A while ago, on Elon Daberechi Musk’s Twitter, a vendor that I follow posted pictures of the dresses she makes. Stunning is so inadequate an adjective to describe the dresses in question. To take things up a notch, the tailor/vendor gave the clothes names.
Not style names. She named them after actual people.
As expected, the clothes were not cheap. I think the most affordable of the lot went for ₦60,000. Her comments section was filled with people oohing, ahh-ing, and yass-ifying her creations. However, one comment stood out.
“Na why I no dey like all these people wey dey name clothes. Them go name dress Mkpurumma, carry the price hang for one place.”
Know your worth and add tax.
This is one mantra of our 2020s, Gen Z-obsessed, self-loving, personal development-focused realities. We all believe we have worth, are enough as we are, and deserve all the good things we have and want to have—rightly so. Amid this drone of self-help platitudes is the core belief that nothing is beyond our reach so far as we can dream it. In a world that plucks the stars from our eyes and leaches us of basic human optimism early in life, these mantras become mental pick-me-ups that help us put in an extra unit of effort each day.
But is there a line between knowing your worth and exploiting others? Is there really a metric to know which products and services are deserving of the tax-inclusive values attached to them? What makes an “Mkpurumma” dress more expensive than an anonymous dress of the same physical and aesthetic value?
One sentiment parroted off in professional circles and LinkedIn spaces is this idea that one is not being paid for the service they are delivering but for all the training (degrees, certification courses, hands-on experience) they received that made them a maestro of their craft. Thus, when you pay a 2D animator for a character sketch, you are not just paying for that singular blue-haired, Disney-esque character they drafted, you are paying for all the time spent learning the distinction between light and shade, final gradation, and proportions. When put like this, one understands why luxury brands are phenomenally expensive. What is worse is with these brands, you are also paying for the name and “all the years of expertise.”
On the surface, this concept of value-added worth is a good idea, especially if you are a skilled professional that consistently undersells themselves. Using this concept of tax-inclusive worth, you can really turn things in your favor when negotiating salaries. However, as with self-medication, self-help can turn us into psychological hypochrondriacs, forcing us to fix things that were never broken. Thus, people with a healthy sense of self-worth end up adding extra “tax” to their perceived values. There is also the Dunning-Kruger Effect and the reality of people with sub-par skills believing they are also deserving of tax-inclusive worth, but that’s a story for another day.
As human beings have a proclivity for breaching boundaries, this concept of value-added worth should be retained and upheld in personal relationships. However, there is a need to review it in professional settings. As you are personally acquainted with the hurdles of your career, it is easy to believe and insist tax should be added to the value you bring.
But what about the rest of us?
Imagine every service provider and product manufacturer begins to add tax and “experiential commission” to every product they offer. (No) thanks to multiple years spent in medical school, the resultant mental stress, and all the student loans acquired, doctors will quintuple their (already high) consultation fees and the prices for medical procedures. To correct for the mental and physical stress they go through, garbage men will increase the cumulative amount they charge to cart away rubbish. Electricians will probably add a hazard allowance to their tax-inclusive prices because of the dangers of rewiring your house.
You think food prices are already high?
Wait until farmers absorb the concept of value-added worth. It’s not easy to speak the language of the earth and get her to respond to your ministrations. As farmers are the chosen ones, it will only be fair if there is a tenfold increase in the prices of their crops.
Certain things in life are invaluable.
True love.
A mother’s sacrifice and devotion.
The experiences and effort that perfected your craft.
Attempting to commodify them cheapens them. In the same way a child will never be able to financially repay their mother for her love and sacrifices, none of your customers will really be able to pay you an amount that is commensurate with all the efforts you have put into honing your craft. And they shouldn’t. Everything doesn’t need a price tag to be valuable.
What are your thoughts? Do you agree, disagree or have a nuanced view on the matter? I look forward to reading your thoughts in the comments section.
Like what you read? Check out The Perks of Responsibility and The Age of Instructions and Self-Proclaimed Experts
