When you're not allowed to spend your e-money

When you're not allowed to spend your e-money

By Hafiz Adewuyi   June 24, 2018   No comments :

This morning, after my 5km+ run, I decided to stop by the Tastee Fried Chicken (TFC) outlet within a walking distance of my house to get some nice chops. After all that hard work, I felt well-deserving of some self-pampering. All sweaty and pumped up, I stepped into the restaurant and within five minutes of being there, I had made my order and it was time to pay (2000 Naira; I thought it noteworthy that my order added up to a round figure).

I brought out my Access Bank Verve card and handed it to the lady who had treated my order. She inserted it into the POS, normal savings/current drama ensued, and then she asked me to enter my PIN. Cut to the chase, the transaction failed. And then it failed again. And then again. From the error on the POS screen, I knew it was likely to be a problem from the bank's system.

The sales attendant and her supervisor were quick to ask me to go get cash from the closest ATM. The TFC branch is in an Oando filling station which also has an Ecobank ATM lobby within its premises. I tried to explain to them that the problem was with the bank, so it was unlikely that I'd be able to get cash from the ATM with that same card. Maybe I didn't try hard enough to explain (I tried though), but they didn't understand why I thought it was going to be futile to try to withdraw cash with a card which wasn't working on the POS.

Because I didn't have much to lose and didn't really have a lot in alternatives, I decided to try the card at the ATM anyways. An "Issuer or Switch Inoperative" error message confirmed my intuition on the problem's root cause. I use my card to pay for over 80% of things I buy and I can't remember the last time it failed me. As a result, I've grown so confident in e-transactions that you'd be lucky to find me with cash of more than 1000 Naira at a time.

I felt hopeless, considering that the fastest way for me to get cash now was from my bag which was all the way at home. But because I believe in finding hidden options through enquiry, I decided to get back into TFC and ask if I could transfer the payment to an account. "We don't do transfer here", the bored-looking lady attendant responded, shattering my fragile heart into 1000 pieces.

I decided this wasn't worth the fight any longer. Perhaps, the powers that be wanted me to fast this morning or just eat Golden-Morn. However, as I stepped out of the TFC, I remembered there was another thing called "Cardless withdrawal". Yay!

But just as I was starting to celebrate my newly-found solution, my last experience trying to use Quickteller cardless withdrawal on an EcoBank ATM started to restore into my conscious mind. The machine did not support Quickteller! I forged ahead, praying that things would be different for these here Ecobank machines. Alas, they weren't. What a shame!

I started on my way home and just as I stepped into my estate gate, I decided I was going to do the trouble of walking back to TFC; this time, cash-in-hand. I had fantasized so much about munching on that crunchy chicken that it was like torture to not actually get to do it. I brisk-walked the rest of the street between the gate and my house, then rushed in and out after picking an exact 2000 Naira out of the mint 5000 Naira I had collected from the Suntrust ATM (always dispenses mint) around my office on Saturday (yesterday).

Not caring to lock the door to my apartment, I rushed back out and jogged through the distance between my house and TFC. The jogging was to pacify my ego for my absolute lack of respect for myself; crawling back on my knees to TFC after all the trouble that their lack of flexibility/innovation had put me through on this random Sunday morning. After all, if I could cut the time I spent sucking up to TFC in two, that meant we could get over it more quickly and forget all about it while orally dissecting the crunchy chicken that started it all.

As I walked back to my apartment one more time (with food in hand of course), I pondered on how much money TFC might be throwing away on a daily basis due to their extremely limited payment options (cash or POS). Just yesterday, for the first time ever, I had used mVisa QR app to pay for my brunch at The Place restaurant, VI (there was a 500 Naira discount on my meal). It was so freaking seamless and I was so impressed that I see myself actively using it henceforth.

For the rest of the journey back home, some thoughts that I found coursing through my mind are:

• Why hasn't mVisa even gotten to these razz TFC guys?

• Couldn't that bored-looking lady attendant have been more inventive at her job just to please a customer? Perhaps, have me transfer the payment to her personal account (I was ready to give a small tip, in addition to bearing a 72.5 Naira transfer cost).

• Then I remembered Seth Godin (in his book, Linchpin) talking about how organizations increasingly need people who can do more than just do their job

• Then I started to think about how I myself could be that kind of employee to my own employer, Access Bank whose failing system put me in all of this mess in the first place

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GIVE ME SOME ACCOLADES by commenting. It would mean a lot to me to read your thoughts and feelings from reading this.

