You're interns, grunts, nobodies, bottom of the engineering food chain.
[my version, from Grey's Anatomy ep. 1]
My internship is still going on. I made friends with an American engineer of Siemens', he's 36 and he has been working on site (my site) for three months. Of course, I have never seen him before, mostly because he works on shift and in a remote place of the site where I never step my foot before. He has been working for Siemens for 11 years and he was relocated to Germany in 2006.
He told me he is staying in a hotel 10 km from where I live, and he has been there for three months. I mean TTTTHHHRRREEEE months in a hotel in a place of nothing, without knowing the language and with the same 4 colleagues.
He asked me for a restaurant and I gave him some address. I think he wanted to invite me, but chance is I'll never know because when I gave him the addresses when he was leaving by car, so he just took my scratch of paper (where I wrote no contact detail). In this very moment our companies are fighting, and I am afraid that it would give the wrong impression to make friend with the enemy.
A part from this, I have to tell you that I am already getting sick of the Italian job. It seems that nothing is ever gonna change, that you will never be paid more even if you work harder and better than your colleagues. Things have been that way like forever, and nobody sees why this should change.
I already told you that my company was previously public (had always been before) and the privatization didn't change too much until now. The new managers are 40-45 years old, they worked abroad, saw how things work out of Italy. They come here, want to change the world, bring the company to the international level but don't consider that the people working there are 50 years old and grew up in that same town, working in the same way for the past 30 years.
I was fashinated by the new managers: I felt just like I was finally in the *real* world (meaning the international one and not the little provincial one). They talked about performances, assets, hard working, career oriented way to work. They said "who is lazy?...that's the door, keep it in mind", "you are with us or you are over", "things are gonna change here...a lot!",...
Then nothing happened. Walls got painted, but lazy people stayed. New meetings came in the daily routine, but unproductive people are still sitting at their desks, earning the same money.
So I faced the bull: the last time my boss complained about someone not doing something I asked him where all his good proposal to change things went. He replied "it cannot be done".
What the....?!?!?
They keep lazy and unproductive people that are just waiting to swing their badge at 4.30 PM to go home and I have to work my ass out 12 hrs a day to try to get a decent wage and possibly get hired?!
I realized things aren't gonna work for me in Italy.
I am waiting for my internship period to finish (end of June), then I am taking my professional exams on the 3rd of July. The next step, if I don't get hired with a proper wage, is to get on a plane and reach my friend Flavia in the United Arab Emirates. She says there is plenty of vacancies for engineers and the wages are good. Plus, it would be a great chance to boost my career.
Italy, you sink, I leave!
I imagine those lazy people in your company are on indeterminato contracts and don't worry so much about loosing their place. It must be quite difficult to be a manager of such people to be honest. I mean, what can motivate them?
RispondiEliminaHope you get to go out with the American guy. Contacts contacts :)
I know what you mean. My company here in the US has been laying people off. In fact, they had a layoff while I was in Italy and Portugal this past March. When I went back, I expected that certain people would be gone. They weren't. The ones who should've been laid off were still there, and people who should've stayed got laid off. Management where I work sucks. They've been making one bad decision after another, and things just keep getting worse. I've gone from doing the work of one person, to doing the work of two, to now doing the work of three or four, and my wage is the same. I intend to ask for more money, but I'm positive they'll say no. That's okay, though. My doctor has told me that there is some surgery I will be needing, and when I finally have the surgery (which should be soon), I'll be out of work for about 8 weeks, and my employer will have to continue to pay me, because of a thing called Short Term Disability.
RispondiElimina