It all started with a motorcycle.

Our driver wanted to buy a brand new motorcycle. The price tag was 6x his salary but since it was a 2-years to pay deal at Php 3,500 a month payment.

That’s around 23% of his monthly salary.

“How can he afford it?” I said. “That’s a lot of cash out. A preloved bike would cost just half the amount.”

“It’s okay,” my husband consoled me. “Guys always want something that’s pogi (handsome). His wife is working anyway, so they can very well afford it.”

So our driver bought the bike.

Every month, he is forced to pay the installment or forfeit the bike.

As expected, money became tight.

When money becomes tight, the wife became more of a nagger. This usually happens when you have a kid and another one on the way.

It became an unhappy home. Who wants a pregnant wife who screams at you all the time?

Then my husband gave the driver a postpaid line. “To make sure he has load so I can reach him the whole day.”

Great — so now the driver has load and Internet. 

Understandably, given his unhappy home, the driver found excitement via messaging women from Facebook. Since his boss was paying for his load, our driver could now flirt with abandon.

Whereas Internet used to cost him Php 50 for three days, it was now free. So our driver found old loves, created fake accounts, and messaged them online.

Apparently, one believed that he was in an unhappy marriage and boinked him. “It’s okay,” our driver winked to his coworker. “I used protection this time.”

Our driver came to a point that he would lie about his work schedule. He usually gets off early at 3pm on school days. His wife didn’t know. So he would spend late afternoons chasing after women.

Of course, one day, he got caught. 

Everyone does get caught eventually.

For our driver, it was a message sent by his girlfriend to his phone that his wife happened to see.

All hell broke loose — he was kicked out of the house. Cried a bit. And his children got into the mess because the mother told the kids that their father didn’t love them because he chose her over them.

He took two days off to solve his family problem.

He was a lot quieter.

The wife forgave him, only to kick him out once again after she caught him with a second Facebook account, the one with the chicks.

Oh well, so now he has an unhappy home.

And I want to tell my husband, “I told you so.” 

But what for?

We all know where the problem lay. He was happier when he didn’t have the freaking phone, load, and brand new motorcycle.

It’s a bunch of wrong personal decisions that brought him to an unhappy home, a reduced bank account, and instability.

“Well, it was an unhappy home anyway,” my husband said.

No, it wasn’t.

He was happier when he didn’t have enough money.

He was happier when he commuted to work.

He was happier when he didn’t have a phone to find a sex buddy.

He was happier when he didn’t have free internet.

As bosses, we need to be more vigil in giving our people liberties that are inevitably harmful to them. If we care about our staff, we need to be more careful on how one bad decisions end up to the other.

The unhappy home started with an expensive acquisition and led to a broken family.

Next time, we should do better in becoming good bosses to our staff.