Don’t be alarmed, this is not about Techpoint 😋. This actually happened about 10 years ago.

In February 2010, I resumed work as a cyber cafe attendant in Oshodi, Lagos and got fired exactly a year later. And that would be the first and the last time, I ever got fired from a job till now.

Back then, I was working 14 hours a day, Mondays to Saturdays and 8 hours on Sundays, for N18,000 a month. What the actually f**k?!

I was a terrible negotiator back then and I’m just a little bit better now.

But then, after completing secondary school and computer training, I was tired of staying at home doing nothing and I wasn’t ready to proceed to higher institution in spite of the fact that I had good grades in WAEC in a single seating a couple of years back.

Back to the story of how I got fired. I was doing the job of many people: cafe attandant, computer engineer, and graphics designer and more.

The owner of the cafe still won’t consider me before accepting jobs from customers. For him, it’s all about making money.

One fateful night, I was very tired and trying to fix one of the desktop computers and he accepted a letterhead design job. The customer needed it immediately and I told the guy to come back the next morning but my oga won’t take it.

He raised his voice at me at a point and I also raised mine back at him. I’ve had enough. He is old enough to be my father by my way.

I forced myself to do the design and didn’t bother trying to initiate a conversation with my boss throughout the rest of that day.

After closing he handed me my salary. I was surprised not because it wasn’t month ending. It was March 2nd and I wasn’t expecting salary to drop that soon. Usually, salary doesn’t come until around 9th or 10th of the following month.

I headed home and was a couple of streets away from home when I got a text message that I shouldn’t bother resuming work the following day.

Waoh! I stopped walking and replied immediately.

“Thank you sir.”

By 7:30 the following morning, my cousin with whom I was staying with back then woke me up. She asked why I was still sleeping because I usually get out of bed by 6am and leave house between 7 to 7:30am.

I told her that I got fired and that I wanted to rest. What kind of person gets fired and puts rest on his agenda?

It was a tiring job and I had resigned a couple of months back after which my pay was increased from N12k to N18K. And I made it clear that I would continue on the condition that he would be on the lookout for a replacement because I wanted to leave.

Unknowing for me, he was actually expecting that I would beg when he sent the text.

I went back to the cafe the following afternoon to get some of my personal items but he played hard to get and won’t allow me in.

Guess what? A couple of days later, oga begged that I come back to work with the promise of doubling my pay. He even dragged one woman beside the cafe to intervene but then egungun has entered express already.

I wanted to leave and I was shown the door. And we what, move!

Till tomorrow.

Apologies, this came in pretty late. It was a busy day.