrality of someone who is never really surprised either.
The dismantling of the web took [music] three weeks, methodically, item by item. Retrieved, returned to its owner under one pretext [music] or another. Thread by thread, removed during the nights Nadj was alone in the storeroom. [music] And one morning months later, 42 people woke up feeling strangely light without [music] knowing why.
Two resigned within the week, five asked for raises. [music] Three started responding to headhunter calls. Fa launched her structure [music] 6 months later. Four former colleagues joined her of their own accord . Bedy never knew exactly what [music] had happened. He had good oversight of the people in control.
But Nadj had learned from him how to monitor and she had been more thorough. Kofy left the company months later without explanation. He sent a polite email to management and disappeared. Nadj did n’t try to find out where he went. Some questions were better left unanswered. [music] There’s a difference between a place where you feel good and a place where We have been rendered incapable of feeling bad.
The difference isn’t visible from the outside. It isn’t measured in annual satisfaction reports. You sometimes feel it on an ordinary morning when something inside you wonders if what you’re feeling [music] really comes from you. Bédie had built something efficient, a perfect retention tool, discreet, [music] without apparent violence, and he had made the mistake that all those who underestimate the people they seek to control make.
He had thought Nadj’s intelligence was a risk to neutralize [music] when it was the only thing that could make his system better. He had opened the door for him. Beware of those who are too attentive to your preferences. [music] Not all attention. Genuine attention is one of the best things that [music] exists between people.
But attention that collects, attention that remembers everything without you needing to repeat yourself, attention that never misses a thing. Sometimes, what we take for A gift is an investment, and investments always pay off. Thank you for reading this story. If it made you want to see that overly perfect colleague at the office in a new light, subscribe and share it.
See you soon for the next story. Mr.
