Work

It has now been nearly 2 months since nose first hit grindstone. Several things have changed. There was a minor crisis as the company announced the introduction of "Kurzarbeit". This effectively means that people are obliged to work 20% reduced working hours i.e. one day less/week and get 20% less pay. This of itself is hardly ideal, let alone when the same level of output is tacitly expected. The alternative is of course simply firing people. However, given the large amount of paperwork and redundancy pay, as well as the fact that around 10% of employees have been laid off over the last year, the option of simply working people harder for less money seemed like a super plan.

Thankfully, common sense and huge disgruntlement put paid to this merry scheme within a week, resulting in a retraction from the upper echelons. My colleagues were unsurprisingly very happy at this, even though some of them had taken days off in order to get rid of some of their built up overtime (which would no longer have been useable). Another benefit of retraction is that muggins would no longer be the only full-time employee in his office...

Sadly, the retraction of Kurzarbeit did not extend to the making redundant of a colleague at work. My colleague's contract having been up for renewal a month previously, the President himself decided not to renew it. At any other time, this would have been a formality, at this point it was a handy cost-cutting measure. What is so ridiculous is that the person losing their job seems to be exceptionally friendly, intelligent and competent.

The net result of this is that I have been given his job. This is turning out to be far more engaging than the sort of odd-jobs one does as a Praktikant, which by their short miscellaneous nature conversely end up all being rather similar. The job involves dealing with lots of people in lots of different countries and managing all the marketing necessary for the release of two ranges of products. This can involve anything from devising new texts to describe products to getting kit couriered to photo-studios, who then produce the images necessary for PR agencies to produce brochures. Unfortunately, there is still work left from my previous Praktikant engagements, which is still to be finished. This is proving difficult as there is a vast amount to learn in a very short space of time. Sending out mass emails is still mildly intimidating. God forbid I should get a raise, lest my bargainsomeness be reduced.