England what we didn't know. What you didn't want to know about England. Abramovich has problems with the British authorities
In 4th grade middle school, in the first half of the year, for homework math, they ask you to count up to 20. After the new year, count up to 40. Almost no one there really knows the multiplication table. But in the third grade, all students are given a calculator right at school. This is another reason not to teach her. The division system looks like this: 15:3. I'm not even saying that this is again a multiplication table that you need to know by heart. The number 15 is written on a piece of paper. It is circled, and three legs are added to the circle. This is 3. And then dots are placed sequentially opposite each leg until you count to 15. All that remains is to count the dots opposite one leg. This is the correct answer. At first I thought the child was doing nonsense. I even asked what she came up with? To which I received the answer:
They explained to us at school how to divide numbers.
I was shocked. After a couple of seconds I asked:
Can you divide 200 by 10?
Oooh, this is a difficult task,” my friend’s eight-year-old daughter answered me, “But I’ll try.”
She wrote the number two hundred, circled it, drew 10 legs, and began dotting and counting.
For God’s sake, stop, I asked, I can’t look at this.
One of the Poles, who had a 14-year-old daughter, thought about returning to Poland. And he sent his wife and daughter on reconnaissance, to see what and how, because they had lived in England for more than 6 years. When they arrived in Poland, the first thing they did was go to school. After a few lessons, my daughter ran out in tears and told her mother that she would never stay here. Of course, she should have been placed back in class for a couple of years. And the worst thing is that all her classmates laughed at her. The brother of a Pole moved to England and brought his 12-year-old daughter. She was assigned to a class based on her age, but she began to complain that she had nothing to do there. Mathematical problems that her peers took 20 minutes to solve, she did in a minute and a half. The girl was transferred to a higher class. But even there she sat and looked at the ceiling, because the situation was practically repeated. Since it was no longer possible to transfer even higher, she was left as is. My daughter completely lost interest in learning. There was also a Pole whose son graduated from an English school. The boy has studied there for the last 8 years. I asked him:
So how is it?
Fool is a fool - he answered.
I don’t know how it is in high school, but in junior school they do everything except study. They sing, dance, draw, swim, go on excursions, and some dogs, chickens, and bunnies are brought to them. But in fact, children do not know basic things. For example, when filling out a diary for tomorrow, they ask every day what date is tomorrow. Nothing surprising. After all, in the third grade, at school, they are read a fairy tale about the three little pigs. Another interesting option is notes for the teacher. If you can’t do your homework, or don’t want to, you need to write a note saying you can’t do it. Moreover, the child himself writes the note. And when he comes to school with this note, there are no sanctions for unfinished homework. In my opinion, it's the same as writing "I'm stupid" and taking it to the teacher.
What you didn't want to know about England
1. I had to start from the very bottom. From a fish factory on a remote Scottish island in the North Sea. According to the Internet and the number of prizes on their website, this is one of the best salmon hatcheries in Europe. I wonder what happens to others then?
2. I was lucky that there was a Lithuanian in the workshop who had been finishing the final work for the last two weeks. He told me everything and brought me up to date. Usually, no one teaches anyone anything. You look and move in. At first, even if as a result of your ignorance, accidents and stops occur, everyone silently corrects everything, but no one speaks not a word. The same thing happens with the locals. No one teaches them either, but we ourselves learn faster. And that's why we are more valuable employees. Plus, there are many among us who really work hard. Although some of ours, if possible, quickly restructure and begin to work according to the local principle. That is, diligently avoid work under any pretext. Sitting in toilets with IPhone, hiding on the street, in short, being in a place where there are no cameras and it is impossible to prove that you are not doing anything. If a slacker is caught, head supervisor(chief manager) gives him a lecture, and he answers "sorry"(Sorry). This is all.
3. Available at the factory category of local people, which are simply there. These are either someone’s children who have nowhere to be placed because they just graduated from school and don’t know how to do anything, someone’s brothers, sisters or relatives who don’t want to go to hard work and instead sit their pants here, or people pre-retirement age. The latter are supported until retirement. They usually walk around the factory all day in circles with their hands behind their backs or carry an object, such as a ball of rope, back and forth. They have positions like daily cleaners (cleaners), and during thirty-minute breaks (breaks) they wash the already clean walls with a hose. Complex equipment, which is all covered in fat and intestines, is washed by ours. Our cleaners mostly worked the night shift, when it was necessary to clean the entire plant. The local there was a supervisor, although we must pay tribute, he also washed the workshops along with all the night lights. Four people, plus a supervisor, cleaned all the lines and all the workshops overnight. When we came in the morning, these people were scary to look at. During the day, while working, local youth took ice from bins (large plastic containers), made snowballs and played with them. The assistant supervisor, an elderly woman, absolutely incapable of organizing anything and very strict towards us, just looked at them and smiled. Sometimes they hid behind it during the “battle”, and sometimes they even hit it with a snowball. All this was visible on the cameras in the supervisor's office, but he did not say a word to them. The real situation at the plant is for one worker – one non-worker. But everyone gets paid the same way.
4. We had a young Lithuanian assistant to the supervisor. She didn’t understand anything about work, but she was very beautiful, constantly hovering around the manager and his assistants, opening all the doors and gates for them, and knocking on everyone and everything. That's probably why she was made an assistant.
5. When you come to work in the refrigerator, you are only given gloves, a cap, ordinary rubber boots and oilskin(rubberized overalls with straps, by the way, made in Latvia). In the refrigerator it’s usually +2, sometimes it’s minus, but warm clothes are your personal concern. Over time, if you get a contract and if you ask, they may give you a synthetic winter cap and thermal boots with thick soles. This is all.
6. If you are got sick or got injured it's your problem. A Lithuanian once tore his back, and the doctor told him that he had to stay at home for two weeks. When he said this at work, he was fired so as not to pay sick leave, and after he recovered, they hired him back. Due to interrupted service, he lost all annual bonuses. I hit my right forearm with a box two weeks after starting work. When I lifted heavy boxes, the pain was wild. But at that time, I didn’t have a contract, and I understood that if I couldn’t work, I would be fired. I bandaged my hand, and when the pain was completely unbearable, I rolled up my sleeve, unwound the bandage and put my hand in ice. After a couple of minutes it became easier, I bandaged my hand again and continued to work. I suffered all the colds that I had during the entire period of work on my feet, eating medicine right in the workshop. In such situations, locals immediately go on sick leave and may not appear for weeks. They just bring a piece of paper from the doctor and go home again. Nobody will fire them. They try not to give you a contract for as long as possible. Without a contract you are nothing. You work at a reduced rate, and any day they can tell you that you are not needed. Plus, you don't have guaranteed pay for 30 hours a week if there's no fish. Only contract workers have this. Some of us have been working without a contract for years. Simply because there is nowhere to go. They gave me a contract quickly, at the end of the probationary period. But I think it’s only because it’s very hard to find people in the refrigerator, and they just tried to tie me down. Locals from other workshops openly said that if they were transferred to chill(freezer), they won't even change clothes. They'll just go home. Because it is hard and inhumane work. And you can’t mock people like that. I had a record with me. A local man, after working in our workshop for 2.5 hours, went to drink some water and did not return. Before this, they usually lasted about two days.
7. Fridge. Non-contract rate £6.05 per hour, before tax. With contract 6.55. This is the hardest work at the factory. Loading and shipping of finished products. Our people go there, having nowhere to go. There should be 6 people in the workshop. In reality, they were never there. Or rather, it was even more when there were no robots. Then, all the products were removed by hand from the conveyor belt, along which boxes are continuously moving, and loaded onto pallets. That is, a fully automated plant, in 2011, at the exit to the warehouse, did not have any equipment other than loaders. A team of 6-7 people passed through 40 to 120 tons of fish every day, depending on the season. As a rule, ours worked on the loading, the locals only picked up the finished pallets in rolls and took them to the ramp under the fork of the loader. I'm lucky. A few months before my arrival, robots were installed. And the bulk of the boxes went to them. We only got our hands on the smokehouse boxes. But the number of people has decreased by half. For the smokehouse, everything was loaded manually in any case, because the boxes were without lids. On bad days, two or three of us would load up to 100 pallets with 21 or 24 boxes each. One box of fish and ice weighed an average of 25 kg. At the same time, it was still necessary to have time to correct the boxes that went to the robots, re-glue crooked stickers with barcodes, pull out boxes if they got stuck on the line, and collect from the floor and repack those boxes that the robot dropped. If the robots stopped, we started loading everything by hand.
The plant couldn’t stand, so the chief manager didn’t care how we managed. In addition to us, there was a supervisor (manager) and two visers (assistant managers) in the workshop. They were locals. The supervisor received 10 pounds an hour, the supervisors 8. They helped us extremely rarely. Basically, they removed finished pallets from manual loading and from robots. The rest of the time they chatted and were on their phones. One local worked with us on loading. His name was David. But he was with a certificate. Only a sick local could go here. A normal person would never come here. He was a unique worker. First of all, we never knew whether he would be there in the morning or not. Being late is normal practice. There were days when the Lithuanian and I were the only ones in the workshop who arrived on time. We arrived at 7:50 and prepared the workshop for work. The supervisor arrived at 8 and turned on the robots. Later he taught me how to do this and began to come even later. David crawled up at five minutes past eight, sometimes at half past nine, or he might not come at all. Weisers could be 10-15 minutes late. But they could not be kicked out. Weisers knew how to control robots. And this was the main argument. In fact, the whole system looks like this: any fault of a local employee is hushed up and no one pays attention to it. No reproaches. No comments or reprimands. I think because they all understand that they themselves can find themselves in the place of the guilty party at any moment. And then no one will tell them anything either. They are all equally irresponsible. And there is no point in telling anyone anything. Today I will redo it for him, and tomorrow he will redo it for me. Unlike them, we were reprimanded for everything.
8. There were days when it was just me and David. When there were a lot of boxes for manual loading, he turned around and went to the toilet. And when he returned, he took a rokla (trolley for transporting pallets) and rode around the workshop. Or sitting in the office. One day, my patience ran out, and I told the visors what kind of thing this is, in my country they break their faces. They immediately drove him to his workplace. But the next day everything happened again. When David got tired of working at this pace, he took several boxes of fish and threw them with a flourish. One for the wall, one for the electrical panel, one for the finished pallet. And after that, he turned around and left, saying that he wouldn’t clean it up. I had to collect fish, twist wires that had been torn off from sensors, and remove ice. If only because it was necessary to walk somehow. And the whole floor was strewn with salmon and ice.
