NIGERIAN ARTISANS AND THEIR PROBLEMS.

Ranging from your average Carpenter,Electrician,Tailor,Mechanics,Plumber,just name it,any artisan that comes to mind.These set of people have the ability to drive a sane person crazy,especially when they have been paid to do your job.They are called 'onise owo' in Yoruba parlance and they can hold a customer by the jugular,most of them have lost clients due to their non-nonchalant attitudes to their chosen profession,believing another customer will always come,even if u no longer require their services,what a twisted mentality.

The other day the electrician came to fix a ceiling fan at mines,fast forward  to a week later,the fan blew up,yes you read right,blew up,he probably didn't connect the wires well or something and of course after having cashed his own check/cheque,all efforts to make him come and do the repairs have been futile,what would it take to come and fix the fan you ask me?.Another experience i had was with a   new tailor around my area,i gave her the material almost two weeks earlier,letting her know i will be wearing it to a wedding  the upper Saturday,she said no problem,took measurements,money exchanged hands and she told me to come and collect my cloth the following Wednesday,lo and behold i got there and she has not even cut the fabric,what!!!,i calmed down,because i figured this is our first encounter,she didn't really have much explanations to give,so she told me to come back on Thursday evening,well your guess is as good as mine,lets just say i was at her shop by 6.45am on Saturday morning which was when she started putting finishing touches to the said cloth,i had tears welled up in my eyes because i was so so disappointed and her excuse was that she thought the style i chose was so simple and she could finish it in a day,not knowing that the fabric is hard to sew,what a lame excuse!i just took my cloth and left her shop seething with anger.

What about the mechanics that will inflate prices and make you cough out lump sums of money,simply because they know you do know better,your car might just need plugs,but knowing you are not aware of what the problem with your car is,they will just compound it and make you pay for a non-existent problem.I can go on and on about the antics of various artisans in Lagos and Nigeria as a whole,but that will be time consuming,almost everybody i know has had an unpleasant experience with this people and i don't know why,seems like it's even a criteria for artisans to know how to annoy,disappoint  and in most cases lose clients here in naija or could it be as a result of our orientation as a people or what?We seriously need to change our mindsets,because even the educated ones among them are not left out of this unbecoming behavior.

Dear readers have you had a nasty experience before,feel free to share.