An assistance that became a snare....hive naija prompt #20

Hello friends on hive and hive naijans, hope you're all doing great.

Everyone born into this world needs a level of assistance. From birth to death, you would need the help of others to see you through certain times and things.

Some persons render assistance with out any form of condition attached while others shamelessly seek for something in return for the assistance being rendered not minding if the one that needs the help can meet up with the said conditions.

A very rare case of assistance gone wrong (permit me to call it that) is the one I am about to share with you all.....

_{a quick selfie at work}

Growing up, I feared no evil, this was courtesy of my dad. I was his pride and princess, thus nothing evil or hurtful came near me. I lived a sheltered life then. This caused me to believe that the world was all a bed of roses, thus making me easily trusting of people.

In 2006, my family joined a Pentecostal church close to our house, it was just across the road from where we lived. I had recently finished secondary school but I had not ventured into the labour market yet as the plan was to further my education immediately post jamb results came out.

It so happened that the results came out but my name was not on the list for those offered admission. This meant that I had to wait till the next year to write another jamb examination. That was the period when the general overseer of the Pentecostal church we had just joined announced on a service day that he would be offering jobs to interested youths in his newly opened shoe making company. He promised a mouth watering salary scale which started from thirty thousand naira for casuals to one hundred and fifty thousand naira for staff cum managers. He claimed this was his way of assisting the youths in empowering them.

_{newly employed}

Believe me, at that time the economy was still fair and so that amount of money on a regular monthly basis was succulent and mouth watering. Moreover I overly trusted him as a "man of God" I didn't think twice before putting my name down as an interested candidate. I even became a fervent evangelist of his gospel, spreading it far and wide to interested persons and at the end a total of 250 youths put down their names while 50 older men and women applied for the managerial positions.

_{me at work not too pleased}

I resumed work with the others in January 2007, after a vigorous and tense interview. We were all eager to perform so that by month end we would receive our renumeration with pride. Lo and behold, at the end of the first month, what I received as salary was seven thousand naira, haba, this was below my expectancy. He (the G.O) pleaded with us to be patient claiming there was no sales and he paid us from his pocket. We who were his members "understood" but others did not and so gradually some resigned to seek better opportunities.

This thing continued for a year and by the next January, he paid twelve thousand naira. I wasn't happy with the way things were going but I couldn't leave. I was not only a member of his church but I was in the choir and was the youth secretary, so my hands were tied. I thought that was going to be the only issue but I thought wrong cos by 2009 he moved his base to Abuja and employed pastors for the church and only visited quarterly. This was the beginning of our woes as salaries were no longer regular and he began ro owe workers periodically. He would pay January salary in April, February in May and like that. This meant a lot of debt but he never cared.

_{my work}

He would even stand on the altar and declare that he is not owing anyone salary to the shock of myself and other workers. This continued for a long time. He raised our pay with 500 naira or 1000 naira depending on his mood. To cut the long story short, I ended up working for him for ten years and the last salary I received was #18000. It was like scales fell from my brain, I found the courage to finally leave his company but I had lost a lot such as time, energy, strength and my educational goals were suspended. I encountered mamy problems from him in church after I left his company, it was so much that I had to relocate from that part of the city to another place entirely to have my peace.

This taught me a life lesson never ever to work with or for someone that I am familiar with no matter the promises attached. Be it a friend, pastor or a relative, everyone should maintain their lane. I also stopped trusting people easily too.

All images used are mine.

Thanks for reading... Shalom