The Cost of Being Lucky

How the workplace politics all started

They say that you attain success when you’re made of hard work and good luck. However, what if the good luck you stumble upon belongs to someone else?

I am Amara Okezie, and I’ve asked myself that question every single day of my career life.

I wasn’t trying to steal anyone’s spotlight. If anything, I was the understudy, the type who did well enough to be noticed, but never loudly enough to shine. That was Ifeoma’s gift. She wasn’t flashy, but her brilliance was in the detail, the type of woman who would spend hours perfecting a single sentence in a pitch deck because she understood that words could close million-dollar deals.

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But life… life doesn’t pay genius necessarily. Sometimes it pays to be there. And that, unfortunately, was where I belonged.

It was April. The Global Brand Summit. The pitch of the year. Ifeoma’s pitch. Weeks of working herself to death.

But that morning, her mother got sick in Surulere. She sent a frantic message: “Amara, please tell them… I’m not going to make it.”

The agency director stormed into my office.
“You’ve seen her slides. You’re young. You’re smart. You’re speaking in an hour.”

I stood frozen.
“Sir, I just glanced at them—”
“No whining. Pull your socks up.”

And pull my socks up I did.

Adrenaline-rushing, lights blinding, standing in that conference room, I fought fear and teased it into fire. Words flowed out. The audience hung on. When I’d finished, the applause thundered. The client signed the largest deal our agency had ever made.

The next day, the Guardian front page announced:

“Young PR Guru Shines.”

My face on the business pages. Not Ifeoma’s. Mine.

A few days thereafter, when she returned, relief in her eyes at her mother getting better, the office echoed with congratulations…. on me.

“You were amazing, Amara.”
“You rescued us.”
“This is your moment.”

Ifeoma merely smiled, that tired, soft smile. But when our eyes met, I saw it… the shadow of something breaking.

I told myself I’d set it right. I didn’t.

Six months later, it happened again. A multinational pitch. This time, officially Ifeoma’s.

Presentation morning, fate struck again, her brother in a car crash. Another frantic text. Another vacant chair. Another anticipatory look from the director.

“Amara, you know what to do.”

And I did it. Seamless. Convincing. The client signed. The room applauded. Another headline bore my name.

But this time, Ifeoma did not return quickly. She took a leave. Gossip ruled the office:
“She’s unreliable.”
“Her family soap opera always disrupts work.”

No one recalled that she had built the very pitches I had presented.

When Ifeoma returned months later, she was different… Sharper. Colder. She no longer freely shared her thoughts. She no longer smiled at me.

One night, after a late meeting, she cornered me in the parking lot.
“Do you like it?” she said.
“What?”
“Having on my work like skin on you.”

I stammered. “I never asked for this—”
“No,” she said, voice trembling, “but you never said no to it either.”

She turned around and walked away. Her heels clanged like a sentence I couldn’t escape.

It was about this time that I started seeing Tunde, one of our clients, a charming, driven kind of guy who made the world grow just by looking at you in the eye.

One evening, he said to me, “Amara, you are incredible. I have never seen someone so courageous on stage.”

I open my mouth to correct him, to tell him the truth… that the brilliance he had admired wasn’t just mine. I don’t. I let it roll over me, selfish and beautiful.

Until weeks later, I discovered Ifeoma and Tunde had a history. They briefly dated years ago. When she spotted us at a gala, she became cold stone eyes.

She didn’t say a word to me that evening. She didn’t need to. The silence was a judgment.

Then there was the International PR Awards. We were winners. My name was announced. Cameras snapped flashes. The hall gave a burst of applause.

But out of sight, I found Ifeoma alone, her knuckles white as she gripped a glass of champagne.

“You know what the universe gave me, Amara?” she panted.
“What?” I asked.

“Bad luck. That’s what I got. Misfortune. And you—you’ve profited off it. Tell me, how does it feel to bask in borrowed glory?”

Her words cut me open.

That night, I could not sleep. Shame seared my chest. Success had never been sweeter.

It didn’t stop there.

Months afterward, a lawsuit was filed on the agency’s table. A client accused us of intellectual piracy… the campaign we pitched (the one I pitched) bore an uncanny resemblance to the work of another agency.

The director freaked out. Blame was pointed in all directions. But Ifeoma… Ifeoma kept her cool.

She spread out her drafts, timestamps, receipts. The facts were straightforward: the campaign was hers right from the start, original and concise. The “stealing” was from the way I’d done some improvisation in the pitch… inserting examples that I thought were great but had unconsciously cribbed from another agency’s ideas.

The courtroom saw me lose my grip. Journalists whispered. Tunde’s eyes no longer looked at me with awe but horror.

And in that moment, Ifeoma might have destroyed me. Might have shown the world I was nothing but a shadow in borrowed light.

But she didn’t.

She cleared out the agency with a sweep. Defended me. Smiled, too weak, exhausted, almost pathetic.

And I realized then: I was never Ifeoma’s rival. I was her mishap in the web of workplace politics.

Epilogue

They still call me lucky. They see my promotions, my covers on the magazines, my speeches.

But luck is a snake. It does not always taste like blessing. Sometimes it tastes like theft with a bow on it.

And when I think of Ifeoma, the woman whose “bad luck” became my good luck, I wonder: did the universe bless me to be a star, or a thief?

Maybe both.

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