There were days when he had fun. He put his hands on the moving conveyor belt where it was covered in grease, and when the gloves turned black, he walked around the finished pallets and put his handprints on the snow-white foam boxes. I wonder what customers thought when they received such cargo in the USA, Germany or Dubai? In moments of lyrical mood, he would make a hole in a foam box and fuck it with his index finger. After some time, he got a second job driving a taxi. He told me that he went there not because of the money, but because he needed to carry a lot of girls there. And they often pay with sex. When he had to choose between overtime (overtime) at the factory and working as a taxi driver, he dropped everything, turned around and went to work as a taxi driver. The supervisor, swearing loudly, rushed after him, but he only increased his speed and disappeared through the door. He didn't care. They say that David had several dozen warning(warning). We were fired after the third.
9. By the way, tendency to destroy boxes was observed not only in David. From time to time our supervisor would fly into a rage. He started throwing empty pallets and boxes, breaking them and kicking them. No one touched it, only because there was simply no one to find in this place. And once you get there, you will stay there forever. Unless, of course, you leave yourself. And he had absolutely nowhere to go. At 40 years old, he didn’t know how to do anything else, and the island was quite small, and there weren’t many job offers there. Locals, as a rule, don’t want to take a job like his, and they won’t hire an emigrant as a supervisor.
10. Process, this is the workshop where salmon filleted using a special machine. And then the bones are taken out of it. By the way, it is impossible to remove bones from fresh, just killed fish. Therefore, it should stand in the refrigerator for about two days. Then the bones flake away from the meat and can be pulled out of the fillet. Then they start cutting the fish. This is, at best, another day. Then she walks for another day to the mainland. And then also to the store. Therefore, the word “fresh” and “excellent” does not really describe it. Among other things, people during the process did not put much effort into removing the bones. And when there was not enough ice, the supervisor would shovel it from the floor and put it in boxes. I just took it from the pile that formed under the ice maker. When a box of fillets fell off the line in our workshop, no one carried it back to the process either. It was much easier to turn the box on its side and push the ice and fish back with your boot. Fortunately, everything was wrapped in blue plastic film, and the resulting mess could be covered with it.
11. Organic. Wildly expensive products. There were several special farms that raised organic salmon. I don’t know what they did with it, but one day the ship brought fish that literally tore with their hands and stank terribly. We assumed that she died a natural death, and its main advantage was that she died without stress, which means it was wildly beneficial for health. Other times, she was alive and very beautiful. However, there were a couple of days when the ship brought regular fish, but after a while boxes with the “organic” sticker began to come out, and then regular fish came out again, although they all came from the same ship.
12. Sometimes engineers forgot to close the street gates in the refrigerator. They remained open to the street since Friday, and on Monday it was almost impossible to enter the workshop. Several tons of fish were rotten, blood flowed out of it onto the floor, and it stank so much that you wanted to vomit. But I had to work. And the office was feverishly thinking about what to do. As a result, all this fish was put into the smokehouse. There are a lot of recipes with various herbs and spices that saved the product. Then the girls at the trial who were cutting her into fillets began to wrinkle their noses. The most interesting thing is that they didn’t even know why there was such a stench. But during breaks we brought clarity to them, and this made them wrinkle their noses even more. And the engineers, as if nothing had happened, continued to work.
13. At all, clock system very good for experienced workers who use it to pass off their own idleness as full-time work. Our supervisor, a lonely man who did not have to rush home, sat in the office until 9 pm. Even if we finished work at 5. Sometimes he left someone with him to walk around the workshop, wipe down the robots, carry pallets from place to place, but this was very rare, and he left only those very close to him. In addition, there were cameras in the workshop, and it was impossible to fool around for long. But in the office, there was no camera. The supervisor covered the office windows with lids from empty boxes, and watched porn. In fact, he always watched it. And he brought the most interesting moments to show the employees on his IPhone. He never showed me porn. Apparently, I understood that my list of hobbies included something else. By the way, sometimes, if David bent over to pick up something, the supervisor would instantly attach himself to him from behind and pretend that he was fucking him. All the locals laughed a lot at this moment.
14. On trial watches were stolen differently. The chopped and packaged fillets were dumped into a large bin (container), all the Lithuanians were dismissed from the line ahead of time, and then the supervisor and several locals close to him remained, who put the fish into boxes and sent them to our workshop. Of course, it was good for us, because their boxes were small, light, and it was an easy extra hours. I had a case where I did clock out(electronic end-of-work time stamp), and followed his girlfriend to the second floor to go home. She was loading empty boxes into a line for tomorrow. Usually this is done by 3-4 people. But none of ours stayed overtime(extra time), and the English, as usual, left. They told me that I couldn’t stay without the supervisor’s permission, so I went to ask permission to help her. Finding no one, I returned and began to help. I couldn’t sit and watch her unload an entire truck alone. In the morning I was told that in such a situation the supervisor should look at the recordings on the camera and manually record additional time for me. After all, I was working! Sveta went to him, explained the situation and asked me to add more time. Instead of the hour worked, I told her that he should write for at least 30 minutes. But I didn't receive anything. It wasn't even offensive, it was just disgusting. Against the general background of the scale of watch theft at the factory, 30 minutes of confirmed time stood in his throat. I was just not local. A local would have gotten everything down to the minute. After all, there is a clock on the camera.
15. Svetka’s daughter had to do eye surgery. She had congenital strabismus. Such operations were not performed on the island, so it was necessary to fly to the mainland. The state paid for everything. A plane there and back, a taxi to the hospital and the operation itself. The child lay in a room with an adjustable bed, a huge TV, a computer, the Internet, toys, books, fruits and yoghurts. The daughter was fed to the fullest, and the mother lived in a special hotel for parents at the hospital and everything was free there too. When they returned, they were also paid money for gasoline, because she drove her car to the airport on the island. The same thing happened the second time, when it was necessary to go for a postoperative examination. Only this time, instead of a plane, there was a paid ferry.
16. After some time they began to give us overtime, and after the main time in the refrigerator I began to go to the smokehouse. It was the same dispatch(sending finished products), only packs of fish weighed 150 grams, and they had to be packed in boxes of 10 pieces. Moreover, for the same 6.55 pounds per hour. There was also a refrigerator there, but working in it was tough. It was especially good there on weekends, when on Saturday there are one and a half and on Sunday even two rates per hour. I was called there by a Lithuanian who had worked there for 7 years and did all the work of a supervisor, who usually checked in in the morning and left for the whole day on his own business. Because he actually performed all of the supervisor’s duties instead of the supervisor, the Lithuanian could stay at the plant as long as he wanted. Therefore, he always had a good salary.
There I first saw Kevin. It was such a local landmark. He was a little out of his mind. Apparently from birth. There are generally a lot of sick people there. Apparently it's a DNA problem. They said that it was due to the fact that for many years they had marriages between relatives. Fathers slept with daughters, brothers with sisters. And as a result of the process, children were born. In fact, even now, you can see people there who look like fairy-tale forest gnomes. Small in stature, with huge noses, close-set small eyes and small, curled ears. A huge number of people in wheelchairs making some kind of animal sounds. Sick children. This is some kind of genetic shift. And I have heard more than once that the kingdom allowed a flow of emigrants into the country to dilute the blood. Kevin, apparently, was not in the most difficult stage. He went to work at the age of 15, received a driver's license forklift(forklift) and car.
By the age of 21, he had already worked in fish factories for five years, he had a red tuned Ford Focus with two white stripes on the body, and his favorite pastime was picking up schoolgirls on the road. He was caught and tried for sex with underage girls more than once, but was released each time. Because he was sick. He left the courtroom and continued to do what he loved. And everyone was just waiting for the next time. I could hardly stand his bestial gaze. He talked nonsense all the time, although, to be honest, sometimes one got the impression that he was not a fool at all. But he’s just pretending to be them. One day a Lithuanian asked me:
- Do you want to laugh? “Kevin, come here.” He took a 150 gram pack of smoked salmon, showed it to him, and said:
– Kevin, here 150 gram of fish. How many fish are there in three such packs? “He thought for a moment, and after a while he answered:
– 350 gram. – We held back our smiles, and the Lithuanian continued:
- How many fish are there? ten such packs?
“About a kilogram,” came the confident answer.
- How much will it be multiplied? 3 on 7 ?
The post is very long, so it is divided into five parts, but it is worth it.
The author Alexey Lukyanenko is a formerly successful Latvian businessman who, like many others, failed in the 2008 crisis and was forced to leave for the UK and start his activities from the very bottom.
I never thought I would find myself in this situation. I often heard about many leaving, and knew many who left. But I never thought that I would go on my own.
For most of my life, I had my own, quite successful business, I worked hard and did a lot of things, and always found a way out of the most difficult situations. But life decreed otherwise. No matter how hard I tried, I could not resist the situation that had developed in my country. It took shape... Or it was put together... During the year and a half I spent in England, I came to the conclusion that it did not take shape on its own. And this is what I am writing about now. And at that time I was going to an amazing country, about which a huge number of books have been written and a huge number of films have been shot. Where amazing people live, about whom legends are made and hymns are written. Where everything is good and where everyone is happy. Where the best goods are produced, and where tolerance and democracy are at the forefront. It’s clear that creating your own business there, from day one, without initial capital, is a utopia. Therefore, you will have to start as a simple worker at some factory. And then we'll figure it out. They say that everything is simpler there than with us. So, go ahead!!!
1. We had to start from the very bottom. From a fish factory on a remote Scottish island in the North Sea. According to information from the Internet, and the number of prizes on their website, this is one of the best salmon hatcheries in Europe. I wonder what happens to others then?
Houses on the island where migrant workers live. Photo by the author.
2. I was lucky that there was a Lithuanian in the workshop who had been finishing it for the last two weeks. He told me everything and brought me up to date. As a rule, no one teaches anyone anything. You look and move in. At first, even if as a result of your ignorance, accidents and stoppages occur, everyone silently corrects everything, but no one says a word. The same thing happens with the locals. No one teaches them either, but we, on our own, learn faster. And that's why we are more valuable employees. Plus, there are many among us who really work hard. Although some of ours, if possible, quickly restructure and begin to work according to the local principle. That is, diligently avoid work under any pretext. Sitting in toilets with an IPhone, hiding on the street, in short, being in a place where there are no cameras, and it is impossible to prove that you are not doing anything. If a slacker is caught, the head supervisor (chief manager) gives him a lecture and he replies “sorry” (sorry). This is all.
