That One Time
I've written about the one time I got a job after high-school and how much that job sucked but what I didn't do was give you guys full detail about most of my day to day activity during that time so that you guys can see why I hope never to find myself in such a situation where I feel my only hope of surviving will be me working in a place like that ever again.
Like I said in one of my previous blogs, I got the job after I was done with high-school, while waiting for schools to offer me an admission. I had gone for an interview for the role of a pump attendant, a job I had happily accepted after the man told me he was pleased with my character and the kind of man he thinks I am and I could start the next Monday.
I remember going back home that day feeling very excited. I told my parents and my siblings about the good news and everyone was excited for me. The manager who conducted the interview had told me that I would be working five days a week, from 5:30am in the morning to 10:00pm at night, so you see, this wasn't even the usual 9 to 5 kind of work, it was way more than that while the pay on the other hand was way less.
We were being paid ten thousand naira a month, which is about $15 in today's black markets rate while another filling station directly opposite of ours were paying their workers fifteen thousand naira (about $22) monthly and they had shifts, which meant that a person works from 6am to 2pm and then another takes over till 10pm that night.
I saw all of this and yet still accepted the job because I was desperate to leave home and work. So I started working. They were days when I would get to work and then fall asleep simply because I didn't get a good night rest the previous night and whenever a vehicle honked at me, I would jump on my feet with sleepy eyes to go sell fuel for them. And that was when I started to make mistakes.
And then one day, at the end of the day's work, after sales was over, my manager started to do account for the amount of fuel I had sold and that was when we realized that an amount a little bit above $15 was missing from my sales, I had misplaced my entire salary for a month in one day. I was devastated.
I had no idea how it happened, if I sold fuel for someone and forgot to take money from them or if someone had actually helped to sell fuel and didn't give me the money. Unfortunately, it was my money that was lost and I had to bare the consequences, so my manager told me the bad news, that he will be deducting the money from my salary. I would not be getting paid my first month working there.
The whole thing was so heartbreaking that when I got home that night, everyone knew something was wrong just by the look on my face. I finally told my parents that I no longer wanted to work there and that I was just going to work for the rest of the month to clear off my debt and that was it.
Everyone understood my reason for wanting to leave, even my boss did when I eventually told him about it and he felt sorry for me and gave me some money when I was leaving. But fast forward to some weeks later after I've left, I got the news that the money that had gone missing, the money that made me quit my job, had indeed been stolen from me by a colleague. The manager found out and she ran.
I didn't know if I was suppose to be upset or not because truth be told, I was going to leave anyway. That job was killing me and that is why I pray never to find myself in such a situation ever again.