Job: the eternal incognito

Since late spring 2008 I've gave my resumee to working agencies like Adecco and ManPower to find a damn job that would give me the ability to earn some money. I started in may and I end up working in June for a merchandising company from Turin that was dealing at the time with RedBull products. Nothing was on the horizon so I decided to take the job because I was tired staying home doing absolutely nothing. 

The job consisted in working inside of a supermarket two hours in the morning on Monday, Wednsday, and Friday for a total of six weekly hour at a shitty rate of 7 Euros, placing RedBulls on the shelves of this huge supermarket that was 2o km from my house. The supervisor of the drink section was a cool dude, tall havy built size with a bald head that made him look like Mr Clean, but younger and with a sense of humor, he was making sure that every time I was there the merchandise was ready and close to the my isle. All I had to do was load an empty chart with the cans and line them up nicely according to the pictures that was in the manual my company sent to me few days earlier, it was showing how the different stuff was supposed to be placed in each different cooler/fridge. 

The first problem encountered was that the space mentioned inside the manual wasn't as big as the shelves I had in front of me, it was about half and the display job wasn't gonna get done properly. So I decide to ask to the drinks isle supervisor and he stated "I don't care what the manual says, I decide the space slots not your company!", farewell I said and started to pile the cans much like the rest of the energy drinks.

I realized that the company I had the contract with didn't maintain contacts with supermarkets that often, I got the same opinion from two girl working my same position for two different products. 

After a couple of weeks I called the girl that gave me the job because the security chief at the supermakert wanted me to wear a silly white overall with the supermarket logo on the back, the dude told me the reason was so I wouldn't be confused for someone just hanging there -maybe like a fucking costumer randomly filling the shelves for the love of it?- I thought.

I asked the company why they would insist on that, my contract didn't stated that I had to wear anything beside my clothes and a badge with my pic. Well the conversation over the phone ended up badly with this girl, she insisted that I had to do that without giving any logical explaination, I had to wear the supermaket uniform while not working actually for that supermarket and with costumers ready to ask me every two minutes "Excuse me where do you keep the deodorants?". That would have my two hours shift doubled, and the company woulnd't even pay the extras because they calculated that replacing and filling shelves with cans would just take me two hours or less.

I ended up quitting that shitty job after I tried to explain the girl at my company that 40 Euros a week isn't worth it and they wouldn't even reinbourse me the gasoline as stated in the contract, so I sent them an email with my immediate resignation explaining carefully my decision, they replied to me that they require me to sign one of their officials letter and mail it back to them. The letters arrived after less than three days and surprise... on 'the reason I quit my job' they wrote "Incompatibilities with the workplace"; so I mail them back saying that if they wanted that letter signed they would have to pay me first then change the motivation with the one I gave in my original resignation email. 

After a month or so I receive a letter from them with the two weeks salary and no gas money reinbursement, they wired the money to my bank account, a meere 80 Euros got a cut of 15 Euros by their bank as transfer charges, so I receive 65 euros minus government taxes and another letter in my mail box from the company inviting me to sign the letter, I didn't mail them back nor signed that letter; all I recieves in my pocket was less than 50 Euros (again minus withdraw fee from bank). I dont' care if they are still waiting, they wasted enough of my time, it was nice to wast their!

Summer, heat and thirst

My last post was a few days before summer started, before the longest day of the year, in fact the Sun went to sleep later than any other day. 

Like any other summer you know that mosquitoes and heat will be your best friend for almost three months, but what I find incredible and awkward is the constant presence of days where rains and Sun shine alternate on a very frequent basis. Those are days that you rarely see in your life because of strange weather patterns, or more likely due to global warming, because Earth is now warmer due to the green house effect, we can now expect phenomena where the soil will deliver a more powerful vertical force from the ground up, where thunderstorm cloud type can form more easily and more violently. This adds up when you see towards the end of August the weather forecast of tornado valley in the US, more and harsher storms will hit countries like north America and south Asia.

Desert countries like USA and Africa will see their deserts expanding and their vegetation dyeing from the extreme heat of the atmosphere, while somewhere else more energy from a power station is pumped to cool those houses where air conditioning units are working 24/7; and maybe elderly people are on the brink of death because of dehyadration due to an excess summer temperature.