3. There is a category of local people at the plant who are simply there. These are either someone’s children who have nowhere to be placed because they just graduated from school and don’t know how to do anything, someone’s brothers, sisters or relatives who don’t want to go to hard work and instead sit their pants here, or people pre-retirement age. The latter are supported until retirement. They usually spend the entire day walking in circles around the factory with their hands clasped behind their backs, or carrying an object, such as a ball of rope, back and forth. They have positions like daytime cleaners, and during thirty-minute breaks (breaks), they use a hose to wash the already clean walls. Complex equipment, which is all covered in fat and intestines, is washed by ours. Our cleaners mostly worked the night shift, when it was necessary to clean the entire plant. The local there was a supervisor, although we must pay tribute, he also washed the workshops along with all the night lights. Four people, plus a supervisor, cleaned all the lines and all the workshops overnight. When we came in the morning, these people were scary to look at. During the day, while working, local youth took ice from bins (large plastic containers), made snowballs and played with them. The assistant supervisor, an elderly woman, absolutely incapable of organizing anything, and very strict towards us, just looked at them and smiled. Sometimes they hid behind it during the “battle”, and sometimes they even hit it with a snowball. All this was visible on the cameras in the supervisor's office, but he did not say a word to them. The real situation at the plant is that for every one worker there is one non-worker. But everyone gets paid the same way.
4. We had a young Lithuanian assistant to the supervisor. She didn’t understand anything about work, but she was very beautiful, constantly hovering around the manager and his assistants, opening all the doors and gates for them, and knocking on everyone and everything. That's probably why they made her an assistant.
5. When you come to work in the refrigerator, you are only given gloves, a cap, ordinary rubber boots and an oilskin (rubberized overalls with straps, by the way, made in Latvia). In the refrigerator it’s usually +2, sometimes it’s minus, but warm clothes are your personal concern. Over time, if you get a contract and if you ask, they may give you a synthetic winter cap and thermal boots with thick soles. This is all.
6. If you get sick or injured, that's your problem. A Lithuanian once tore his back, and the doctor told him that he had to stay at home for two weeks. When he said this at work, he was fired so as not to pay sick leave, and after he recovered, they hired him back. Due to interrupted service, he lost all annual bonuses. I hit my right forearm with a box two weeks after starting work. When I lifted heavy boxes, the pain was wild. But at that time, I didn’t have a contract, and I understood that if I couldn’t work, I would be fired. I bandaged my hand, and when the pain was completely unbearable, I rolled up my sleeve, unwound the bandage and put my hand in ice. After a couple of minutes it became easier, I bandaged my hand again and continued to work. All the colds that I had later, during the entire period of work, I suffered on my feet, eating medicine right in the workshop. In such situations, locals immediately go on sick leave and may not appear for weeks. They just bring a piece of paper from the doctor and go home again. Nobody will fire them. They try not to give you a contract for as long as possible. Without a contract you are nothing. You work at a reduced rate, and any day they can tell you that you are not needed. Besides, you don't have guaranteed pay for 30 hours a week if there is no fish. Only contract workers have this. Some of us have been working without a contract for years. Simply because there is nowhere to go. They gave me a contract quickly, at the end of the probationary period. But I think it’s only because it’s very hard to find people in the refrigerator, and they just tried to tie me down. Locals from other workshops openly said that if they were transferred to a chill (freezer), they would not even change clothes. They'll just go home. Because it is hard and inhumane work. And you can’t mock people like that. I had a record with me. A local man, after working in our workshop for 2.5 hours, went to drink some water and did not return. Before this, they usually lasted about two days.
7. Refrigerator. Non-contract rate £6.05 per hour, before tax. With contract 6.55. This is the hardest work in the factory. Loading and shipping of finished products. Our people go there, having nowhere to go. There should be 6 people in the workshop. In reality, they were never there. Or rather, it was even more when there were no robots. Then, all the products were removed by hand from the conveyor belt, along which boxes are continuously moving, and loaded onto pallets. That is, a fully automated plant, in 2011, at the exit to the warehouse, did not have any equipment other than loaders. A team of 6-7 people passed through 40 to 120 tons of fish every day, depending on the season. As a rule, ours worked on loading, the locals only picked up the finished pallets in roller loads and took them to the ramp under the fork of the loader. I'm lucky. A few months before my arrival, robots were installed. And the bulk of the boxes went to them. We only got our hands on the smokehouse boxes. But the number of people has decreased by half. For the smokehouse, everything was loaded manually in any case, because the boxes were without lids. On bad days, two or three of us would load up to 100 pallets with 21 or 24 boxes each. One box of fish and ice weighed an average of 25 kg. At the same time, it was still necessary to have time to correct the boxes that went to the robots, re-glue crooked stickers with barcodes, pull out boxes if they got stuck on the line, and collect from the floor and repack those boxes that the robot dropped. If the robots stopped, we started loading everything by hand. The plant couldn't stand, so the chief manager didn't care how we managed. Besides us, there was a supervisor (manager) and two visers (assistant managers) in the workshop. They were locals. The supervisor received 10 pounds an hour, the supervisors 8. They helped us extremely rarely. Basically, they removed finished pallets from manual loading and from robots. The rest of the time they chatted and were on their phones. One local worked with us on loading. His name was David. But he had a certificate. Only a sick local could go here. A normal person would never come here. He was a unique worker. Firstly, we never knew whether he would be there in the morning or not. Being late is normal practice. There were days when the Lithuanian and I were the only ones in the workshop who arrived on time. We arrived at 7:50 and prepared the workshop for work. The supervisor arrived at 8 and turned on the robots. Later he taught me how to do this, and began to come even later. David crawled up at five minutes past eight, sometimes at half past nine, or he might not come at all. Weisers could be 10-15 minutes late. But they could not be kicked out. Weisers knew how to control robots. And this was the main argument. In fact, the whole system looks like this: any fault of a local employee is hushed up and no one pays attention to it. No reproaches. No comments or reprimands. I think because they all understand that they themselves can find themselves in the place of the guilty party at any moment. And then no one will tell them anything either. They are all equally irresponsible. And there is no point in telling anyone anything. Today I will redo it for him, and tomorrow he will redo it for me. Unlike them, we were reprimanded for everything.
8. There were days when only David and I stood on the assembly line. When there were a lot of boxes for manual loading, he turned around and went to the toilet. And when he returned, he took a rokla (trolley for transporting pallets) and rode around the workshop. Or sitting in the office. One day, my patience ran out, and I told the visors what kind of thing this is, in my country they break their faces. They immediately drove him to his workplace. But the next day everything happened again. When David got tired of working at this pace, he took several boxes of fish and threw them with a flourish. One for the wall, one for the electrical panel, one for the finished pallet. And after that, he turned around and left, saying that he wouldn’t clean it up. I had to collect fish, twist wires that had been torn off from sensors, and remove ice. If only because it was necessary to walk somehow. And the whole floor was strewn with salmon and ice. There were days when he had fun. He put his hands on the moving conveyor belt where it was covered in grease, and when the gloves turned black, he walked around the finished pallets and put his handprints on the snow-white foam boxes. I wonder what customers thought when they received such cargo in the USA, Germany or Dubai? In moments of lyrical mood, he would make a hole in a foam box and fuck it with his index finger. After some time, he got a second job driving a taxi. He told me that he went there not because of the money, but because he needed to carry a lot of girls there. And they often pay with sex. When he had to choose between overtime (overtime) at the factory and working as a taxi driver, he dropped everything, turned around and went to work as a taxi driver. The supervisor, swearing loudly, rushed after him, but he only increased his speed and disappeared through the door. He didn't care. They say that David had several dozen warnings. We were fired after the third.
9. By the way, the tendency to destroy boxes was observed not only among David. From time to time our supervisor would fly into a rage. He started throwing empty pallets and boxes, breaking them and kicking them. No one touched it, only because there was simply no one to find in this place. And once you get there, you will stay there forever. Unless, of course, you leave yourself. And he had absolutely nowhere to go. At 40 years old, he didn’t know how to do anything else, and the island was quite small, and there weren’t many job offers there. Locals, as a rule, don’t want to take a job like his, and they won’t hire an emigrant as a supervisor.
10. Process, this is a workshop where salmon is cut into fillets using a special machine. And then the bones are taken out of it. By the way, it is impossible to remove bones from fresh, just killed fish. Therefore, it should stand in the refrigerator for about two days. Then the bones flake away from the meat and can be pulled out of the fillet. Then they start cutting the fish. This is at best another day. Then she walks for another day to the mainland. And then to the store. Therefore, the word “fresh” and “excellent” does not really describe it. Among other things, people during the process did not put much effort into removing the bones. And when there was not enough ice, the supervisor would shovel it from the floor and put it in boxes. I just took it from the pile that formed under the ice maker. When a box of fillets fell off the line in our workshop, no one carried it back to the process either. It was much easier to turn the box on its side and push the ice and fish back with your boot. Fortunately, everything was wrapped in blue plastic wrap, and the resulting mess could be covered with it.
11.Organic. Wildly expensive products. There were several special farms that raised organic salmon. I don’t know what they did with it, but one day the ship brought fish that literally tore with their hands and stank terribly. We assumed that she died a natural death, and its main advantage was that she died without stress, which means it was wildly beneficial for health. Other times, she was alive and very beautiful. Nevertheless, there were a couple of days when the ship brought regular fish, but after some time boxes with the “organic” sticker began to come out, and then regular fish came out again, although they all came from the same ship.
12. Sometimes the engineers forgot to close the street gate to the refrigerator. They remained open to the street since Friday, and on Monday it was almost impossible to enter the workshop. Several tons of fish were rotting, blood was leaking out onto the floor, and it smelled so bad you wanted to vomit. But I had to work. And the office was feverishly thinking about what to do. As a result, all this fish was put into the smokehouse. There are a lot of recipes with various herbs and spices that saved the product. Then the girls at the trial who were cutting her into fillets began to wrinkle their noses. The most interesting thing is that they didn’t even know why there was such a stench. But during breaks we brought clarity to them, and this made them wrinkle their noses even more. And the engineers, as if nothing had happened, continued to work.
