Introduction.
Good afternoon friends, how have you been?
I hope this meets you well.
This is my firt entry into this week's hivenaija prompt. The topic i would like to write on is; "There have been times that we have been prompted to step-up and assume responsibility. It may be in our personal or professional lives. Tell us about a time you were required to step into a phase of leadership - no matter how brief the moment. Was it difficult? Did you adapt?"
The times I stepped-up to assume responsibilities at work.
Yes, a number of time nature or necessity had prompted me to step-up to take new positions and take responsibility. These have happened at various stages of my life, but the one I will talk about in this post are the ones that happened while I was working with keystone bank, Ikot Ekpene branch. (Keystone bank is a comercial bank in Nigeria)
When I joined the bank in march 2013 as an outsourced staff, I was detailed to understudy the customer service person. The customer service person at that time was a woman named Peace. Peace was a staff and had been with the bank for about 6 years before then. About four months into our stay, our supervisor resigned because his wife who stays overseas secured his visa to join her in the states. As a result, he resigned to join the wife at United States of America. (Our boss is referred to as SM meaning: Service Manager)
So after he left, my direct boss became the Service Manager and I had to step up to be the customer service person. This was a very challenging task because thats a big branch that issues more than 20 instant cards, with other customer complaints like alerts, counter cheques, issuing of statement of account, account openings, account reactivations, account transfers, mobile banking processing, and so on.
It was a very challenging period in my career. This is because, I wasn't prepared to take over at that material time. However, I started work as the customer service personnel with the support of my direct supervisor and other staffs.
The change of things was a swift way to elevate me and speed u my learning process. However, it didn't come without challenges. I made mistakes with printing of card and I had to pay for those cards I spilled.
Moreso, after work each day, I was always very tired that I couldn't even have the strength to bath nor make dinner, once I got home, I will would just sleep off, sometimes I slept off on my clothes. Only to wake at midnight to undress, bath and look for food to eat.
At one point, My boss (Peace) traveled for a trining that was scheduled to last for two weeks. This time, a staff was sent to us from a nearby branch as relief. Unfortunately for me, the staff was also a junior staff and as such was only proficient in cash and tellering (C&T). The relief staff was drafted to cash and telling while Okpe was brought to customer service, I was sent to the FT (Fund transfer unit), while John; the FT officer went ahead to cover for our boss that went for a training.
They sent me to "FT" because they believed I could learn learn quickly but within me, I was very scared. Within this two weeks I stayed there, I made a very serious mistake that cost me almost half of my salary. This mistake occured while I paid salaries of a hotel. I mistakenly paid a certain girl twice.
By the time I realized it, the girl had withdrawn the money and traveled to Aba. Unfortunately for me, that was supposed to be her last salary from that hotel as she had already tendered her resignation. I had to bring money from my purse to pay the staff I had not paid.
Conclusion.
As you have seen, stepping-up to assume bigger responsibilities, be it at the family level, work place or elsewhere comes with lots of changes. In some, you will make mistakes sometimes, very costly mistakes, but you will learn greatly while at that.
Thank you for visiting and reading through my blog, am grateful.
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