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The worst purchase decision I made in 2016 or in my life

The worst purchase decision I made in 2016 or in my life

By Hafiz Adewuyi   March 25, 2017   4 comments :

After work yesterday, I was hanging out with Victor, my friend who is one of the few people who encourage me to keep blogging. At some point, he suggested that I build a mobile app version of the Yoruba tone marking tool. So, after telling him I was no good at building mobile apps (despite my numerous false-starts of learning it), I went further to reveal how I had invested $19 into an online Android programming course in January. The kicker? The last time I visited the course was the same boring Sunday afternoon when I purchased it. I bought the course, watched the first 12-minute video via the online classroom with the intention of returning the next day. It is now almost two months since then, but that next day is yet to show up.  

Victor mocked me lightly, mentioning how I could have gotten those same videos for free on YouTube and saying in Yoruba, how those "sharp guys" have nabbed me. Victor is an Igbo boy but if we're both placed side-by-side to speak Yoruba, he would thrash me in terms of accentuation. He went on to share his thoughts on how if he's financially motivated enough, he would consider joining those sharp guys by hiring a brilliant software developer and setting up an online coaching offering. "I would just put up a page with videos copied from somewhere else and state that I'm available for consultation within the hours of 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. every Saturday", he said.

Since I had shared my stupid decision to buy this Android course and I survived his mockery, it occurred to me, later on, to share a similar goof (but on a much larger scale) with him. I told him to promise not to mock me if I shared this mighty goof with him or else, I might be the next to jump into the lagoon out of the stigma. Once I said this, he told me he would rather I didn't share it because he wouldn't want my blood to be on his neck :D

At that point, the intention to share my big goof left my mind for a while. But I guess my subconscious dwelt on it, because not too long after, I resolved to share it. I wanted to face my fear which had made me keep it to myself until now, head on. The fear of being called a buffoon, or worse still, to be seen as someone who cannot improve their life to save their life.

Now that leads us to the Koko of this story. Enjoy laughing at me for the rest of this piece. It's your lucky day!

I PAID $299 dollars for an online course!!!

That was in one of the -ember months of 2016. And the very first time I revisited the course after the purchase was two weeks ago (March 2017) when I was feeling a little motivated. I completed what was more or less the introduction of the course over a course of three nights (probably at 5% progress now). And since then, I've not gone back to it. I want my money back!

The title of the course is How to Market yourself as a Software developer (H2MYSD). I can remember like it was yesterday how enthusiastic and ecstatic I was just before I purchased the course. I was absolutely sure this was what I needed to change my story from "developer who is always frustrated from being underpaid" to "Nigerian rockstar millionaire developer". At least, that's what the course promised.

What spurred me on to take the final step in this investment were the two following things:

• The author promises a 100% money back guarantee if I am not satisfied with the course, but on the conditions that I must have gone through the course, applied the principles therein and have evidence that it did not work for me, within a year of the purchase date (I still have time)

• I was sure that motivation to complete the course would not be a problem as is often the case when I try to learn new stuff via free MOOC platforms. For one, I needed to change my life as a matter of urgency. Secondly, I thought it was beyond my bounds of laziness to shell out so much money for a course and then fail to get the best of it through dutiful study and application

Alas. Over the next following months, I got to learn more about myself; about the truly boundless nature of my laziness. The only reminders I had of the H2MYSD course were the calls I received from my younger sister, each time the monthly $99 debit hit her GTB Naira MasterCard which I had used to make the initial payment.

I want to insert a wise lesson to end this article. But there's none. Except that I should not buy any other online course until I exhaust my current decaying 'stash'.

My friend Victor is a nice guy. He truly did not want me to jump into the lagoon on my way from Victoria Island back home through the Third Mainland bridge to Yaba that night. So he regaled me with the story of how he had paid about 50000 Naira for an offline CCNA training a few years ago and failed to actually engage with the training until it was over. Now, he regrets the fact that he lost that opportunity because he can imagine a parallel universe where he has better career opportunities from taking advantage of his investment in the CCNA course.

Have you got a similar goof to share? Use the comments section below. Thanks for reading. 

P.S.

Please, don't share. My next employer must not see this. After all, my CV says I'm a fast and self-motivated learner.

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Business Series (Introduction)

Business Series (Introduction)

By Hafiz Adewuyi   March 01, 2014   No comments :

The first intentional profit I ever made in my life was while I was at Ijanikin (FGCL, High school, Boarding house); final year. Like most other petty businesses that I have run in my lifetime, it was started accidentally. I wonder if that is a good thing or a bad thing (I lean towards the latter).

Well, the goods in this business were sachets of raw Indomie noodles. I had smuggled about a carton of them into the boarding house. It's a wonder how I managed to convince my mum to allow that since she was convinced that eating uncooked noodles causes cancer (duh! We were not allowed to cook at all in the hostel). Besides, she was the disciplinarian mama who would not aid and abet her kid in defying authority. 

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