13. In general, the system of working by the hour is very good for experienced workers who use it to pass off their own idleness as full-time work. Our supervisor, a lonely man who did not have to rush home, sat in the office until 9 pm. Even if we finished work at 5. Sometimes he left someone with him to walk around the workshop, wipe down robots, carry pallets from place to place, but this was very rare, and he left only those very close to him. In addition, there were cameras in the workshop, and it was impossible to fool around for long. But in the office, there was no camera. The supervisor covered the office windows with lids from empty boxes and watched porn. In fact, he always watched it. And he brought the most interesting moments to show the employees on his IPhone. He never showed me porn. Apparently he understood that my list of hobbies included something else. By the way, sometimes, if David bent over to pick up something, the supervisor instantly moved behind him and pretended to fuck him. All the locals laughed a lot at this moment.
14. During the trial, the watches were stolen differently. The chopped and packaged fillets were dumped into a large bin (container), all the Lithuanians were dismissed from the line ahead of time, and then the supervisor and several locals close to him remained, who put the fish into boxes and sent them to our workshop. Of course, it was good for us, because their boxes were small, light, and it was an easy extra hours. I had a case when I clocked out (electronic end of working hours) and followed my girlfriend to the second floor to go home. She was loading empty boxes into a line for tomorrow. Usually this is done by 3-4 people. But none of ours stayed for overtime (extra time), and the British, as usual, left. They told me that I couldn't stay without the supervisor's permission, so I went to ask permission to help her. Finding no one, I returned and began to help. I couldn’t sit and watch her unload an entire truck alone. In the morning I was told that in such a situation the supervisor should look at the recordings on the camera and manually record additional time for me. After all, I was working! Sveta went to him, explained the situation and asked me to add more time. Instead of the hour worked, I told her that he should write for at least 30 minutes. But I didn't receive anything. It wasn't even offensive, it was just disgusting. Against the general background of the scale of watch theft at the factory, 30 minutes of confirmed time stood in his throat. I was just not local. A local would have gotten everything down to the minute. After all, there is a clock on the camera.
15. Svetka’s daughter had to have eye surgery. She had congenital strabismus. Such operations were not performed on the island, so it was necessary to fly to the mainland. The state paid for everything. A plane there and back, a taxi to the hospital and the operation itself. The child lay in a room with an adjustable bed, a huge TV, a computer, the Internet, toys, books, fruits and yoghurts. The daughter was fed to the fullest, and the mother lived in a special hotel for parents at the hospital and everything was free there too. When they returned, they were also paid money for gas, because she drove her car to the airport on the island. The same thing happened the second time, when it was necessary to go for a postoperative examination. Only this time, instead of a plane, there was a paid ferry.
16. After some time, they began to give us overtime and, after the main time in the refrigerator, I began to go to the smokehouse. It was the same dispatch (sending finished products), only the packs of fish weighed 150 grams, and they had to be packed in boxes of 10 pieces. And for the same 6.55 pounds per hour. There was also a refrigerator there, but working in it was difficult. It was especially good there on weekends, when on Saturday there are one and a half and on Sunday even two rates per hour. I was called there by a Lithuanian who had worked there for 7 years and did all the work of a supervisor, who usually checked in in the morning and left for the whole day on his own business. Because he actually performed all of the supervisor’s duties instead of the supervisor, the Lithuanian could stay at the plant as long as he wanted. Therefore, he always had a good salary. That's where I saw Kevin for the first time. It was such a local landmark. He was a little out of his mind. Apparently from birth. There are generally a lot of sick people there. Apparently it's a DNA problem. They said that it was due to the fact that for many years they had marriages between relatives. Fathers slept with daughters, brothers with sisters. And as a result of the process, children were born. In fact, even now, you can see people there who look like fairy-tale forest gnomes. Small in stature, with huge noses, close-set small eyes and small, curled ears. A huge number of people in wheelchairs making some kind of animal sounds. Sick children. This is some kind of genetic shift. And I have heard more than once that the kingdom allowed a flow of emigrants into the country to dilute the blood. Kevin, apparently, was not in the most difficult stage. He went to work at age 15 and received a forklift and car license. By the age of 21, he had already worked in fish factories for five years, he had a red tuned Ford Focus with two white stripes on the body, and his favorite pastime was picking up schoolgirls on the road. He was caught and tried for sex with underage girls more than once, but was released each time. Because he was sick. He left the courtroom and continued to do what he loved. And everyone was just waiting for the next time. I could hardly stand his bestial gaze. He talked nonsense all the time, although, to be honest, sometimes it seemed that he was not a fool at all. But he’s just pretending to be them. One day a Lithuanian asked me:
- Do you want to laugh? “Kevin, come here.” He took a 150 gram pack of smoked salmon, showed it to him, and said:
— Kevin, there are 150 grams of fish here. How many fish are in three of these packs? “He thought for a moment, and after a while he answered:
- 350 grams. – We held back our smiles, and the Lithuanian continued:
- How many fish are in ten such packs?
- About a kilogram. – came the confident answer.
– How much will it be to multiply 3 by 7?
17. Once at the smokehouse they told me that we would be packing fish for a promotion in a retail chain. “Pay for one, take two” promotions were often held here. In the dispatch workshop there was a pallet with cardboard boxes covered with snow. Usually, bags of fish flew out of the window of the smoking shop, but today they were in cardboard boxes on a pallet. Several workers took the contents out of the boxes and affixed a sticker with a date for several days in advance. At first I didn’t understand what was happening, but then, when we went into the freezer, taking out another frozen box, I saw a sticker with a date on it. It was September 2009 there. And it was the second half of 2011. The fish was stored in the freezer for 2 years. And now they were packing it for a promotion, in a store where it costs 25 pounds per kilogram. I asked the Lithuanian what would happen to the one that is being smoked now. He replied that he would go into the freezer.
18. Sometimes our workers from other workshops went to the smoking shop for overtime. Eat salmon. If it was still sometimes possible to take raw food legally, then smoked food was immediately fired. Therefore, if you stand with your back to the camera, you can quietly eat it. Especially on packaging. But that was not the main thing. There was one recipe where brandy was splashed on the smoked salmon before vacuum packaging. From a bottle like the one you spray on flowers. Usually ours stood in this place and sprayed once on the fish, once in their mouths. The ending of the shift was quite good. But the locals didn’t go there because they had no idea how to drink pure whiskey, brandy or vodka. This is unrealistic for them. Although three to four pints (a pint is 0.568 liters) of beer per evening, and a couple of glasses of wine on top, is the norm.
19. When it was necessary to pack fish in a smokehouse, the supervisor tried to use ours. Because there had to be four different recipes, put in different boxes, before that, putting them in four different cardboard envelopes. But the most difficult thing is to constantly put a vacuum pack of fish into a paper envelope with your face into the window. In addition, it was necessary to discard packs with broken vacuum. The locals did this with great difficulty. They were constantly wrong. And stores made complaints because instead of fish, the back side of the foil from the lining was visible in the package window, and in some packs the vacuum packaging was completely broken.
20. When cutting salmon, red caviar is thrown out along with the intestines. Locals say that you should not eat fish eggs.
34. There was such a Gunar. And he had a girlfriend Iveta. They lived together and just drank hard. After getting drunk, they constantly fought and sorted things out. When she came home and saw him sitting on the sofa with a can of beer, she simply kicked him in the face. And he regularly threw her out of the house. One day a friend came to them, and the three of them began drinking. Having gotten drunk, Iveta began to perform, and they tied her up and put her on the sofa. Having finished, the guys went to smoke. In T-shirts and slippers. And Iveta untied herself, locked the door from the inside, and called the police. Later, Delphi will write that a Latvian citizen was arrested in England for the forcible imprisonment of his girlfriend. They have a serious article, by the way.
35. It rains constantly on the island and a strong wind blows. There are times when in the morning you see your car, but you cannot approach it. The oncoming flow of air is so strong. There is almost no sun. Over time, an absolutely depressive state sets in. When there is a strong storm and the ferry does not reach the mainland, there is no food in the stores. Even bread. Therefore, you should always keep a supply of cereals and pasta at home. And in the freezer there are buns, like French bread, that can be baked in the oven instead of bread. Sometimes such fog descended on the island that planes from the mainland could not fly in or land. Accordingly, no one could fly away from the island. My friends, a couple from Riga, bought plane tickets from the island to Glasgow, and from there they had a plane via Amsterdam to Riga. The island was covered with fog, and the guys realized that they might not be able to fly away tomorrow. They decided to take the ferry into the night. But before that, they went to the airport and tried to return the money for the plane tickets, because they were told over the phone that there would be no flights in the next 24 hours. At the airport, they explained that they had two more planes, to which they were told that the money would not be returned to them, and that the company would provide them with a flight, but... when the weather gets better.
36. It is much easier to get a house from the local government on the island than on the mainland. It is enough to come to the local government with suitcases and say that you have nowhere to live. It would also be preferable to be kicked out. If you have a job, everything gets resolved very quickly. Svetka’s sister and her boyfriend got their house this way.
37. Interesting and unusual for us is the system of re-registration of cars upon purchase. You look at the car, hand over the money, write your address in the required column of the registration document and sign, after which you tear off the spine and leave. The previous owner sends the registration certificate to the department by mail, and you receive a new registration certificate by mail. It doesn't cost anything.
38. Local fish take 5-6 hours to ship. When we are the only ones working on weekends, everything is done in 2.5. The general manager always said on Saturdays and Sundays that if he had the opportunity, he would recruit everyone from the Baltic states. And at these moments I thought that all these guys would happily live and work at home if we were given such an opportunity. But in our country, fishing quotas have been cut and almost all fishing enterprises and the entire fishing fleet have been destroyed. We just probably need workers in England. After all, their factories are more important for Europe.
39. When I found a new job and told the factory about it, everyone was shocked. It turned out that Dorset County is the place where a huge number of the local population dreams of living. Well, the salary promised to be twice as much, which of course couldn’t help but rejoice. In addition, I was going to a world-famous premium superyacht manufacturing plant. So I packed my suitcase, my computer and bought a plane ticket.
40. The flight was delayed by 3 hours. I was sent through another city, so I missed the plane to Southampton, and as a result, the bus from Southampton and the train from Bormouth. I got on a different plane to Southampton, the bus driver took me on an expired ticket, and at the station the machine printed out a ticket for me for another time. That's how I ended up in Pula.
