A matter of adaptability

A classmate who studied in Berlin, speaks several foreign languages ​​with German at a professional level, has a profession acquired at the university, but moved to her small hometown in Bulgaria during the covid crisis, wrote on FB a few days ago that she started work. Apparently, for some reason, she did not want to say the name of the company and so to answer her friends' questions, but a single word made an impression on me, I immediately recognized the company and immediately wrote to her.

Because it was about a company I applied to already last year, their job advertisement had turned out to be misleading, the contract they offered was not even an employment one, but a freelance, circumventing the Bulgarian labor legislation on many points, their HR manager continued to lie to me during all the interviews regarding the legality and accounting of the contractual relationship between the client (them) and the contractor (me), so I ended up calling the Labor Inspectorate.
The officials there confirmed my concerns, they said that they have already received many reports about this company, they have gone to many inspections there, but in my case they are not allowed to do that because I rejected their offer and I am not their employee, lol.

I think I wrote a post about this case back then, but now that I think about it, I think it's another Catch 22. Coming across a fraudulent company, I can't report it, and have to let it continue breaking the law because I did not accept their unfavorable and misleading contract terms. This can only be done from within, only if I accept these conditions. Then everything becomes meaningless anyway. But ok.

Now I wrote to this classmate of mine because I was quite amazed - how could such a qualified person fall into the trap of an incorrect German company. Or maybe also in the hope that since she had agreed to their terms, then maybe they had changed something about them in the long time that had passed since then.
I just saw that my conversations with them are from April-May 2023.

It was day two of her starting this job and her response to me was somewhat worried, even scared. Right at the beginning she said something like: I don't feel like things are going well here and I don't see how they're going to turn out.
At the same time, nothing has changed since then - all the terms of the contract that I mentioned have remained the same.

That day we were writing each other on Messenger and I was quite confused by her actions. She said that she did not know the Bulgarian labor legislation because she had only worked in and for Germany so far, so she did not know about the circumvention of the labor law by this company. But it was the only company where she could work on her own schedule, even though that schedule had to be set a month and a half in advance, and even though there were still quite a few hour restrictions. Because she has two children to take care of. All the other companies she applied to for online work refused this.

That got me thinking. Everyone's life has developed in a different way, under different circumstances, and everyone has figured out what suits them, what they can agree with, what they can adapt to.

This acquaintance of mine, who recently started working in the capital with a contract of incomplete insurance and money given in cash, recently wrote to me how amazed she was by her boss, because he gave her money in cash in advance, even before she worked it out, then he did not want she should pay him back if she made less, etc. He even allowed her to bring her child to the office and set her own working hours, something no other company would agree to. That's why she is happy with these contract terms, incomplete insurances, etc., things that I had considered to be long gone illegal practices in the labor market.

Now this overqualified classmate of mine accepts other unfavorable conditions for similar reasons.

Am I the only one who can't deal with this?
I have experienced so many scams and unfair practices from employers over the years that I just can't take it anymore. And as my partner said on this last occasion with my classmate: either you accept the unfavorable contract terms and have a job, or you refuse to be lied to in this blatant and brazen way and remain unemployed. Like I am right now.

The next day my classmate called me on the phone. This time the mood of the conversation was different. I found out from her that we had applied for the same companies and had been to the same interviews. She even applied to that Bulgarian-German company that I recently wrote to you about, that I did an experiment by calling them to ask them why they refused me the job position at the last minute and why they never called me again after the subsequent announcements for the same position.

They had liked her a lot because of her professional German, but she couldn't do even the excel exam, which was really quite difficult, and they told her that she had a lot of skill gaps and when she filled them in, she could re-apply to them.
She was quite puzzled by this result, because really, all these gaps can be filled quickly and easily with training during the training process, but this company insists on completed specialists, which cannot be found on the Bulgarian market, because its activity is related to the life and legislation of Germany and there are no other companies in our country that prepare such personnel. In short, they are looking for the impossible, as I personally told them too.

At the same time, she finds herself in a company where her colleagues have a very low level of command of the German language, even though this is the main requirement for the position, and she herself clearly sees what the situation is in the labor market at the moment, how there is no qualified staff, how all kinds of companies try to trick people with languages, especially with German, by any means, how every day new and new customer support positions are opened, mostly with German, and at the same time there are no people.
Then employers reject capable and hard-working people because they want accomplished specialists who can start work without training for complex jobs for low wages, while other employers are forced to hire completely unqualified people with whom the work will not go anyway and will not be done well by no means, and capable people, finding themselves in this situation, will not be able to endure, as she herself fears it will happen to her.

And yet, my classmate thanked me, said that the conversations with me helped her a lot. Even my negative point of view has calmed her down about her situation, because from the second day she saw that things in the company were not going well, maybe she was expecting miracles or just a normal work process like in Germany, but here, as I told her myself, I keep trying to find some logic, but there just isn't any. The only good thing is that in her case she can terminate the contract with one month's notice rather than three, which is again against the freelance guidelines, but that's another topic, obviously.

As I mentioned, I have been having these conversations with quite mixed feelings, feelings of confusion and frustration as well, perhaps frustration with myself more, for not being so adaptable, even refusing to be so to the conditions here because I consider them unfair and abnormal. And if a person is not adaptable and does not reconcile, he simply cannot survive.
Ask me if I was able to pay for my doctor's appointments or medicine, for example.

But on the other hand, talking to this person also helped me as well. I realized that I'm not the only one in this situation, it's not that something happens to me and only me in this country, that I'm the only one experiencing these things in the labor market. We've been to the same interviews at the same companies because we both try to avoid call center ads and the other slightly more normal looking job ads are very few. On the other hand, she, like me, says: I will not go to the capital just to work something. Just like I say. Because only in the capital there is some variety and higher paid work, while in the other settlements there is no choice for anything.

And that is - either you put up and make a big compromise just to get some money, or you don't and just die.
A matter of adaptability and survivability.

Thank you for your time! Copyright:	@soulsdetour
	Soul's Detour is a project started by me years ago when I had a blog about historical and not so popular tourist destinations in Eastern Belgium, West Germany and Luxembourg. Nowadays, this blog no longer exists, but I'm still here - passionate about architecture, art and mysteries and eager to share my discoveries and point of view with you.

Personally, I am a sensitive soul with a strong sense of justice.
Traveling and photography are my greatest passions.
Sounds trivial to you?
No, it's not trivial. Because I still love to travel to not so famous destinations.🗺️
Of course, the current situation does not allow me to do this, but I still find a way to satisfy my hunger for knowledge, new places, beauty and art.
Sometimes you can find the most amazing things even in the backyard of your house.😊🧐🧭|