Παρασκευή 4 Οκτωβρίου 2013

The chronicle of an activist working for an international company

Athens - Greece

 17/7/2013 - 1st day of training.

Everything looks so interesting. People from Italy, France, Spain, Palestine, Morocco, Netherlands and Germany are in Athens and they will all work together in the same building floor of a French international company subcontracted by a US company.
Motivational phrases are written on the walls and you get inspired even if you have spent many years studying subjects like Mathematics and Biodiversity Conservation ( or Biology, Criminology, Languages etc). You have to face the crisis and the current Greek reality so you make the decision of stop saving animals for a while because you have bills to pay in order to survive.

19/7/2013 - going out for dinner with the company's Human Resources

The HR department of this French company decides to invite all 81 people that they have just recruited.
60 of them accept the invitation and here we are, near the world-famous Acropolis; eating, drinking and socializing.
One of the guys from the HR explained to me that 'this bureau was created just last year in order to connect people from company, by bringing closer the Greeks with the workers from abroad,and of course, to show them the Greek culture, etc... through this kind of events".
EXCELLENT- I thought. I was amazed, thrilled and impressed.

If we add the fact that they provided a relocation package with flight tickets and 2 weeks at a hotel near the company's headquarters while they search for an apartment... it all sounds good and organized.


-Until the moment you dare to talk to someone in whom one of the HR's employee is interested in (Who are you? Why do you want to inform this guy where to go tomorrow? Where are you working exactly? And come again, why there?' - those kind of questions because you interrupted the 'hitting').
-Until the moment you realize that another employee from the HR has the audacity to touch you the moment he is making fun on the fact that you are vegetarian (when did he even get the right to come that close to you).
-Until the moment you see that all the people from the HR are drunk and all they want is to go to a bar and get even more drunk (and get laid of course with some of the foreign workers -"victims", to the altar of their Greek exotic origin- NOT) so they don't give a damn about the bus driver who is waiting in the middle of a busy central street in Athens. They don't even bother with  informing the poor bus driver that there will be a need of 1 and not 2 buses.
-Until the moment, YOU, a Greek worker, try to help the bus driver to communicate with all these foreign drunk people and explain to them that they have to hurry up and that smoking is not allowed, etc...