41. The next day I went to the employment agency. It was half Polish. But they only spoke Polish with Poles, and I had to communicate in English. Unfortunately, my English was still very far from perfect. At the fish factory we communicated little, and the courses were held once a week, and even then not always. All negotiations with the agency were conducted by my friend, and the Englishman was shocked at how I even got to them. On top of everything else, there was a completely different dialect here. And if on the island I already understood the language quite well, here I understood absolutely nothing. The only trump card was my CV. I had very good experience in fiberglass production, and the yachts that the plant produced were made from it. The agent said that with my knowledge of the language, most likely I would not be able to work at this plant. He said that he would go and call and if they agreed, then I would go to work. In principle, I was already mentally ready to go back. But the agent returned and said that he was told that there were many Poles in the workshops, and if I understood Polish, then they would help me at first. I understood Polish. And the next day I had to go to a new job. The tattooed guy across from me helped me fill out the forms. It turned out that he and I were going to the same job. It was Thomas. He was from Scotland.
42. There was no work for us that day in the workshop we were supposed to go to. And we were taken to another shipyard. She was huge. After a short safety briefing, we were taken to the workshop. There was nowhere to put my things; I was wearing jeans and shoes. I put paper overalls over my clothes and paper covers over my shoes. I was allowed to leave my jacket and bag in the supervisor’s office. There were no lockers here, like at the fish factory, in which personal belongings were placed and the locker was locked. Or rather, they were. But only for those who worked under a contract. Anyone who worked through an agency during a probationary period was not entitled to anything. Now I was ready to get to work. I immediately found two Poles, said that I was from the Baltic states, and asked for help getting comfortable. They told me to watch what they were doing and repeat after them. Then I did not yet know that they arranged all their people according to this scheme, even those who had no idea about this production. Former builders, doctors, and musicians from Poland worked there. Who was there! Although, of course, there were those who worked in this specialty all their lives. At the end of the day, Thomas and I were told that tomorrow we had to go to our factory. He suggested meeting near the bridge in the morning and going to work together.
43. It’s very good that we went together. There were only Englishmen there. There was only one Pole, and when I asked him to help, he looked at me not very joyfully. Then, of course, we became friends, but at first he helped me with obvious dissatisfaction.
44. But no one from the locals helped here. It was a school of survival. They simply told you: “Go and do it.” Nobody said what materials to use, in what quantity and in what ratio. Plus the Dorset accent was telling. And when the British saw that you didn’t understand them, they got terribly annoyed. They made faces, stuck out their tongues and made all sorts of obscene sounds. All this had to be endured. Because I needed this job and I didn't want to go back to the island. What struck me most was the attitude towards work. The shape of the yacht's hull was full of chips, which no one paid attention to, and inside the yacht there was a lot of debris and traces of dirty shoes, in which everyone climbed right inside. It is simply difficult to describe how much material and tools were thrown into the trash. If we talk about technology, this was the 80s of the last century at the most. Thomas was treated even worse than me. They constantly made fun of him because he was a Scot. Well, I got the same thing, because I came with him, and they thought that I was his friend. By the end of the week, Thomas invited me to move to the hotel where he lived. The hotel was several times cheaper than my hotel, and I moved to a room where the toilet and shower were shared and located on the floor. The room had an electric kettle, a washbasin, a plywood built-in wardrobe with a crossbar, painted white, and a small TV on which there were 4 programs: BBC 1, BBC2, BBC3, and BBC4. The first time I turned on, I found myself on a channel where political scientists in the studio were discussing how emigrants from Poland and the Baltic states were taking away jobs from the English population. Then they showed a story from a London job center. A young clerk in a suit and tie was giving an interview. Behind him, a huge hall was visible, in which there were a lot of tables, at which a lot of people were sitting. There were coffee and tea machines near the walls. People played chess, read newspapers, drank coffee and talked among themselves. Almost all the tables were occupied. The BBC correspondent asked the clerk:
Who are these people?
These are the unemployed. - he reported.
So you don't have any vacancies? - came the next question.
Well, said the clerk, we are inundated with vacancies.
So why don't you give it to them?
The answer killed me on the spot: “They don’t know how to do anything!!!” They have no qualifications!!!
45. I had to pay 100 pounds a week for the room. Later they raised my price to 120. It was a 45-minute walk to work, and 2 pounds one way by bus. We had to walk. £100 a month for a bus was a bit much for me. In the morning, to get to work by 6:00, you had to get up at 4:40. In the evening, having finished at 18:00, we still had to go to the store. There was no refrigerator, so we had to buy food every day. At about half past seven I was at the hotel. To get at least 8 hours of sleep, you had to go to bed at 20:40. Roughly speaking, it took a little over an hour to do everything. This means washing, eating, packing food for work for tomorrow, and, if there is time left, chatting with family and friends on Skype. Of course, it was possible to work from 8:00 to 16:15, as all the English did, but not only did the move cost fifteen hundred thousand, I needed money for the coming months. After all, we had to rent an apartment. But here in the south, this pleasure is not cheap.
46. All my food at this moment consisted of foods that did not need to be cooked. Tea, buns, milk. I didn’t drink the coffee that was on the table at the hotel. But I realized that instant Nescafe is drunk not only in Russia. Sometimes, I made sandwiches with sausage and cheese. I ate the same thing at work. I really wanted hot food, but in pubs it was expensive for me, there was nothing to cook in the hotel, and sometimes I went to Burger King and ate a burger with potatoes. All my life I hated fast food, but the food was warm and that made me happy .
47. I was pleased with my first salary. At that time, the plant was bursting with orders and we worked 12 and sometimes 14 hours a day. I still ate all kinds of nonsense. But on the day of my first paycheck, I got really drunk. I just took a bottle of brandy with fruit and passed out. Luckily there were two days off ahead.
48. Thomas found another job. According to him in Italy. At the Ferrari factory. May be so. I don't know. He would have left anyway. He was prompted to do this by constant conflicts with the British. The British really ate him up. He went to the supervisor and said that they had racism at the plant. The panic began. Racism in England is a terrible thing. This is a criminal article. When you are hired, you sign a document that you will be tolerant and respectful of people of a different race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. In fact, it's only paper. The English consider themselves a superior race, and just because they don't tell you this out loud doesn't mean they can't show it in their actions. Thomas was immediately transferred to another workshop. Across the road. But he didn’t last long there either. When we walked home, he kept telling me that there are very angry and aggressive people here. And that he had heard about it, but this was the first time he encountered it closely. To be honest, I felt the difference too. People in Scotland are more welcoming and kind. Even to us. This was not the case here. When Thomas left, he left me a microwave. He bought it for 40 pounds just before he left, and in the evenings he invited me to warm up some ready-made food that we bought in the store. He asked for £10 for the microwave but I gave him £20. In the end it only worked for two days. Microwave food was disgusting, but at least it was hot. In general, the British are so lazy that the majority of people do not cook anything at home. Their most popular establishments are fast food and take away (establishments with ready-made food), and the shelves with ready-made dishes for microwaves are simply enormous in size in any store. I once read that the British do not have their own kitchen. That's probably true. All their dishes are Chinese, Indian and Taiwanese cuisines. A huge amount of curry in any food after some time begins to cause a gag reflex. I very carefully selected my food for the evening, but for me there were only a few dishes that were actually edible.
49. One evening, the hotel manager knocked on my room. In a couple of days, she said, the owner of the hotel comes to check. You cannot have anything in your room that indicates that you are staying here for more than three days. No pajamas, washed socks on the radiator, and no food. Maximum lemonade and cookies. And what’s more, no microwaves. It was a disaster. At first, I didn't even know what to do. But, after thinking about it, I found an option. There was a cover on my bed that hung all the way to the floor. Without thinking twice, I put the microwave under the bed, and put the food and most of my things there. The check went well. But I left the microwave under the bed. Of course, it was not very convenient to heat food under the bed, but it was a way out. A little later I found out that this hotel worked with my employment agency, and the agency accommodated everyone who came from other cities there. The owner of the hotel, apparently, did not even realize that people lived there for months, and it was not customary for them to arrive without warning. Most likely, the manager agreed with the agency without the knowledge of the owner. In addition, during the 5 weeks I lived, paying for the room weekly, I received a check only once.
50. There was a pub on the ground floor of the hotel. I went there sometimes to connect to the Internet. The hotel router was so weak that the signal did not reach the second floor. In general, the Internet and mobile communications in England are a separate matter. Every evening, a crowd of people gathered in the pub, but on weekdays, as a rule, everything was quiet and decent. The most interesting thing happened over the weekend. It all started on Friday. But it was the calmest day. The people buzzed until late, but it was a faint hum. On Saturday there was live music after 7pm, but even on Saturday it was tolerable. After all, Sunday is ahead, and you can sleep all day. The worst began on Sunday. There was a feeling that this was the last day of their lives, and tomorrow the global flood would begin. Therefore, people had a blast. The visitors bawled until 2 am. Moreover, one Sunday night, at about 12 o’clock, everything suddenly became quiet, and screams were heard on the street. I looked out the window and saw people carrying a decently dressed drunk body with no signs of life out of the pub. After a few minutes, the body tried to get up, but the attempts were in vain. Soon an ambulance arrived, loaded him into the car, and took him away. The rest returned to the pub and continued the fun until half past two in the morning. HOW? Explain to me how it is possible, after this, to go to work the next day and do it within the framework of human standards?
51. After that, I stopped being surprised that we meet inappropriate people in our workshop in the morning. With shining eyes, hanging snot, falling asleep, sitting down somewhere, and walking in the opposite direction instead of the one they were told to go. In addition, they confused materials and chemicals, and the foreman, who, like all of us, understood why this was happening, averted his eyes to the side and tried to give them an easier job. Well, so that they don’t spoil anything too much. By the first break, these people, if you can call them that, came to their senses and started moaning about how bad they felt. It would be more like the end of the working day so I can return home and lie down in bed. However, after lunch, apparently having finally sobered up, they looked forward to the end of the working day even more. To go to the pub again as soon as possible.
52. In general, they moan all the time. Every morning starts with groans. If you ask how things are, they answer that it’s not good. That they had to get up early, that yesterday there was a lot of beer, that they went to bed late, that they were very sick. From time to time they drop the tool and run to the toilet to throw up. As a rule, these are the main causes of morning suffering. They count down the hours and minutes until the end of the working day, and almost never stay for overtime. We are the only ones who work overtime.
53. One day at work I felt bad. This rarely happens to me. But apparently the food from the microwave did its nasty job. I felt terribly nauseous and said that I didn’t feel well. The British immediately said that there was no need to eat kebab. And then they sent me home. It was very nice to leave the workshop and close my eyes from the sun. After all, I only saw him during breaks. In the morning he was not there yet, and in the evening he was no longer there. By the way, because I left in the middle of the day, some bonuses were deducted from me.
