I had to send an employee $25 that's 2000 in Indian rupees. I sent her $2000 dollars by mistake. I made this stupid error on 31st Jan 2024. She won an award for 25 dollars in January for writing a viral post on Linkedin for one of her clients.
Her name is ADAEZE ANYANWU and she is from Nigeria.
I'm so stupid, I thought I was transferring her money in INR but instead I sent her 2000 in dollars i.e. 169,000.
And this is what happened next...
I didn't realise it.
She did.
I didn't ask her.
She did.
I didn't follow up.
She did.
For days, I didn't notice but when the money hit her bank, she immediately texted me.
To me this was one of the lowest points in my life, I started House of Creators last year and we are completely remote.
She lives in Nigeria, even if I wanted to recover the money from her -I wouldn't have been able to do anything sitting here in India.
She could've chosen to switch off her phone and move on with the extra cash that she got. I mean, 've read a lot about Nigerians scamming the world, and to be honest, I believed most of it. But, not everything you read online is true.
Ada went through the trouble of sending the money back to my account in less than 5 days. She had never done an international transfer before, so for her it was a lot of back and forth with the bank. She took ownership for my mistake and didn't make me feel bad or guilty for it.
She is GenZ and there is a lot of bad stuff we read on the internet about them too. I can say that's all exaggerated and untrue.
This experience changed me.
I've been meaning to write about this for a while. I'm glad I did today.
You know kindness and honesty go a long way.
I'm so happy to share, we've hired more responsible people than me in the team.
And we're growing our team size, looking for 2 more content writers.
If you know someone, who is GenZ with a strong werk human ethic like Adaeze, please tag them so we can get the conversation started.
Ada has taught me to help the team without making them feel bad about themselves.
As a young leader, that's a big lesson for me.
So, thank you, Ada.
PS: I've not made such silly mistakes in the last 3 months from learning and pushing to do better everyday. Now, every time I hit transfer on any transaction, I check it 100 times. I don't want to feel stupid again.
Jatin Saini
Co-Founder House of Creators, India
