Cheats can be a source of pain
WE were quaffing ice-cold beers while sitting on tall bar stools one fine weekend when a guzzler rose from his seat to unrestrainedly pump countless fists into the belly of a woman of easy virtue with whom he had been boozing with for a long time.
So angry was this guy with a furrowed brow that had all his fists landed on the target, the police homicide department would have been deployed to gather details and arrest him for murder. Naturally, everyone was disturbed and sought to know what had triggered this sudden turn of events considering that the couple initially appeared to be much into each other with countless public displays of affection.
The miffed assailant disclosed that the member of the fairer sex had prejudiced him of nearly US$100 by ensuring that she did not bring change whenever they bought booze, cigarettes and snacks.
“She deserves this. She has been pocketing all my change since morning. Just now, I caught her stealing from my wallet, thinking that I was too drunk to notice. Such people have no place in society and I need to beat her up even more,” the bloke bellowed as he was being pulled away from the hapless woman.
Sadly, this is roughly how untrustworthy many people have become.
A good number of our citizens, despite age or sex, have become so untrustworthy that they make sure you lose something for getting close to them.
Househelps often help themselves to provisions meant for the children they look after, only to look like hopeless lumps of mud by the roadside when exposed. Some rogue young women also bed their elder sisters’ husbands, who plucked them out of poverty in the rural areas, only to be found pregnant and sent back into suffering mainly as a result of untrustworthiness, kusavimbika.
Worse in this category of untrustworthy people are children.
These people often under-declare change or completely refuse to give it to the owner.
“Sorry, I forgot to collect the change”, “Sorry, I thought I had given you the money” and “I think I lost the money” are some of the replies one gets when he asks for change, while others will claim to have given you the money.
It can be worse, especially for parents who trust sending their children to do shopping on their behalf.
If one sends some untrustworthy children to buy groceries worth US$100, they will buy goods worth US$75 and pocket the difference, and want to continue with life as though nothing would have happened.
So rogue have children nowadays become that they can even steal from an ailing parent before pointing fingers at househelps and other relatives. When cornered, these people will sometimes own up but largely, they profess ignorance.
The case is not confined to groceries. At a time when there is exchange rate volatility, some unruly children have the effrontery to splash cash meant for their school fees on niceties and trendy apparel before claiming to have lost the money to thieves.
This business of people seeking an unfair advantage over others is also commonplace at workplaces, where some characters will collect T-shirts and other branded merchandise for personal use at the expense of other workers.
Did you know that some untrustworthy people will furnish you with wrong prices each time you send them on an errand to a point where they take offence when you send someone else?
“Why did you send me in the first place if you did not trust me? Life goes well with a bit of trust,” they will tell you straight in the face.
Gentle reader, while you can cheat some people some of the time, you cannot cheat all the people all the time.
Inotambika mughetto.