54. Meanwhile, my friend, sitting on the island, was looking for options for an apartment. I don’t know how it is in the center of the mainland, but here in the south, finding housing right away is almost impossible. You come to work, go to work, and naturally you need to live somewhere. It is impossible to obtain housing for rent through an agency. Because you do not have a permanent contract and you work as a temporary worker. Accordingly, they don’t give you rent. All you can do is look for housing through private advertisements in newspapers or in Polish stores. They have a notice board and offer rooms. But even if you find something, you need to pay a deposit several months in advance, and accept that for the foreseeable future, for 70-80 pounds a week, you will have a shared kitchen, shared shower and shared toilet. And the room will be the size of a dog kennel. Based on the fact that my friend had two children, we needed an apartment with two bedrooms. Firstly, there were four of us, and secondly, she wanted to apply for state housing. And everything is very simple there. If you deliberately rent a small area (and in the case of children, a minimum is stipulated), then not only will they not give you anything, but they will also punish you for fraud with the state. It is believed that you are doing this deliberately to get extra points and increase your status in the housing queue. Besides everything else, there is one more problem. Few people here want to rent out an apartment or house to a family with small children. According to their laws, you cannot put small children on the streets, even if their parents do not pay rent. Therefore, agencies and landlords (real estate owners), as a rule, refuse to apply to families with small children. They'd rather let someone in with a dog or cat. Because you can drive a dog or a cat out, but not with children.
55. Nevertheless, Sveta was looking for options on the Internet, calling each other, and my duties included going and looking at the next option. One day, I needed to look at two apartments from one agent. Fortunately, it wasn’t far to go, the apartments were in the same building, and in the evening I went for a viewing. An agent arrived in a Range Rover. They all drive Range Rovers there. Real estate in the UK is good business. The prices are exorbitant, so no one is in poverty. Although for the most part, the apartments are very small and cramped. Before this, I didn’t even understand how a two-room apartment could be less than 50 square meters. And there are the majority there. The agent showed me two apartments, each with only one bedroom. They were in the same house, and both were on the top floor under the roof. I find it difficult to even name their area. In my opinion, about 20 meters. In general, they have a lot of small rooms and apartments with slanted ceilings, where when entering the room you have to tilt your head to the side. For the most part they are in terrible condition. The owners of the houses divide them into countless separate rooms in order to squeeze the maximum profit from the rental. I have seen rooms with only a table, a wardrobe and a bed. Moreover, the bed was already under a slanted ceiling, and it was even difficult to sit on it normally without hitting your head. In general, I looked at what they showed me, and I didn’t even have any comments. Not to mention the price. But I was especially impressed by the heating boilers. In both apartments, they stood in the bedroom, and on the floor. Apparently those who installed them installed them in a way that was more convenient for them to work with. Honestly, I can’t imagine how you can sleep with a heating boiler in the same room, and I can’t imagine how you can live there with a small child. After all, the cauldron is the first place he will climb into. I asked the agent what about apartments with gas heating because gas is much cheaper than electricity. If in winter you pay 30-40 pounds a month for gas, then for electric heating the bills reach 200. He asked where I was from, and upon hearing the answer, he told me that in Scotland, where I came from, the situation really looks like this. But in England, just the opposite, electricity is much cheaper than gas. He lied to my face. In general, I refused. And a couple of days later Sveta found another option. Close to work, with a patio, parking space, gas heating and two bedrooms for £600 a month plus bills. The bills added up to about two hundred more. Local government tax, internet, water, electricity and gas. The apartment was 40 meters, maybe less. Looking at the size of our bedroom, I caught myself thinking that in Latvia, in my last rented apartment, I had such a kitchen.
56. Only then, after some time, she told me what it cost her to get this apartment. How many times she listened to reproaches for her bad English, although she had very good English, how many times the agents did not answer the phone, how many times they promised to call or write back and did not do it, it is simply impossible to describe. About myself, I only knew one thing: while she was fighting with them, my second month in the hotel began. The agency prepared the contract for a whole month. First, they demanded a deposit from us for one month, then for two, then they also asked for a financial guarantor, then they checked us through some company. After that, they gave me a certificate of verification of the condition of the apartment, where all the scratches were recorded. I had to fill it out, add to it if there were more defects, and bring it back to them for signature. I did this for two days with the help of my Lithuanian friends, but no one came to check what we added. And then, they invited me several times to pick up the keys, and each time they did not give them, talking about how they understood my difficult situation, and promising that I would leave the hotel and move to their wonderful apartment. I refused overtime, ran to the agency, and each time I realized that again I had not earned money, I had not received the keys. But finally, a significant day came when the agency reported that it was today. The woman co-owner of the company told me to come after work, and her partner would give me the keys after signing the contract. I arrived at the appointed time, just in case, taking with me a Lithuanian who spoke good English and volunteered to help me. The smartly dressed partner was alone in the office. When we walked in, he asked who we were and why we hadn't made an appointment. They say he has an important meeting and he can’t waste time on us. We said that, in fact, it was assigned to us, and we did not understand his reaction. An important gentleman, with a dissatisfied look, began to rummage through the papers and look for the agreement that I had to sign. There was no agreement. Apparently they forgot to prepare it. He began to copy a blank of the contract on a photocopier, but then the cartridge ran out. During the conversation, I apologized for my bad English, to which I received a sharp answer that in any case, his Polish was worse than my English. I said that I am not Polish. To which he asked where I was from, and hearing the name of the country, asked where it was. Apparently, he did not know where the Baltic Sea was, so he was satisfied that it was a former republic of the Soviet Union. In general, I later very often came across the fact that when they hear the word Latvia, the British ask how far it is from Poland. I signed the papers and received the keys. It was a moment of happiness. I rushed to the supermarket and bought everything I could. Starting with products and ending with frying pans and pots. My God, how delicious the bacon and eggs were, fried in a normal kitchen!!!
57. Meanwhile, work was in full swing at the plant. There were a lot of orders. The London Boat Show has just finished. The plant worked 24 hours a day. We worked hard from 6 am to 6 pm. And at 6 pm the night shift came and worked until 6 am. Fortunately, now the apartment was closer than the hotel, and it only took 25 minutes to get to work. Therefore, it was possible to sleep a little longer. There was also a normal shower, a wide bed and a refrigerator with normal food.
58. My foreman, his name was Eric, asked me for the third time where I came from and where I worked before. Hearing the answer “from the Shetland Islands from a fish factory” for the third time, he was sincerely surprised for the third time and nodded his head sympathetically. Seems like a decent guy. Only 35 years old... Older workers openly mocked him. At first I didn’t understand why. Then I understood. When he went to the warehouse to get something, he forgot what it was on the way. He worked with the same model of yacht for several years, and could not remember the simplest things. Every time he was asked about the type of material used, or the dimensions of a part, he went to look at the drawings. Even if it was one single part in the body, he could not remember its technological map. By comparison, it only took me two months to memorize the main production parameters of our model. Over time, new employees stopped asking him questions and started turning to me. Because there was no need to wait with me. Eric was very offended at first, but then he realized that now he could walk around the workshop even more, and we began to see him even less often. Sometimes in the morning, he could simply not come to work, and would not appear for another week and a half. He almost never stayed for overtime. During my year at the plant, he worked with us only four times. And, frankly, it would be better if it didn't work. After all, redoing something for someone else is always harder than doing it from scratch. In general, he disappeared all the time, and we were looking for him to get to the warehouse for tools and materials. It all ended with us making a duplicate of the key to the warehouse and secretly going there to get everything we needed. We didn't have time to look for him in corners and toilets. We had to work. One morning the supervisor came into the shop and asked:
Is Eric there today? (he had been gone for 4 days).
We asked jokingly:
And who is it?
The supervisor sighed, laughed and left. I think Eric was someone's relative from the office. Because they never told him anything, no matter what he did.
59. Only the other foreman was cooler than him. When he filled out work documents, of which, by the way, there were an insane amount in the workshop, he wrote the word “bot” instead of “boat” (ship), and copied the name of our company from the logo on his work jacket.
60. In general, there were a lot of strange people in the company. There was one Englishman. William. Small and red. He constantly came to check on our branch. Sometimes he spoke at rallies and said that we should work hard and throw certain garbage into certain baskets, depending on their coloring. He couldn't say anything more. The rest of the time he walked around the workshop, scaring everyone with his gaze through large square glasses. Everyone tried to avoid him. It was the boss. One day I asked who he was. I was told that a former simple employee, just his dad, once sat in the head office. And then, he also got to the office. Because I went to the same church with the head of personnel of the enterprise. And then William disappeared. Later we found out that he had left to work for another company. HR manager. There he was offered 60 thousand pounds a year, against 50 at our enterprise. I immediately remembered the fish factory. There, too, everyone arranged warm places for their friends and relatives. Mental and professional qualities, in this case, did not matter.
On the weekend, the end of the world was coming in the city - everyone lived as if it were the last day.
The author Alexey Lukyanenko is a formerly successful Latvian businessman who, like many others, failed in the 2008 crisis and was forced to leave for the UK and start his activities from the very bottom.
I never thought I would find myself in this situation. I often heard about many leaving, and knew many who left. But I never thought that I would go on my own.
For most of my life, I had my own, quite successful business, I worked hard and did a lot of things, and always found a way out of the most difficult situations. But life decreed otherwise. No matter how hard I tried, I could not resist the situation that had developed in my country. It took shape... Or it was put together... During the year and a half I spent in England, I came to the conclusion that it did not take shape on its own. And this is what I am writing about now. And at that time I was going to an amazing country, about which a huge number of books have been written and a huge number of films have been shot. Where amazing people live, about whom legends are made and hymns are written. Where everything is good and where everyone is happy. Where the best goods are produced, and where tolerance and democracy are at the forefront. It is clear that creating your own business there, from day one, without initial capital, is a utopia. Therefore, you will have to start as a simple worker at some factory. And then we'll figure it out. They say that everything is simpler there than with us. So, go ahead!!!
1. We had to start from the very bottom. From a fish factory on a remote Scottish island in the North Sea. According to information from the Internet, and the number of prizes on their website, this is one of the best salmon hatcheries in Europe. I wonder what happens to others then?
Houses on the island where migrant workers live. Photo by the author.
