Language is an interesting thing, and more so are traditional phrases which are widely used in each and every culture. One of my favorite phrases is in Arabic, and it says:

Kul Kalb Biji Yomo

كُلّ كَلْب بِيجِي يُومُه

Apparently in the Arabic culture a dog has a negative perception. And saying on someone that they behave like a dog doesn’t indicate they are cute or loyal… it means they are filthy and unreliable. While these animals are widely considered by many Western cultures to be ‘man’s best friend’, the Koran describes them as unhygienic. Muslims will therefore avoid touching a dog unless they can wash their hands immediately afterwards, and in some countries they will almost never keep a dog in their own home.

So what does it mean? well, it has quite a powerful meaning:

Every dog shall have his day

In other words, every bad person shall have his punishment eventually…

Now, you must have an image of someone you really don’t like – in your head right now. Unfortunately not everybody around us are good people who treat their peers with respect and good heart. Consequently, some of them will irritate us in such a bad way, that we will regretfully find ourselves wishing them some unpleasant wishes in return.

So, here’s a story. This blog started about a year ago, when a sequence of events led me to nearly quit my job. What eventually happened was that I moved to another side of the business altogether. Why? because I couldn’t stay there anymore. For a family business, where I treated them like my own family, my reward was for them to treat me like sh*t. Effectively it was one particular person who was appointed at the time as my manager.

A person like him with such an abusive management style should not be allowed to work with people, let alone manage them. When I raised my concerns about working with him, I was shut down as if the problem was with me and I should be more adjustable to different management styles. I resolved my agony by moving on, but listen to what happened in the following twelve months.

When you give someone with such personality – antagonistic, egocentric and self-centered – the keys to lead other people and control their everyday professional lives, you are setting up the situation for an explosion. Apparently his abuse towards other people, effectively everyone in the organisation, was eventually well observed. But it was only thanks to an internal and anonymous survey that revealed the extent of his abuse across the board. At that point, following a clear professional advice from the third party who ran the survey, the company had no other choice than to let him go.

The critical point here, though, was that his departure wasn’t just shooshed as one would expect. The contrary had occurred – the director of the board called out a general meeting with all employees and used this incident to emphasize the organisation’s Values and how much his behavior was NOT in line with the basic values of Respect and Care for each other, which are meant to bring a group of individuals to operate as a Team.

So there you go, as the old phrase says, “Kul Kulb Biji Yomo”. The arrogant piece of sh*t who thought he was at the top of the world and treated others like they were nothing, has now been kicked out and publicly shamed. Justice has been made.