Don’t expect too much from people — Gbubemi Atimomo 

Thoughts on having and managing expectations

I remember when I started job hunting in Lagos after returning from NYSC in Fika, Yobe State. It had been a year spent teaching secondary school students government, a subject I hadn’t taken in school but willingly volunteered to teach. I was eager to come back to Lagos and begin my “professional career”. I had enjoyed my time teaching the students, but I felt that I could do a lot more with the opportunities that I believed were available to me.

I arrived in Lagos and started job hunting. As every job seeker in Lagos knew at the time, the process of searching for a job was a job itself. You would have to keep your ears open for vacancies, then study to ace aptitude tests and practice for interviews. You would have to leave home early to attend tests or interviews where you were guaranteed to meet a sea of people. It wasn’t just about attending tests and interviews only, it was more about discovering which opportunities were available and then applying for them. The internet wasn’t as accessible as it now is, so The Guardian newspaper on Tuesday was the go-to resource for available opportunities. It was either the newspaper, word of mouth or “man know man”.

The commercial banks were the belles of the labour market ball. I think there were over eighty at the time, and many were hiring. Add the telecoms companies to the mix, and it appeared to be a job seeker’s paradise. The only snag was that one needed to be invited for many of these tests as they didn’t often allow walk-in candidates. Applying for the vacancies wasn’t always a guarantee of getting an invitation, so sometimes people gatecrashed and prayed to get lucky.

Tests would be like crusades with so many people in attendance. The most popular venues were King’s College in V/I, the Law School auditorium, and UNILAG’s main auditorium. It was always a madhouse. I remember trying to sneak into a bank test once and using all the tricks I knew to convince one of the staff on duty that I was scheduled to sit for the test. I guess I didn’t present my case strong enough as I got bounced.

I often got information on vacancies which I shared with other job-seeking friends. I would either go to the cybercafe and send emails or send text messages, which was more expensive depending on the number of people I decided to reach out to. I had just got my first mobile phone, and text messages were still N15/ text. It was expensive for an unemployed young man to be texting people up and down, but I didn’t mind, after all, it was for the greater good as far as I was concerned.

As time went on, more and more of my friends started getting jobs, and I quickly realised that many of the people I was sharing information with were not returning the favour. It never fully occurred to me until one of those friends told me she had five job offers and wasn’t sure which one to pick. It was a real shocker because I wondered why she hadn’t shared those opportunities with me when she was applying for them. I remember feeling bad: I felt I had given so much but got almost nothing in return.

At the time, I had taken it for granted that my friends and I were all looking out for each other. We were all job hunting after all, so it made sense to share whatever information I came across because we were all in the same shoes. It didn’t matter who got a job first as long as we could all benefit from the information one way or the other. What I hadn’t realised was that the flow of information was largely one-sided, same as my expectations. I had assumed that my job-hunting friends would return the favour, and when some of them hadn’t, I had assumed it was because they weren’t getting information I hadn’t already shared.

Many years later, reflecting on this experience and many other similar experiences, I have come to see things differently. I should not have had such high expectations of those friends because none of them had committed to a reciprocity arrangement. I had taken it upon myself to share whatever information I got, and that was my decision. I could not demand or expect to receive what another person had never committed to giving. It’s taken a while for this to sink in as I still have to remind myself occasionally. And even when a person commits to taking a certain action, it is important to realise that the commitment can be broken.

Am I advocating for people to have low or no expectations of others? Nothing could be further from the truth. I know many people say that having no expectations of others helps them to live a peaceful life. At least, if you have no expectations, you can never be disappointed. But is this possible though? I am not so sure about that. I think some people have just learned to better manage their expectations of others. My view is for people to be clear and upfront beforehand so that their expectations are communicated and established.

Even though I do not advocate for an absence of expectations, it is important to realise that you can only be fully responsible for what you can control. I very often hear people say things like “I didn’t think you would do this” or “I didn’t expect that of you”. When we remember that we can only control the outcomes we are responsible for (and this isn’t even always guaranteed because some outcomes are dependent on the involvement of others), it is much easier for us to leave room for disappointment. Life could happen, people could have other commitments they consider more important than their existing commitments, and then forget to communicate a change in circumstance. People could even procrastinate on taking action. To be honest, people don’t even need any reason not to meet expectations except for integrity, and that is an entirely new conversation for another day.

We should learn to have moderate expectations of others, even of ourselves. Whilst we hope for the best, we should also prepare for the worst. Life would be much better if we communicated our expectations clearly, same for communicating our inabilities to meet previously agreed commitments. Either way, we should try not to get ourselves riled up when our expectations are not met. Life is too beautiful to keep one’s focus on the actions of others This is the way I see things today.