2. I was lucky that there was a Lithuanian in the workshop who had been finishing the work for the last two weeks. He told me everything and brought me up to date. As a rule, no one teaches anyone anything. You look and move in. At first, even if as a result of your ignorance, accidents and stoppages occur, everyone silently corrects everything, but no one says a word. The same thing happens with the locals. No one teaches them either, but we, on our own, learn faster. And that's why we are more valuable employees. Plus, there are many among us who really work hard. Although some of ours, if possible, quickly restructure and begin to work according to the local principle. That is, diligently avoid work under any pretext. Sitting in toilets with an IPhone, hiding on the street, in short, being in a place where there are no cameras, and it is impossible to prove that you are not doing anything. If a slacker is caught, the head supervisor (chief manager) gives him a lecture and he replies “sorry” (sorry). This is all.
3. There is a category of local people at the plant who are simply there. These are either someone’s children who have nowhere to be placed because they just graduated from school and don’t know how to do anything, someone’s brothers, sisters or relatives who don’t want to go to hard work and instead sit their pants here, or people pre-retirement age. The latter are supported until retirement. They usually spend the entire day walking in circles around the factory with their hands clasped behind their backs, or carrying an object, such as a ball of rope, back and forth. They have positions like daytime cleaners, and during thirty-minute breaks (breaks), they use a hose to wash the already clean walls. Complex equipment, which is all covered in fat and intestines, is washed by ours. Our cleaners mostly worked the night shift, when it was necessary to clean the entire plant. The local there was a supervisor, although we must pay tribute, he also washed the workshops along with all the night lights. Four people, plus a supervisor, cleaned all the lines and all the workshops overnight. When we came in the morning, these people were scary to look at. During the day, while working, local youth took ice from bins (large plastic containers), made snowballs and played with them. The assistant supervisor, an elderly woman, absolutely incapable of organizing anything, and very strict towards us, just looked at them and smiled. Sometimes they hid behind it during the “battle”, and sometimes they even hit it with a snowball. All this was visible on the cameras in the supervisor's office, but he did not say a word to them. The real situation at the plant is that for every one worker there is one non-worker. But everyone gets paid the same way.
4. We had a young Lithuanian assistant to the supervisor. She didn’t understand anything about work, but she was very beautiful, constantly hovering around the manager and his assistants, opening all the doors and gates for them, and knocking on everyone and everything. That's probably why they made her an assistant.
5. When you come to work in the refrigerator, you are only given gloves, a cap, ordinary rubber boots and an oilskin (rubberized overalls with straps, by the way, made in Latvia). The refrigerator is usually +2, sometimes it can be minus, but warm clothes are your personal concern. Over time, if you get a contract and if you ask, they may give you a synthetic winter cap and thermal boots with thick soles. This is all.
6. If you get sick or injured, that's your problem. A Lithuanian once tore his back, and the doctor told him that he had to stay at home for two weeks. When he said this at work, he was fired so as not to pay sick leave, and after he recovered, they hired him back. Due to interrupted service, he lost all annual bonuses. I hit my right forearm with a box two weeks after starting work. When I lifted heavy boxes, the pain was wild. But at that time, I didn’t have a contract, and I understood that if I couldn’t work, I would be fired. I bandaged my hand, and when the pain was completely unbearable, I rolled up my sleeve, unwound the bandage and put my hand in ice. After a couple of minutes it became easier, I bandaged my hand again and continued to work. All the colds that I had later, during the entire period of work, I suffered on my feet, eating medicine right in the workshop. In such situations, locals immediately go on sick leave and may not appear for weeks. They just bring a piece of paper from the doctor and go home again. Nobody will fire them. They try not to give you a contract for as long as possible. Without a contract you are nothing. You work at a reduced rate, and any day they can tell you that you are not needed. Besides, you don't have guaranteed pay for 30 hours a week if there is no fish. Only contract workers have this. Some of us have been working without a contract for years. Simply because there is nowhere to go. They gave me a contract quickly, at the end of the probationary period. But I think it’s only because it’s very hard to find people in the refrigerator, and they just tried to tie me down. Locals from other workshops openly said that if they were transferred to a chill (freezer), they would not even change clothes. They'll just go home. Because it is hard and inhumane work. And you can’t mock people like that. I had a record with me. A local man, after working in our workshop for 2.5 hours, went to drink some water and did not return. Before this, they usually lasted about two days.
7. Refrigerator. Non-contract rate £6.05 per hour, before tax. With contract 6.55. This is the hardest work in the factory. Loading and shipping of finished products. Our people go there, having nowhere to go. There should be 6 people in the workshop. In reality, they were never there. Or rather, it was even more when there were no robots. Then, all the products were removed by hand from the conveyor belt, along which boxes are continuously moving, and loaded onto pallets. That is, a fully automated plant, in 2011, at the exit to the warehouse, did not have any equipment other than loaders. A team of 6-7 people passed through 40 to 120 tons of fish every day, depending on the season. As a rule, ours worked on loading, the locals only picked up the finished pallets in roller loads and took them to the ramp under the fork of the loader. I'm lucky. A few months before my arrival, robots were installed. And the bulk of the boxes went to them. We only got our hands on the smokehouse boxes. But the number of people has decreased by half. For the smokehouse, everything was loaded manually in any case, because the boxes were without lids. On bad days, two or three of us would load up to 100 pallets with 21 or 24 boxes each. One box of fish and ice weighed an average of 25 kg. At the same time, it was still necessary to have time to correct the boxes that went to the robots, re-glue crooked stickers with barcodes, pull out boxes if they got stuck on the line, and collect from the floor and repack those boxes that the robot dropped. If the robots stopped, we started loading everything by hand. The plant couldn't stand, so the chief manager didn't care how we managed. Besides us, there was a supervisor (manager) and two visers (assistant managers) in the workshop. They were locals. The supervisor received 10 pounds an hour, the supervisors 8. They helped us extremely rarely. Basically, they removed finished pallets from manual loading and from robots. The rest of the time they chatted and were on their phones. One local worked with us on loading. His name was David. But he had a certificate. Only a sick local could go here. A normal person would never come here. He was a unique worker. Firstly, we never knew whether he would be there in the morning or not. Being late is normal practice. There were days when the Lithuanian and I were the only ones in the workshop who arrived on time. We arrived at 7:50 and prepared the workshop for work. The supervisor arrived at 8 and turned on the robots. Later he taught me how to do this, and began to come even later. David crawled up at five minutes past eight, sometimes at half past nine, or he might not come at all. Weisers could be 10-15 minutes late. But they could not be kicked out. Weisers knew how to control robots. And this was the main argument. In fact, the whole system looks like this: any fault of a local employee is hushed up and no one pays attention to it. No reproaches. No comments or reprimands. I think because they all understand that they themselves can find themselves in the place of the guilty party at any moment. And then no one will tell them anything either. They are all equally irresponsible. And there is no point in telling anyone anything. Today I will redo it for him, and tomorrow he will redo it for me. Unlike them, we were reprimanded for everything.
8. There were days when only David and I stood on the assembly line. When there were a lot of boxes for manual loading, he turned around and went to the toilet. And when he returned, he took a rokla (trolley for transporting pallets) and rode around the workshop. Or sitting in the office. One day, my patience ran out, and I told the visors what kind of thing this is, in my country they break their faces. They immediately drove him to his workplace. But the next day everything happened again. When David got tired of working at this pace, he took several boxes of fish and threw them with a flourish. One for the wall, one for the electrical panel, one for the finished pallet. And after that, he turned around and left, saying that he wouldn’t clean it up. I had to collect fish, twist wires that had been torn off from sensors, and remove ice. If only because it was necessary to walk somehow. And the whole floor was strewn with salmon and ice. There were days when he had fun. He put his hands on the moving conveyor belt where it was covered in grease, and when the gloves turned black, he walked around the finished pallets and put his handprints on the snow-white foam boxes. I wonder what customers thought when they received such cargo in the USA, Germany or Dubai? In moments of lyrical mood, he would make a hole in a foam box and fuck it with his index finger. After some time, he got a second job driving a taxi. He told me that he went there not because of the money, but because he needed to carry a lot of girls there. And they often pay with sex. When he had to choose between overtime (overtime) at the factory and working as a taxi driver, he dropped everything, turned around and went to work as a taxi driver. The supervisor, swearing loudly, rushed after him, but he only increased his speed and disappeared through the door. He didn't care. They say that David had several dozen warnings. We were fired after the third.
9.By the way, the tendency to destroy boxes was observed not only among David. From time to time our supervisor would fly into a rage. He started throwing empty pallets and boxes, breaking them and kicking them. No one touched it, only because there was simply no one to find in this place. And once you get there, you will stay there forever. Unless, of course, you leave yourself. And he had absolutely nowhere to go. At 40 years old, he didn’t know how to do anything else, and the island was quite small, and there weren’t many job offers there. Locals, as a rule, don’t want to take a job like his, and they won’t hire an emigrant as a supervisor.
10.Process, this is a workshop where salmon is cut into fillets using a special machine. And then the bones are taken out of it. By the way, it is impossible to remove bones from fresh, just killed fish. Therefore, it should stand in the refrigerator for about two days. Then the bones flake away from the meat and can be pulled out of the fillet. Then they start cutting the fish. This is at best another day. Then she walks for another day to the mainland. And then to the store. Therefore, the word “fresh” and “excellent” does not really describe it. Among other things, people during the process did not put much effort into removing the bones. And when there was not enough ice, the supervisor would shovel it from the floor and put it in boxes. I just took it from the pile that formed under the ice maker. When a box of fillets fell off the line in our workshop, no one carried it back to the process either. It was much easier to turn the box on its side and push the ice and fish back with your boot. Fortunately, everything was wrapped in blue plastic wrap, and the resulting mess could be covered with it.
11.Organic. Wildly expensive products. There were several special farms that raised organic salmon. I don’t know what they did with it, but one day the ship brought fish that literally tore with their hands and stank terribly. We assumed that she died a natural death, and its main advantage was that she died without stress, which means it was wildly beneficial for health. Other times, she was alive and very beautiful. Nevertheless, there were a couple of days when the ship brought regular fish, but after some time boxes with the “organic” sticker began to come out, and then regular fish came out again, although they all came from the same ship.
