From Frying Pan To Fire

Hello My inkwell family, welcome to my blog.

This week prompt reminded me of my previous place of work and I'd like to share my story here with you all.

I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I had just stayed back at my former place of work. That question still follows me not with regret exactly, more like curiosity, the kind that makes me replay a decision just to see if it still makes sense from this side of it. I don't really have an answer. I just have this habit of running the tape back in my mind, especially on the quiet days when I have nothing else to think about.

At my former school, I was paid fifty thousand naira monthly. Every month, honestly it was always paid on time, no delays, no stories attached. My proprietress was that kind of person, she wrote your pay date down like it was a promise she intended to keep. But I looked at that fifty thousand and all I could see was how far it wasn't stretching. Rent, transport, the small things that quietly become big things. I complained to my colleague, I compared my situation to other people's own . I convinced myself that a bigger number would fix my needs, that a job was only ever as good as its salary.

So when that seventy thousand naira offer came from another school i didn't even think twice, I resigned. I thought I was moving up. I was so excited.

I wasn't prepared for how quickly the shine would wear off. The first thing I learned is that seventy thousand naira on paper and seventy thousand naira in your account are two different things. That school never paid, at least for the few months I worked there. It always comes two weeks late, sometimes three, always with an explanation ready before I even asked for one, most times I wondered if the learners were not paying school fees. There was always a story to tell, a delay from the bank, a delay from network, a delay from somewhere I could never quite locate or question.

The explanations didn't change anything about how I was supposed to survive in the meantime, how I was supposed to explain to a taxi man that my salary was coming, because I had no money at hand. It was really frustrating.

Then there was the workload. At my old school, everything wound down by 2:00pm. Children went home, staff went home, the activities genuinely ends by 2:00pm and I still had an afternoon to call my own, at least to run errands, rest, whatever I needed it. But at my new place, we dare not close until 4:00pm, sometimes half past four, and by the time i get home, whatever energy I had left for myself had already been spent on the commute. It didn't just feel like a longer day, it felt like a smaller life outside of work, because there was less of the day left to live once I finally get home.

And the rules were very strict in a way I didn't expect. My old proprietress corrected some of our mistakes gently, she'd call you, talk to you, treat the error like something to learn from, not something to punish. I remember submitting a report late once because that particular child was sick, and all she said was, "Next time, just tell me early so that I will know how to go about it" but at my new place, mistakes cost money. A deduction, on top of pay that was already late. I made one small error with result booklet a few months in, an honest mix-up, and I watched a chunk of my next salary disappear because of it. There was no room to plead.
Looking back, I think about my old job more than I expected to. Not because fifty thousand naira suddenly felt enough, but because I understand something now that I didn't back then. Getting paid on time was never a small thing. Being allowed to make a mistake without losing money for it was never a small thing either. I was so focused on the size of the flame that I didn't notice it was, at least, one I could manage.

I'm not saying I regret leaving. I'm not even sure "regret" is the right word for what I feel. Some days I think I'd make the same choice again, if only to have learned this the way I learned it. I just know I jumped for one reason "Money" and found out money was only ever one part of the whole picture, not the part that decides whether the job was actually good for me.
Frying pan to fire. I used to hear that and think it was just something old people said, a saying for other people's mistakes. Now I know exactly what it costs to test it for yourself.

Image is ai generated.