I've always been the kind of guy who hates being cheated. The moment I notice that someone is trying to play smart and cheat me out of something, I call them out, and depending on what that thing is, I either stop associating with them or take a step that would ensure I no longer get cheated on.
But I used to have this friend of mine some years back who used to be in business with this other guy that we all knew was cheating him out of some cash. But every time he told me how much he was paid and the difference between that amount and the amount he was expecting to be paid, I always got furious and would always try to motivate him to say something.
But then he would always tell me that he prefers being paid something to not being paid at all, because he knew that in order to speak up, he would have to stop working with that other guy, which automatically would mean the both of them running out of business, because the other guy had the connection while he had the product.
Now, while I might not have agreed entirely with his logic, it made a bit of sense to me because I remember many years ago, there used to be this music producer who wouldn't shut up about how he got a deal from EME Music, which at the time was one of the biggest record labels in the country.
This was the record label that had music artists like Wizkid signed to them at the time. He would always pull out the contract he had been asked to sign to show to us, a contract he had refused to sign because he felt that the record label had wanted to take advantage of him. They had wanted to take ownership of every piece of music he produced under the record label's name and all that, and he had refused.
He refused and ended up going back to the street, working for upcoming artists and struggling to make ends meet. Now I can't help but wonder what would have been the case if he had taken that deal, ignored the fact that he was being cheated (he felt he was being cheated), made the connection with bug music artists like Wizkid, and then, when his contract expired, he could have gone on working with those artists as an independent music producer.
If he had done that, if he had endured being taken advantage of for a little while, his entire life story may have changed.
Basically what I'm trying to say is that while standing up for ourselves is a good thing, sometimes we have to take a moment and look at the bigger picture, weigh our options, and then decide what would be best for us in the long run.
