Money sweet! My first encounter with big salary
I have made it a tradition to write about myself on my birthday, albeit in snippets, till I’m ready for a full autobiography.
Story, story… Once upon a time…
“Hello, Kola Muhammed,” a mail came in, to my amazement.
I have email subscriptions and I know the time they come in, mostly in the mornings. A 4pm mail wasn’t part of the arrangement and certainly not with a ‘We want to hire you’ subject.
“Hope you’re well,” the message continued. “I’m Dayo, We have certain issues at our company and we need your media and editorial skills to plug these gaps…”
I read the mail again and saw that they were actually serious. Okay, let’s give this a try. It’s for a limited period of time — three months.
I put a call through, the responsibilities and KPIs were explained, I was pretty comfortable with them. We got to the most important part — salary. I was already bored with the big, big English being rolled out as role expectations. I just couldn’t tell the HR guy say make una leave all these heavy vocabularies. How much una wan pay?
“The budget for this role is pretty much fixed. We will pay you a net salary of N300k monthly.” I couldn’t believe my ears. N300k? Really? I heard him clearly but I couldn’t believe it. I asked again, “Sorry, I didn’t get that. How much again please?” He repeated the figure.
Within a second, my tummy had erupted, my heart was already beating at double the usual speed and my head was on its way to exploding. Some months before, I was being paid N55k for the glorified title of a Senior Reporter. What would be the increase percentage?
In another second, I calmed myself down, and I told the person on the other end of the phone — with a tone that seemed like ‘I’ll manage your N300k’ — that I’ll consider the offer and they should give me some time to think about it.
Deep down in my mind, I knew that there was nothing to think about. But I didn’t want to look desperate and hungry for that big money. I phoned my best buddy, Deji, and told him to start phoning Mercedes Benz vendors, that we’re coming for them.
After 24 long hours which made me think that ‘Kola, hope you’re not overdoing this hard-to-get game,’ I reached out to the HR and told him that I was okay with it. He was delighted but he couldn’t have figured out how I was super-elated.
I resumed my three-month contract work on the first day of the following month, and I spent two weeks on onboarding. Another two weeks to familiarise myself with the company’s projects and teams. Before I realised it, it was the end of month 1. To me, I had practically done nothing except read plenty of briefs and attend meetings. And I was like, these people are really going to pay me 300k for doing ‘nothing’?
Lo and behold, I got the credit alert. N300k complete! I must have opened my GTBank app like a thousand times between the 5pm that I got the alert and 5am the following day. I couldn’t even make any transfer. I was fearful that they might reverse the transaction or even reach out to me that it was supposed to be half of the money since I only attended meetings and perused briefs.
I would still casually check my account balance and see that ALL the money was actually mine. Then a wave of euphoria came upon me. Me? 300k? Is this how easy it comes?
Then the spending began. It was my first month, so I told myself, “Alaye mi Kollington, you have only one life to live. Enjoy am!”
And boy did I spend. I hardly cooked that month. It was the biggest sum I had received heretofore, I couldn’t help but misbehave. After all my escapades, transfers left, right and centre, eat-outs, and any other frivolous thing you could think of, the month ended and I still had about 50k left.
For the first time in my life, I had leftover from one salary before another came in. Right there and then, I knew that I had been poor all my life. I looked at myself in the mirror, “padi mi, o ti suffer mehn, no be like this life suppose be?”
The couple of months that followed, I worked my ass off. Report upon report, presentation upon presentation, analysis upon analysis, training upon training. At some point when I was spending consecutive days at a workspace because of poor power supply, I even had a rethink that I was cheated with the 300k.
But then, that first month remains vivid in my memory. If there was a month I realised that I needed to make money, it was that month.
Sadly, the contract ended, and I went back to my sorry 9–5. I had hoped they would mistakenly credit me the following month. The only message I got from GT was an SMS charge debit alert. I was in severe pains.
I still reached out to the HR guy afterwards if there was going to be any similar engagement in the future. I don’t need to tell you why I did that. He replied in the negative, and continued to, till he told me he had left the country. I shed tears. He thought I was happy for him but in actual sense, I was sorry for myself. Since then, my prayer point has remained the same. You can guess it — Goddddddddddd, I wan chop life againnnnnnnnnn.
Padi mi Kollington, as you clock another year, no worry, God go do am and you go oblee again.
