I remember now that scene from many years ago, something in
the range of a decade how long exactly I cannot say with certainty. I remember
I stood there in the audience above all others with my hands resting on the
rail, listening to a brilliant speech by our seemingly eloquent speaker. He had
come to our weekly place to speak to us about jobs and employment, the
exact occasion that warranted his presence
is something I can’t remember however, as I recall he stood there
confident in his stride pacing the podium
as he dropped nuggets of wisdom,
with snippets of knowledge borne from years
of experience to spice it up.
He spoke
to us about ways and practices to
overcome employment delays, scale through the most difficult interviews, make a fantastic impression and consequently seize
the job from your would be competitors. But, just in the event you do not belong to
the class of desperate job seekers he still had just the right package for
you. With well rehearsed speech He captivated the crowd so much they were ecstatic as though salvation had come their way a
second time…
Now, at this point it’s easy
to assume I’m exaggerating but I assure you I am not. For though I may not recall
the speech given that day as replicable transcripts, the vivid picture of the audience’s reaction that
faithful day remains etched in my memory, it was outright amazing. So, riding
the tide of applause and encouragement from the crowd, our beloved speaker continued
his conquest like a determined general. But all was not well.
Somewhere in
my mind's thought amidst all the roar and applause; I could pick out the weight
of damage his accent delivered on English words. I felt it was wrong
especially for a man of his calibre to make such utterances but the
audience didn’t seem to mind one tiny bit. If they were forgiving of his blunders who was
I not to? So I told myself “ here is that example of a man who defiled the circumstance of his birth, and the
environment of his upbringing to become all he is today so why
judge him on the basis of a funny accent and other sublime grammatical
wrongs”. with that thought running through my mind I pushed aside all distracting notions and focused on
the ploy of the moment.
Now before long he
was speaking about his grand DIY self
schooling instruction package the A-Z of starting out your own business. With this package business success is near certain or that’s what he
had us believe and we did believe all that he said hook line and sinker. We took it all in, it should come as
no surprise that when he hinted that the
package was a set of printed manuals obtainable at a few stands located at the
back of the auditorium a frenzy was put
in effect.
Before my eyes I saw men and women, boys and girls diving for their wallets, to my left one mama
was losing the big knot at the tip of
her wrapper to reveal the secret stash
of cash she’s probably always kept on
herself where its farthest from the fast fingers of her biological underlings, on
the other hand I could see a married
woman bring out a purse from inside a
purse and open one of those numerous
zips were cash can be stashed, it seemed the men had lost their showmanship with no one ably representing their interest but this changed when I turned
to see right behind me, a man facing the wall with his hands deep in his pants; look I don’t know if he was
searching for money or seizing the opportunity afforded by the distraction to
attend to other itching matters all I
know is what I saw!
All around me hands were going into all manner of places
and money was coming out with them. Since our beloved speaker had decided to keep us all in suspense as to
the actual price of his various packages and only felt it was best we know that
it was available in limited supply everyone wanted enough cash on their person to be able to grab their own copy of the
manuals at any cost.
So, like the flurry of
horses bursting through their starting barriers at the sound of a gun, the seats
inside the auditorium became empty the
moment the go ahead to sell was given
with almost everyone rushing to the back of the auditorium as though it
was the finish line. A queue formed
right out of the blue. some faith–full individuals even joined the queue without money and only after
they had secured a space did they start
negotiations with their good friends to loan them some money.
Indeed no one was
going to miss this golden opportunity, who knows we could all become Dangotes
from what secrets were contained therein. Some fellows ordered one manual
others two yet there are those who took no chance and bought all that was on
display. As for me, I stood aloof watching the drama not because I
was not perturbed by the "gold rush" but
because I was captivated by the drama, so in the recess of my heart I hoped
that mum who was in that auditorium somewhere would purchase
a copy of the manuals because me like every other person edging on the queue wanted those manuals badly.
Thankfully my wish was granted and mum did
get a copy of those now golden manuals
and even though it was not exactly the one I desired, it still felt good to have something to hold on to, our own share of it all, for
it meant I could smile and not have a
gloomy look to my face like the faces of those who by some stroke of
luck could not lay their hands on a copy.
With the available
copies exhausted the program continued. for our beloved speaker it was fait
accompli to our monies now safely secured in his pockets as he found his way out. For the rest of us
beaming with smiles like the gold rush
prospectors of the 18th century all we wanted was for the program to
end already, soon enough we got our wish. The programme came to an end and we
all headed home.
I got home in a hurry my “treasure map” in hand. Once I was behind closed doors I eagerly flipped through
its pages hoping to find whatever it was I intended to find. That was however
not to be the case, with each new page I turned my face contoured more and more
to depict a state of frustrated bewilderment. I was having serious difficulty restructuring
the sentences in the error laden passages,
which had more errors in a single
line than could be counted on the fingers on both hands; the lexical errors,
grammatical errors and numerous
topographical errors that littered the work
where so bold that they blinded
one’s eyes to the knowledge if any that was supposed to be In it.
I
struggled with this a bit and gave up. At about that time, my mum came in and tried
her eyes on it for a bit and gave up, and so one by one my siblings took turns
at the ill drafted document and came to the same conclusion: the errors were
too numerous to allow the written text convey any meaning;it was largely incomprehensible
and we were understandably upset.
As you might guess we were not alone, other
participants began to complain through calls, text and.. No No! not social media at that time such things
were not really popular. But people complained all the same, some even made
treats and passed all manner of derogatory comments about the man when next we
saw but this too was understandable their rage was not misplaced.
Today, that manual
lies somewhere in this house a written testimony to the difference that can
exist between the excellence a man may put forward to make his first impression
and the absence of due diligence that
characterises his second. Till this very moment I find it hard to marry the
disparity between his eloquent speech
and the meaningless document he sold to us. If he earlier chided us for
submitting application letters and resumes filled with detestable blunders how then could
he insult our collective intellect with such quagmiry ?
Looking back through the lens of recent knowledge I’ve told
myself: he’s just a good salesman, one who’s good at selling himself, good at
selling his consultancy business, good at eliciting the necessary emotions and
atmosphere within his listener but a man nonetheless who’s terrible at
executing the job.
A man who surfers a problem of difference between elicited
expectations and resultant delivery and
he’s not the only offender. You can’t be reading this and not have a similar
experience, surely you’ve met one offender of the like, persons who so carefully crafted the first impression in
your mind raised your hopes of the beauty soon to come, yet failed inexplicably to deliver
as promised. And you wondered why? Why would your business partner fail to meet
expectations? why did your brother or sister, boss, employee, politician
perhaps even mentor fail despite
appearing to have all it takes? much
like my beloved speaker.
Well I have an answer to this riddle, my answer is nothing
new, it’s the same “problem of difference”
between expectations and outcome and am not sure there’s much you can do
to solve this no! But, there’s a way to deal with it, a way to handle the
problems that arise when expectations
don’t meet outcome or perhaps you’ll like to avoid it altogether.. see you next week.
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