[size=14pt]I quit because most clients want bank marketers to offer their bodies - Joke Adegun
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ADEOLA BALOGUN


Joke Adegun, a former banker, resigned her well-paying job to take up the ushering aspect of event management. She tells ADEOLA BALOGUN why she wants to take ushering to a higher level


[img]http://odili.net/news/source/2010/nov/14/punch/images/pix20101113036230[1].jpg[/img]
Joke Adegun



http://odili.net/news/source/2010/nov/14/803.html


Joke Adegun had always dreamt of delving into event management, but her job as a banker had not allowed her to take into it fully. But when the unimaginable twist in the banking industry started and bank workers started losing their jobs late in 2009, the beautiful lady saw this as a wake-up call to make up her mind on what she actually wanted in life.

While she was in the bank, the bucks were rolling in but her soul was somewhere else, waiting to be liberated and nurtured. Though she was doing a bit of event management as an aside with her job in the bank, she was not fulfilled, which meant she had to give herself a time frame to launch out as an event manager.

Though many lost their job as a result of the meltdown in the banking sector, Adegun's job was never threatened. Still, she decided to opt out herself to become her own boss.

She says, "I had had the dream even as a banker but the recent happening in the banking industry was like a wake-up call for me. I drew a plan and promised myself to leave willingly at a particular time. I didn't lose my job in the bank but I resigned my job from Zenith Bank. Before Zenith, I had been in other banks such as GTB and Bank PHB and I joined banking as a graduate. I studied English but I found myself in banking."

The young ex-banker had a swell time while she worked in the customer service section but she got turned off when she had to join the marketing. As a marketer, her duty was to go out and look for depositors in order to meet a target set for her.

"For the most part, I was in the customer service section which I really enjoyed," says Adegun. "It was what I really loved to do. However, along the line, I was in marketing and while I was there, I didn't like it at all."

A lot of people have accused banks of forcing ladies in their employ into prostitution by giving them unrealisable targets which they must meet. It is said that the ladies who are usually called marketers out of desperation to meet their target often fall victim of exploitation by would-be depositors. Perhaps, Adegun found marketing unpalatable because of the unethical practice in the bank, hence her dislike for marketing.

She says, "What we do in Nigeria is not really banking. They just ask people to go and get deposits from outside without bothering how they achieve that. And for some people to part with their money, you must have something to offer in return and to me, it was not professional.

"For me, I didn't find it funny and I was not fulfilled. I can't rule out the fact that some customers are willing to give you their money because of some strings attached. They would ask you what you want to offer and if you are not forthcoming with an explanation, they ask you to offer yourself.

"I got this a number of times and I am sure any average bank marketer would tell you the same thing, but it depends on how you handle such situations. When people say marketers are prostitutes because of the work they do, I tell them that those who are doing it have always had the tendency in them; that if nobody is compelling you to do it, you don't have to do it. If anyone demands that you offer yourself before he can give you money, you move on if every diplomatic tactics you employ to disabuse his mind failed, another person would give you."

She says that despite the fact that she was not ready to compromise, she was still able to win some depositors for her bank. "I was able to bring in something even though it was not so much, I didn't enjoy it," she explains. "Inasmuch as you would not want to tell off your customers, there are ways you can handle advances from men without being impolite and that was how I was able to manage it.

"But even at that, it affected my relationship because customers would call me at times at odd hours when I was with my boyfriend, demanding to see me during the weekends and stuff like that."

I once warned a girlfriend of mine that was about taking a bank job that if dared tried it, that would be the end. . .

seriously, its sad having these things happen without the women societies thoroughly protesting this, they will rather be protesting the menace of woman boku at Kubwa, Abuja considering they have lost a lot of their hubbies to the ashawos there . . .they also must get bothered about their children, young and innocent that get entangled in this mess all in the name of making money and making ends meet . . .

This explains why I am a big advocate of graduates learning vocations, such that u can call the bluff of any employer and create employment instead of continually being paid to remain in another person's employ !

I have been banking for several years and no banker ever offered me her body.  I feel cheated!