9 to 5

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Before working online from home came into existence, 9 to 5 was the only way most people earned a living. Luckily for me, I grew up in a generation where that isn’t the only option anymore because you see, I would really suck at it.

I hate the 9 to 5 job and this isn’t because I’m trying to act woke and be like “working from home is the best” (even though I know it is) but I actually have a personal reason why I hate it. All my life, I’ve only worked one 9 to 5 job and I know that to you guys, that might not be enough for me to criticize it but I think it’s enough for me.

My job back then wasn’t even 9 to 5, it was 5:30am to 10pm, it was crazy. I remember our manager getting pissed at us whenever we showed up by 6am and yet when it gets to 10pm, that’s when we start packing up and by the time we’re done, it’s already some few minutes past ten.

You guys might be wondering what work that is and a lot of you might think that I’m lying after I tell you what work it is but believe me, I’m saying nothing but the truth here. The job was me working as a pump attendant for five days a week and two days off with a monthly pay of about ten thousand naira which is about $25 today.

Back then, the pay wasn’t really an issue for me because I didn’t really have anything to do with the money, but the working hours was what was a problem for me. Especially due to the fact that another filling station opposite us which was paying its pump attendants higher, had a work shift of one day on, one day off.

Yet I still continued working there because I hadn’t seen any other job vacancies and I didn’t want to stay idol at home anymore. My first month at the job went well. If you’ve ever worked as a pump attendant then you will know that sometimes, while doing our final account for the day, we end up running some losses, well that didn’t happen to me unlike my colleagues who lost some money.

The second month started and everything just went upside down. By the time I was done with the second month, I had already lost about eleven thousand naira, which was more than the amount I was getting paid to work there. My boss had told me that he knew I wasn’t the one who stole the money but when I told my parents about it, they asked if I wanted to continue working there because my boss had asked me to continue while paying back the money bit by bit every month but I didn’t want that so I told him to just not pay me for that month and that I quit.

On the day I went to return the uniform, he had called me into his office and handed me some cash before I left. Few weeks later, I found out it was one of my colleagues who stole from me, I had rushed room to go get something and she had sold some petrol with my pump without giving me the money.

After all of that experience, I decided that working 9 to 5 was simply just another form of slavery, the only difference here was that we were getting paid ( I think).