As we try to improve on customer service in restaurants and hotels, we are sometimes faced with unpleasant cases of food poisoning. It should be taboo in this day and age to find cases of food poisoning! But several years ago, it was not entirely surprising to find funny looking eating joints which contributed to food poisoning incidents. I remember that during the late 90s, Aggrey and I used food poisoning to hatch a plan that would see us get rid of our harsh boss. We worked out fervently on getting her to pack up her belongings and head back to her home. This is because she had proved to be such a miserable dictator from the word ‘go’. We had coined her the “Iron Lady” tag. When she was sent to head this NGO where Aggrey and I were employees, she introduced sweeping changes which were not appealing to us. That is why we engaged some gears and thought of a nice plan on how to send her off in a polite way. That is how we found ourselves at Gatenga for a staff function which would have normally been held at Mille Collines hotel if our previous expatriate boss had still been around. But being the miser that she was, our new boss ordered us to hold the function at a cheap place. The ideal place for us therefore was at Gatenga for Zingalo and Primus. So, once at Gatenga, Aggrey and I befriended the cooks. We told them to select the VIP plate meant for our boss and proceed to spray it with a lot of hot chili. Then we encouraged our boss to take a cocktail of Primus, U.G and Guinness-coke. So after several liters mixed up with the hot Zingalo in her tummy, a riot became inevitable. She started to scream in so much pain as she asked people around to take her to the “Ladies”. But people around her were not keen on helping. They were just minding their own business and dancing away to the Dombolo sounds. It was therefore left for Aggrey and me to find means of transporting the boss to the nearest hospital. But as it was already midnight, we could not find any clinic operating. We made the rounds all over town but all clinics had the ‘closed’ sign on. All this time, our boss was yelling and screaming. He mouth was feeling so hot! Her stomach was boiling in pain. Her head was pounding. She was calling out names of her relatives to come to her rescue. We moved up and down in the NGO vehicle looking for a solution but with very little success. When we found one Pharmacy open, we became relieved. But our relief did not last so long because the Pharmacist claimed that he could not give us medicine without a doctor’s prescription. We begged the Pharmacist for leniency claiming that our boss was just suffering from a simple food disorder “Please give her some Paracetamol tablets Sir”. So out of sympathy, the Pharmacist dished out some Paracetamol tablets. Our boss gulped in 2 tablets hoping that the pain would disappear. However, the pain just doubled after the 2 tablets got mixed up with the Zingalos in her stomach. That meant that the screams also increased as we drove through town in the middle of the night. For Aggrey and I, the screams were like music in our ears. We knew that our plan had worked to perfection. We were sure that this dictator would pack up her bags the next morning and vamoose. But being the iron lady that she was, our boss woke up very early and waited for us at the offices. She demanded some tough explanations. Who was the owner of that infamous Gatenga Pub? Did they have a license to operate? And who is the best lawyer in town? Because it is time to sue that pub for poisoning its clients. We started to panic. We had thought that our plan was working. Instead of escorting our boss back to the airport, here we were escorting her to the best lawyer in town.
