The only way I could leave overnight is if I’m fine with them not paying me. Otherwise, I have to wait until the New Year.
This is how we agree. If I have to, I just put up with it (about two and a half weeks).
“If it stresses you out, go home,” says the boss in the morning. I am reporting what I was told by the agency. I still have some work to do here; if i quit immediately i wouldn’t get paid. “Das interessiert mich nicht,” insists his superior. “Zimmer putzen and leave,” he only blurts out. The boss gets involved; together with the agency, they are throwing me around like a hot potato. They also don’t pick up the phone, they lie, they gossip. In the same way as they deal with us, they now deal with each other.
If it is not necessary for me to stay, I should get the money for that week, is the conclusion, which is difficult to come to terms with. “I’ll tell the boss to give you two hundred euros to get home,” the guy from the agency tells me. The rest will be credited to your account next month.
According to the instructions from the agency, I go to the boss for money. A technician behind the bar, they are repairing a coffee machine together. I wait and wait, I stand there a meter from them and – nothing. As if I wasn’t there. He doesn’t care at all. If I didn’t have it for the trip (from my previous job in the Krkonoše mountains), I would be in a complete mess now. This is also where the agency lives. It is based on the fact that we are totally broke. It obviously didn’t occur to him that I had my paycheck. On the last phone call, he asks if the boss gave me the money. “I have to know,” he emphasizes. When I deny this, he fatherly wonders what I will do. When I finished in the Giant Mountains, where going to work in Austria seemed extremely dangerous to everyone, a colleague prophesied that my skeleton would be found somewhere in the mountains in the spring… He obviously wouldn’t want this. The guy from the agency. “If your family sends you money, you don’t have it in your account today,” he thinks. “That’s none of your business. I’ll deal with it. Wir sind fertig,” I conclude the conversation.
“Good luck and a happy journey,” a young colleague from Slovakia comes to wish me.
The other, who has been here for seven seasons, accompanies me to the cable car. “You came here for nothing,” she says. He won’t help me with the suitcase, I drag it through the snow myself. “Hey,” he beeps at me with a card at the cable car.
In addition to the group of people who recommended Austria as a great work destination, I also hear other opinions: “Aren’t you afraid?” “Such courage, I wouldn’t go anywhere.” – There will be something about that approach as well. In a way they are right.
The decision to go to Austria for work was not a rash one. It’s not that unusual either… Even a bad experience is an experienceour classmate used to say in high school. I’m so glad to be out of there. A huge relief and never again.
In the evening in Prague, I will realize that I haven’t said goodbye to that grandfather from the dishes.
