Cankerworms

Something happened some months ago
that will explain to you why some
Nigerian businesses run down
I went to Abuja for a ministration, when
I landed I went to the hotel I usually
stay at in Wuze Zone 1.
Upon getting there I discovered that
their hall was already booked and I
wouldn’t be able to hold the
“Meet and Greet I had planned there,
so I decided to change venue
I took a cab to Sheraton Hotel, I am a
loyalty member and felt I should take
advantage of that by using their facilities
for my visit and ministration
When I got to the reception (I was with
an Abuja based member of The ministry
who met me at the airport) a man in
uniform and on duty whispered to me:
“Sir, how many rooms do you need, we
can give you at 40000 naira per night
but you will not get a receipt for this sir.
It will be our own arrangement.
Because I was wearing a pair of jeans and
a T-shirt plus my boyish look, he assumed
I was an agent looking to book a lot of
rooms and he was offering me a deal
by the side that will grant me access
to the room and all the services but
without the hotel’s official receipt!
He and some others would basically
pocket the money
I was shocked
I know hotel staff members do this
(sell rooms at a cheaper rate without
logging it in or at the normal rate to
customers who don’t care about
receipts and all and then keep the
money for themselves once the
customer lodges out without any
member of management finding out
the guest lodged in but I didn’t
expect such of a hotel like Sheraton.
The once busy and bubbling hotel
had become a shell, someone even
told me I should have gone to
Barcelona or Liverpool or whatever
hotel in Abuja because the services
offered there was much better!
I mentioned this indiscretion to the
guys at the main desk of the hotel
later that evening but they didn’t
seem perturbed or alarmed by it
What I wanted to know was if it was
because of the current lack of
customers the hotel chose to do that
legally to get the rooms filled up
And the answer I got was an emphatic
No!
A week later, I was at Sheraton Lagos
and I told them what happened when
I went to Abuja
I told them that as soon as the man
propositioned me, I told him I am a
loyalty member and I don’t do such deals,
the man quickly called another man to
attend to me and he left the front desk
immediately
The guys in Lagos said it was a very
unprofessional thing to do and such a
conduct will only end up hurting the
hotel
I was told of a lady who got a POS
machine of her own, smuggled it into
Shoprite in Ilorin and started billing
their customers with it
I was told she had stolen 22 million
Naira before he or she was caught.
Such conducts are criminal and they
end up ruining businesses and their
advantages for everybody
If that hotel closes down, the guys
making the money by the side will
be out of a job and many families
will suffer
People should think this way and
not assume they can steal as much
as they want because the business
is insured or has a big name.
Even small businesses suffer from
this myopic attitude of Nigerian
employees
My brother, the founder of Farm
Prices told me his staff members
would take orders from customers,
deliver goods and collect the money
without touching the goods from
his store.
They had replicated the product and
sold their own replicas instead of
the original they were employed to sell
This way the customers get inferior
products and are unsatisfied while
the staff members make some
money that they spend within a day
or two only to discover that the
customer wanted nothing more to
do with the business
By the time he discovered that the
customer had moved on, it was
sometimes too late
I had this discussion with my wife
yesterday and she said it is a Nigerian
thing!
Drivers collecting money for fuel and
not buying such and when asked
would respond by saying “My boss is
very rich and very stingy, apart from
my salary he does not take care of
me as if he had any right to more than
his salary simply because of his
proximity to the boss.
My driver used to do it
We will be going somewhere, suddenly
I will notice the volume of the radio
going down and the guy saying
“There is something i want to discuss
with you sir, i need a loan or I am broke
or something happened to my mother etc”
It happened regularly, every other day
Just so that he can get an extra buck
from me
Or he could come up with “Tyres needed
guaging or I need to check something
in the engine or another nonsense”
Just to make a buck
He once bought five thousand naira fuel
went to Sagamu from RCCG camp and
came back with an empty tank
When i asked him what happened, he
said the sun was very hot and could have
drained the fuel because when he touched
the bonnet of the car, it was very hot!
The on the job conversations always irked me
It didn’t matter to Him whether I was
praying, meditating, desire to speak or
even sleep
I was at his mercy and I must listen
I tolerated it at first until I sat him down
and told him I would sack him if he ever
initiated any of such discussions with
me again
I know how to drive and employing him
was more for his benefit than mine
He got the message and stopped it.
It is not out of place to see staff members
discussing how meager their salaries were
compared to how rich their bosses are and
using this as an excuse to steal…
When I was a PA one of my colleagues will
say They are robbing the government and
we must rob them otherwise they will get
cancer and spend all the money treating
sickness…”
He had come to convince himself that he
was doing our bosses a favour by being
unfaithful.
This habit is not an asset, it is a liability
If you have It you must do away with it
You must change your mindset immediately
To become a blessing, Jacob had an
encounter with God at Bethel.
The supplanter had to become the prince
of God
It is the only way to become a blessing
You can make some money doing shady
deals but that kind of
Money or riches is like dust; easily carried
away into nothingness
If righteousness exalts a nation, we all
must aim for it
If you choose to do the right thing even
when others are doing the wrong thing,
you will have your reward in due season
Nigerian businesses are coping with
So many issues due to the state of the
economy
This issue of staff members robbing the
organization they are working for blind
should stop!
You should count it a privilege that you
have a job, a place to go to hone your skills
and develop your career…
When it is gone, you lose!