23/07/2025
WHY COLLECT SOMEONE’S MONEY IF YOU WON’T TEACH THEM
That was the question running through my mind after hearing my friend’s heartbreaking story.
She had shared with me the challenges she faced during her time as an apprentice, and honestly, it left me both sad and angry. She said she had joined the shop of a popular tailor in our area, hoping to finally learn dressmaking and achieve her dream of becoming a fashion designer. She paid her money, bought her sewing tools, and came ready to learn.
But instead of teaching her, her boss made life frustrating for her.
For the first few weeks, she was full of hope and excitement, expecting to start cutting, sewing, and learning new styles. But to her surprise, her boss would always find a way to keep her away whenever it was time to cut clothes. The woman would cut plenty fabrics at home and bring them already cut to the shop, leaving my friend and the other apprentices to only join the pieces together.
Can you imagine spending three whole months in a shop and never learning how to cut a single new design?
Whenever her boss wanted to cut clothes in the shop, she would find a way to send my friend on an errand or make her stand at the corner, pretending to be busy elsewhere. It became so frustrating that my friend started feeling like she had paid money just to sit and join clothes all day — the same joining she already knew before paying for training.
As if that wasn’t enough, the woman would sometimes bring her personal housework to the shop. She would ask my friend to peel melon seeds, wash her clothes, or run unrelated errands instead of teaching her.
After more than one year of enduring all this, my friend had had enough. She finally packed her things and left the shop to register somewhere else and thankfully, in her new place, she met a teacher who truly taught her what she came to learn.
Her story left me thinking: why would anyone collect someone’s hard-earned money only to hoard knowledge from them? It doe
