The Dreamer

The Dreamer

I am going to rattle you with this letter so you better brace up. If you haven’t been taken to the cleaners in a while I am going to give you a good dose of remonstrating. Yeah, you are crawling sites like Jobberman because you are job-hunting. This is no crime; everybody has done it at one point save those on a perennial spot on the billionaire’s list or the scions of Nigeria’s thieving elite with enough booty to last two generations. And let me add if you are on your way to that much coveted spot-Forbes list – you had better get off this site. Except of course you are checking the site out prior to staging a buyout.

You want a visa out of the motley crowd of the employed and your passport is that sorry resume you carry about. You are day dreaming because that resume hardly gets a second look not to talk of the right attention. You constantly whine and rant to all who cares to listen how you have flooded the whole of Lagos’ central business districts with your resume and it has not earned you a single invite for a chat. The part that sickens you the most is that your neighbor, the tall dark one that sashays when she walks has found a job in a telecom company. Your attempt to belittle her customer care work as a routine job always leaves the maxim – half bread is better than none – ringing in your ears. The other day, you ascribed her landing the job to sleeping her way through the interview panel, after all her coquettishness is famed in the area. You are too moral to stoop that low; your price is too high.

You deplore your fate to no end because you do not have powerful uncles and aunts with complimentary calls that can open the doors to the 7-figure paying jobs you earnestly crave. It is not that your family lacks politicians and party stalwarts. Annoyingly, they are always in the wrong parties, in perpetual opposition. If only your uncle was the chairman of the PDP in the state, you would have changed jobs several times that you would have lost count like your roommate in final year. His step dad is a special assistant in the presidency. Only a call card from him embossed with a scrawl worked the magic. If only you could see your pastor again; he is the spiritual consultant to four former bank chiefs. He says they don’t pick up his calls any longer after the Fulani man at the helm in the central bank gave them the boot. If only you were born in a saner society that guarantees a better life for its citizens; where people get paid for being unemployed; where people get work irrespective of their class of degree; where you don’t need to know both powerful and inconsequential people like the clerk who carries the file before they land a plum job. If only…

Quit dreaming, dearie. I know dreams come true. But you are in Nigeria not Utopia. Your long wish list perhaps should have started with: if only you had made a 2.1 or a first class. Or better still, if only you had developed skills and proficiencies that are sought after by employers of labor your class of degree notwithstanding. You made a 2.2, Third Class or a Pass. Spare me the reasons. But you may not even be invited by employers to relive the pitiable tale of how you could not ‘sort’ your way to 2.1 like the folks in your class who in hindsight seem smarter, or swap your integrity for marks by warming the beds of the randy goats that you had for lecturers. If wishes were horses… beggar would ride. Thank God you know that aphorism in spite of your aversion to reading broad and wide, outside the restricted view of your parochial lecturers who only wanted their outmoded notes regurgitated back to them, verbatim.

You are hating me know right, but I am also sick of your newfound jeremiad that only those wielding 2.1 and those still on the good side of twenty get jobs. Yeah, you left school earlier enough I recall but you sat idly at home waiting nay wishing for that plum job that was nowhere in sight. Now you are past the favored age; you are also not yet a recipient of the favor that your pastor feverishly declares on you every Sunday. And worse still, you are still as bereft of marketable skills as they come. You say you are even skeptical of advertised job openings because you have it on good authority that the companies already have a shortlist and they are only going through the motions of calling for resumes just for the record. Good authority, my foot!

The cover letter you sent alongside your scanty resume was the last straw for me. Little wonder you ascribe your repeated failure at getting a job to bad luck. The well-worn culprit-bad luck- has taken you through many prayer houses and anointing sessions all to no avail. The shock on the faces of unfortunate HR analysts assigned to sort resumes on sighting the sorry cover letter is better left to conjecture – no one wants to receive that shock twice. I can swear I know where your resume ended up.

Instead of staying informed on current happenings in the world, you track the number and names of now successful people who came out with your poor class of degree. You can in one breath reel off the names of people who have since shown the world that the indication of their strength is not in the class of degree with which they finished school. I hate it when you mention their names. Quit that newfound pastime because you are not in their league. They are only convenient as mentors and role model when you want a consolation for your mediocre life. You know the shocking part, when they are seeking for hands to manage their business empires; they will seek smart people, with cutting edge skills and sought after proficiencies which you so clearly lack. So my dear, they are fair-weather mentors. They cannot even brook your slothfulness

Oh you want to be like them, then get off this bog and get a life. And when you have found one, recruit one of your sorry kind and let see if you will get a place on the Billionaire’s table.

Eyinade Adedotun blogs at tinwatinwa.blogspot.com

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