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The Scam

Dear OTTH readers, how are we? Well, I'm very fine just in case you were wondering how I was too. Today, I'm going to be talking about something that has been bothering me but I never really had the inspiration to write about it until something happened to Jerrey's friend which inspired this. Actually, Jerrey told me to write about it since God-knows-when and since I had a similar experience, I thought, why not? So here we are.

Jerrey's friend was told that he "got" a job with a customer care agency whose name I never cared to ask for because we have them all over. So his friend got a job and was told to bring 53 thousand naira for training after which they were probably going to decide if he was fit for the job and that was the same thing one other agency told my friend Funmi, maybe it's the same agency sef, who knows. I'm a customer care representative myself and I wasn't asked to pay a dime for training, infact, I was paid for it. 53 thousand naira is even enough to start up a small business. I remember going for one supposed chat/interview and it ended up being a gathering of the young and old learning under the feet of God-knows-who. There were people there older than 40, a lot were dressed in a lot of funny ways I wouldn’t consider as official e.g. jeans, sleeveless dresses, berets, etc. we were even more than hundred and were addressed at the same time.

It was really funny, I can still remember the guy who was trying to put the projector in place telling us not to talk to each other and also to keep our phones. The guy wore a well ironed obviously old suit and walked like he had shoulder pads - like a boss. Then came another guy came to address us looking as posh as a porsche itself. He began to tell us things that didn't concern us like how much he cuts his hair, how many people can't afford it, how much he bought his wristwatch, bla bla blablashh. Then he began talking about how his jobhunt, how he printed over a thousand copies of his CV and went from place to place submitting them and got no response, in my mind, I was like "ahn ahn, stop lying (supposing it ws true)" because I know that there was no way no place would not offer him anything, no matter how meagre but what's my own?
He went on to talk about how he was working as an attendant at a filling station for almost nothing but he got tips bla bla and while selling fuel one day, he met a customer who changed his life (nollywood scenario), the one who founded where we all were. He referred to the man as "my diamond" and repeatedly said "God bless my diamond" and instructed us to do same. He began to hype the man, how he took him from grace to grass and showed us pictures of the man on different trips abroad (like it was going to change anything, not to me though). While he was talking and talking for more than an hour, the "diamond" walked in and started another round of show-off, he spoke about how he travelled here and there with pictures as proof, he also showed us his "white" fiancee. He told us about the 80 million naira house he was trying to buy (like we've not touched "big" money before), he just went to and fro. The job was supposed to be 120,000 naira monthly take home pay where we would work just thrice in a week and also go on vacations outside the country at least once in a year. I felt ahn ahnn, just like that but I just kept watching and sipping lipton like Kermit the frog. Finally he said we needed to pay 5,000 naira on the spot for our offer letter, ID card, bla bla which those who paid would get the next day. Like really, we've gotten the jobs if we pay 5,000 naira? A job that has no description?

Some paid, some said tomorrow, don't ask me what I did. I did my own investigations and discovered it was GNLD, I don't know what GNLD stands for but job seekers should know what it is about. I heard they're the ones all those people who sell medicines in buses and all report to, that's how they get their profit, bla bla. Job hunting in Nigeria requires a lot of "sense" because a lot of these so-called employers are scammers. They're willing to take away from you that small "change" you use in moving from place to place in search of jobs. We just all have to be careful so we won't fall victim to those kind of people. To those of us who are still job hunting either because we do not have jobs yet or because we want better jobs than the ones we already have, let's not invest in a job we've not gotten. Beware of scammers, they're everywhere. Better still, create jobs if you can or search carefully because I know being an entrepreneur isn't something you wake up one morning to decide. It requires a lot other things especially money and some of us need these jobs to raise our capital hence we have to be very careful about how we go about it so we do not fall into the wrong hands.


Facebook - Odusola Aanuoluwapo
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