Work & CareerPeachTwig

17 Sept 2 min read

My Barbing Salon and POS Business Was a Lie I Told to Survive

I told everyone I had the biggest shop on the street in Ogbia — a barbing salon on one side, a POS and mobile money stand on the other, generator running non-stop, customers in and out from morning till night. My family, my pastor, the cooperative that gave me the loan — all of them believed it. The truth was far from that picture. My salon was one small room with a single clipper that jammed every ten minutes, and my POS business was just my phone and ₦20,000 float that finished by 10am most days. I couldn't afford a second clipper, couldn't afford enough cash float to serve more than four or five customers before I had to turn people away. I was too ashamed to tell anyone the truth, so I started borrowing pictures online smart-looking barbing shops with flat-screen TVs and posting them like they were mine. Everyone at home believed the business was booming. I even used part of the cooperative loan to buy a fancier signboard, thinking appearance alone would fix things. It didn't. Customers still complained about the slow clipper. People still walked away when I told them no cash for withdrawals. Meanwhile, back home, the story had grown bigger than I could control — my name was already being mentioned as the young man doing well for himself in Ogbia. Then my elder sister, who lives in Port Harcourt, called to say she was bringing her church group to Ogbia and wanted to stop by and see this your great shop before continuing to Yenagoa. My chest tightened. There was no way one broken clipper and an empty POS table could stand as proof of everything I had claimed. That night, I couldn't sleep. I kept imagining the shame — not just for me, but for my parents, who had already been receiving praise on my behalf. I decided I would rather confess than be exposed in front of everyone. The next morning, before her group arrived, I called my sister aside and told her everything — the one clipper, the empty float, the borrowed pictures. I braced myself for her disappointment. Instead, she went quiet for a moment, then laughed the kind of tired laugh that comes from carrying your own secret. "Ah, so na so? I told them my own oil and gas contract in Brass never even start work o, na paper contract. We are just two liars trying to survive." She didn't bring her church group to the shop that day. Instead, she gave me ₦50,000 quietly and said, "Fix the clipper first. Worry about looking rich later." Today, the shop is still small — one working clipper, one apprentice, and a POS table that sometimes runs out of cash by afternoon. But nobody has to pretend anymore. Whatever little is happening there now, at least it's real.