You know how Nigerians say “God no go shame us” at every given time? Well, next time someone says that to me, best believe I’ll be responding with a resounding Amen because what I experienced in the name of ‘self-care’ literally almost put me to shame
(9MOBILE 3856 8726 8571 431)
I caught up with a couple of old friends from high school who had come home for the holidays and we agreed to have brunch. I was stuffing my mouth with pancakes when one of my friends asked me where she could get her nails done.
“Oh yeah, that’s not a problem, we’ll go to my nail tech at on the mainland when we’re done”, I responded.
The two other girls chorused in affirmation and when we were done eating, the four of us set out to the mainland for some mani-pedi TLC. Unfortunately, Lagos was happening on the roads and we were in the mother of traffic jams for over 2 hours.
With my IJGB friends growing impatient, we looked up other nail salons on Instagram and settled for the closest one with good reviews. From the minute we arrived at the salon, we were offered tea, water, coffee or juice, cookies, and given all-round princess treatment.
I was lowkey scared of the cost of their service but when I asked the attendant, she said it was “affordable”.
Fast forward to a few hours, the girls and I had done our manicures, pedicures, lashes and eyebrows threaded and were feeling mighty glad with the results. My bill was brought to me and my jaw almost fell to the floor when I saw the sum total of 74,850. It was at that moment I knew I had messed up! My vision suddenly became blurry and I had to squint at the bill to see if I misread it.
74k? Ha! That’s the cost of my living expenses for two weeks that I’ve spent in less than 2 hours! Why didn’t I clarify the prices before going ahead? But, but she said it was affordable now. Apparently, affordable is relative.
I grudgingly handed the attendant my card and paid for the service rendered, praying and hoping that it wouldn’t be declined because of insufficient funds but I knew for the rest of the month, I would be soaking gari till payday because there was no way I was going to go out of budget for any other expenses for the rest of the month
Have you ever been in a similar situation? How did you handle it?
Leave a Reply