Fool me twice…. Guess you already completed it yourself. I will just make my story snappy.
This part of my story would have had a black-and-white effect if this was a movie.
I can deal with a lot of things but being a fool isn’t just one of them. On 27th April 2017, Emeka came to the shop where I was a sales boy at Crowther Avenue. We talked and gossiped, and then he told me he would help me secure a job where he was working. Well, I didn’t even know where.
After about an hour, he remembered something and decided to make a call but his airtime was exhausted. Since there was nowhere to buy recharge vouchers around, he pleaded with me to recharge his line from my bank account so that he would give me cash. He counted the money in front of me as he talked.
“How much own?” I asked, expecting to hear a hundred Naira.
“A thousand, five hundred”, he replied.
Though I wasn’t too comfortable, I sent him a thousand, five hundred Naira worth of airtime.
“My money”, I stretched my hand with my palm opened in anticipation.
“So you really want to collect money from me?” He said with a peal of annoying laughter. He wasn’t joking, he went home without paying for the airtime.
Last night, around 10pm, the security guy brought someone to me, and behold it was Emeka, he wanted to pay for a room and a plate of egusi soup and eba. This is where high taste meets high tension. He actually intended to pay the next day, I know he explained why, but I only saw his lips move, I stopped hearing him the moment he said he would pay later. It wasn’t difficult for me to approve his request but when I opened my mouth to say yes, something different came out.
“Please Sir, there is a company policy here and it can never be altered”
Finally, he dropped the bomb like a lot of people do,
“Nadic it’s me o, don’t you trust me? Have I ever failed you before?”
I cannot really remember my reply but I’m sure I remember seeing him walk out of the gate after standing for over an hour. He thought standing for an hour would be a perfect emotional blackmail to prick my conscience, but we were both standing.
I was standing on our supposed company policy.
