A Cold Day in Hell

They’ve set up a foodstuffs market out in the boulevard of our street. A row of white booths offering everything from Galician breads to Canarian cheese to wines from all over the place. We’ve already checked it out for some good holiday gifts… The noteworthy thing about all this is, however, that the market has a security guard. No surprise, I suppose, considering the value of the goods locked up in those booths. But here’s the kicker…

The security guard is there. All. Night. Long. And, just his luck, this week is COLD. It was down well below freezing both last night and the night before. Sunday night-Monday dawn it snowed. (it’s snowing a tad now too.) Nevertheless, all week when I’ve walked to the metro in the morning, there he is.

Considering the current economic situation, I wouldn’t be surprised if he isn’t counting his lucky stars to even have a job – especially with the holidays fast closing in. But it seems like a job that no one in his right mind would really want…

photo source

The Tower of Bable

...is becoming the bane of my existence. I’ve recently started working on a new project at work only to realize that it means I’ll be working in my 5th language since starting at this company.

A little background... I work in the civil engineering construction department at one of the country’s big electricity companies. Although created as a way of concentrating the company’s construction endeavors, we now do 90% of our work for 3rd parties; in other words we build power plants in other countries. One of the primary reasons I was hired was clearly for my English. The company pays more for people who have a certain (test-proven) level of either English or French (or both for those lucky trilinguals). But it appears that in this day and age bilingualism or even trilingualism (the company also pays for my French classes) only gets you so far…

So here’s the count to date:

1. Spanish
2. English
3. French
4. Russian (look for an off-topic post on my business trip there a month or so ago)
5. Portuguese

I’m not sure if there are many languages left for me to work in. Not that there aren’t more languages in the world, but many of the other countries where we do business (Lithuania, Qatar, etc.) function with a relatively high level of English, which obviously gives me some job security, but not necessarily exposure to another linguistic challenge.

Perhaps we’ll bid on a job in China…

Thursday thoughts

If I only I had my camera with me here at work… then I’d post a picture of the current state of my office refrigerator. It’s stocked full of tantalizing bottles of Lambrusco. And a big cake. Clearly someone is celebrating. And celebrating in Spain means alchohol. Even if it’s at the office. Even if it’s at noon. I might have to join in. Even if it’s not for my department…

Work

Today I started my third job in Spain. Well, my third professional, legally-paying job.

Up to this point, both in the States and here in Spain, I have always worked in small companies – the biggest being back in the States with around 30 people. For some reason I thought that my new employer, a giant, multinational, sector-leading , 36,000-employee company would be more “American.” The idea of long coffee breaks and perpetual tardiness seemed out of place in the mental picture I had of the shirt-and-tie corporate environment, even here on the Iberian Peninsula. I was wrong.

This morning I waited about 30 minutes for my HR “greeter” to appear. And when I was shown to my desk around 10:30 the office was empty – everyone was out getting coffee. Later at lunch my coworkers complained that yesterday morning the boss had asked them not to take coffee breaks in twelvesomes. Only in Spain.

But not everyone has adopted the “when in Rome” attitude. My bosses told me this morning that they hired me in part out of a particular interest in the “Yankee” mentality of organization and discipline. I, on the other hand, am beginning to think that the corporate environment in Spain has a leg up on its American counterpart. Granted I am talking from the perspective of a lowly worker bee. Certainly the lack of productivity caused by lateness and long coffee breaks is irksome to the higher-ups. And, admittedly, I find the tardiness extremely annoying, but the coffee breaks certainly aren’t bad. And from where I sit, looking at the four new skyscrapers of the Ciudad Deportivo out the window, the 26 paid vacation days, shortened summer work schedule, and paid lunches makes me more than happy to twiddle my thumbs as I wait for a meeting to start 20 minutes late.