12.Sometimes engineers forgot to close the street gate to the refrigerator. They remained open to the street since Friday, and on Monday it was almost impossible to enter the workshop. Several tons of fish were rotting, blood was leaking out onto the floor, and it smelled so bad you wanted to vomit. But I had to work. And the office was feverishly thinking about what to do. As a result, all this fish was put into the smokehouse. There are a lot of recipes with various herbs and spices that saved the product. Then the girls at the trial who were cutting her into fillets began to wrinkle their noses. The most interesting thing is that they didn’t even know why there was such a stench. But during breaks we brought clarity to them, and this made them wrinkle their noses even more. And the engineers, as if nothing had happened, continued to work.
13. In general, the system of working by the hour is very good for experienced workers who use it to pass off their own idleness as full-time work. Our supervisor, a lonely man who did not have to rush home, sat in the office until 9 pm. Even if we finished work at 5. Sometimes he left someone with him to walk around the workshop, wipe down robots, carry pallets from place to place, but this was very rare, and he left only those very close to him. In addition, there were cameras in the workshop, and it was impossible to fool around for long. But in the office, there was no camera. The supervisor covered the office windows with lids from empty boxes and watched porn. In fact, he always watched it. And he brought the most interesting moments to show the employees on his IPhone. He never showed me porn. Apparently he understood that my list of hobbies included something else. By the way, sometimes, if David bent over to pick up something, the supervisor instantly moved behind him and pretended to fuck him. All the locals laughed a lot at this moment.
14. During the trial, the watches were stolen differently. The chopped and packaged fillets were dumped into a large bin (container), all the Lithuanians were dismissed from the line ahead of time, and then the supervisor and several locals close to him remained, who put the fish into boxes and sent them to our workshop. Of course, it was good for us, because their boxes were small, light, and it was an easy extra hours. I had a case when I clocked out (electronic end of working hours) and followed my girlfriend to the second floor to go home. She was loading empty boxes into a line for tomorrow. Usually this is done by 3-4 people. But none of ours stayed for overtime (extra time), and the British, as usual, left. They told me that I couldn't stay without the supervisor's permission, so I went to ask permission to help her. Finding no one, I returned and began to help. I couldn’t sit and watch her unload an entire truck alone. In the morning I was told that in such a situation the supervisor should look at the recordings on the camera and manually record additional time for me. After all, I was working! Sveta went to him, explained the situation and asked me to add more time. Instead of the hour worked, I told her that he should write for at least 30 minutes. But I didn't receive anything. It wasn't even offensive, it was just disgusting. Against the general background of the scale of watch theft at the factory, 30 minutes of confirmed time stood in his throat. I was just not local. A local would have gotten everything down to the minute. After all, there is a clock on the camera.
15. Svetka’s daughter had to have eye surgery. She had congenital strabismus. Such operations were not performed on the island, so it was necessary to fly to the mainland. The state paid for everything. A plane there and back, a taxi to the hospital and the operation itself. The child lay in a room with an adjustable bed, a huge TV, a computer, the Internet, toys, books, fruits and yoghurts. The daughter was fed to the fullest, and the mother lived in a special hotel for parents at the hospital and everything was free there too. When they returned, they were also paid money for gas, because she drove her car to the airport on the island. The same thing happened the second time, when it was necessary to go for a postoperative examination. Only this time, instead of a plane, there was a paid ferry.
16.After some time, they began to give us overtime and, after the main time in the refrigerator, I began to go to the smokehouse. It was the same dispatch (sending finished products), only the packs of fish weighed 150 grams, and they had to be packed in boxes of 10 pieces. And for the same 6.55 pounds per hour. There was also a refrigerator there, but working in it was difficult. It was especially good there on weekends, when on Saturday there are one and a half and on Sunday even two rates per hour. I was called there by a Lithuanian who had worked there for 7 years and did all the work of a supervisor, who usually checked in in the morning and left for the whole day on his own business. Because he actually performed all of the supervisor’s duties instead of the supervisor, the Lithuanian could stay at the plant as long as he wanted. Therefore, he always had a good salary. That's where I saw Kevin for the first time. It was such a local landmark. He was a little out of his mind. Apparently from birth. There are generally a lot of sick people there. Apparently it's a DNA problem. They said that it was due to the fact that for many years they had marriages between relatives. Fathers slept with daughters, brothers with sisters. And as a result of the process, children were born. In fact, even now, you can see people there who look like fairy-tale forest gnomes. Small in stature, with huge noses, close-set small eyes and small, curled ears. A huge number of people in wheelchairs making some kind of animal sounds. Sick children. This is some kind of genetic shift. And I have heard more than once that the kingdom allowed a flow of emigrants into the country to dilute the blood. Kevin, apparently, was not in the most difficult stage. He went to work at age 15 and received a forklift and car license. By the age of 21, he had already worked in fish factories for five years, he had a red tuned Ford Focus with two white stripes on the body, and his favorite pastime was picking up schoolgirls on the road. He was caught and tried for sex with underage girls more than once, but was released each time. Because he was sick. He left the courtroom and continued to do what he loved. And everyone was just waiting for the next time. I could hardly stand his bestial gaze. He talked nonsense all the time, although, to be honest, sometimes it seemed that he was not a fool at all. But he’s just pretending to be them. One day a Lithuanian asked me:
Do you want to laugh? “Kevin, come here.” He took a 150 gram pack of smoked salmon, showed it to him, and said:
350 grams. - We held back our smiles, and the Lithuanian continued:
How many fish are there in ten such packs?
About a kilogram. - came the confident answer.
How much does it cost to multiply 3 by 7?
17.Once at the smokehouse they told me that we would be packing fish for a promotion in a retail chain. “Pay for one, take two” promotions were held here very often. In the dispatch workshop there was a pallet with cardboard boxes covered with snow. Usually, bags of fish flew out of the window of the smoking shop, but today they were in cardboard boxes on a pallet. Several workers took the contents out of the boxes and affixed a sticker with a date for several days in advance. At first I didn’t understand what was happening, but then, when we went into the freezer, taking out another frozen box, I saw a sticker with a date on it. It was September 2009 there. And it was the second half of 2011. The fish was stored in the freezer for 2 years. And now they were packing it for a promotion, in a store where it costs 25 pounds per kilogram. I asked the Lithuanian what would happen to the one that is being smoked now. He replied that he would go into the freezer.
18. Sometimes our workers from other workshops went to the smoking shop for overtime. Eat salmon. If it was still sometimes possible to take raw food legally, then smoked food was immediately fired. Therefore, if you stand with your back to the camera, you can quietly eat it. Especially on packaging. But that was not the main thing. There was one recipe where brandy was splashed on the smoked salmon before vacuum packaging. From a bottle like the one you spray on flowers. Usually ours stood in this place and sprayed once on the fish, once in their mouths. The ending of the shift was quite good. But the locals didn’t go there because they had no idea how to drink pure whiskey, brandy or vodka. This is unrealistic for them. Although three to four pints (a pint is 0.568 liters) of beer per evening, and a couple of glasses of wine on top, is the norm.
19.When it was necessary to pack fish in a smokehouse, the supervisor tried to use ours. Because there had to be four different recipes, put in different boxes, before that, putting them in four different cardboard envelopes. But the most difficult thing is to constantly put a vacuum pack of fish into a paper envelope with your face into the window. In addition, it was necessary to discard packs with broken vacuum. The locals did this with great difficulty. They were constantly wrong. And stores made complaints because instead of fish, the back side of the foil from the lining was visible in the package window, and in some packs the vacuum packaging was completely broken.
20.When cutting salmon, red caviar is thrown away along with the intestines. Locals say that you should not eat fish eggs.
21.Face masks and head nets are put on only when the inspection arrives.
22.Hard work and uncomfortable living conditions greatly affect relationships between people. At home we started having constant quarrels and scandals. And this did not add optimism at all.
23. The sister of my friend, with whom we lived, once, during another quarrel with her boyfriend, said: “If I had known how it would all end, I would never have gotten into your new BMW in Riga.” The bastard gave me a lift to the fish factory on the island. I think they are still paying off the loan for this car. Although the bank took it long ago.
24. The robot sorts boxes according to barcodes, which are preliminarily glued to them on scales in the packaging workshop. If they are glued not in the center of the box, crookedly, or upside down (this also happens), the robot throws the box back. The local guy who stands on the scales puts stickers on haphazardly, and then we spend the whole day re-sticking them on moving boxes. There is no force that can force him to start doing this like a human being. He says “Ok, Sorry”, and continues in the same spirit. I guess this is simply too much of a task for him. He simply CAN'T. But the only thing worse than that is a local who comes to overtime on Saturday or Sunday. Because he arrives drunk after a night at the pub. And then the robots simply stop because they cannot read the nonsense that is pasted on the boxes. And, local comrade, you may come stoned or overeat of hallucinogenic mushrooms, which grow in huge quantities on the island.
25.In the event of equipment breakdown, engineers try not to repair anything for as long as possible. And come to the call as late as possible. And then, they stand and watch as we either start working manually or climb in to repair it ourselves. There are electrical panels above each window where the conveyor belt exits. One of them had a switch that stuck all the time. Throughout the 6 months of work, we hit it with our fists, and the line turned on again. When the supervisor saw this, he scolded us for our attitude towards the equipment. But when he got tired of waiting for engineers for 40 minutes, he began to do the same. A thick stream of water flowed onto the second electrical panel from the cooler, which stood under the ceiling. It leaked from time to time when the condensate tank overflowed. All that had to be done was to clean the drain pipe that was hanging on the wall. I asked to do this for a week. It was wildly scary to stand near the shield, because everything around was wet. And in the event of a short circuit, the entire workshop would probably light up, along with us. When the conveyor chain flew off the gear, we usually stopped the line, threw the chain over two teeth, like on a bicycle in childhood, and turned it on again. Fixing the problem took less than a minute. The engineers usually unscrewed all the tensioners, removed the gear from the axle, inserted it into the chain, put the wheel back on the axle, screwed it back into place, and tensioned the chain with the tensioner. This took about 20-25 minutes. Unless, of course, they forgot to bring some kind of tool. The most interesting thing I saw was that one day, when the line went down, an engineer came, opened the shield, looked at it for a long time, and then said that it was impossible to fix this malfunction. Then he closed the closet and left. We independently found the broken wire, twisted it, and the line started working again.
26. Kevin from the smokehouse worked for us one week. He was assigned to remove finished pallets from robots. To do this, you need to stop the robot, enter its work area, take out the pallet and turn the robot on again. But Kevin kept confusing the sequence of buttons, even though they were all different colors. And the first thing that happened after he pressed the buttons, instead of stopping, the robot took an empty pallet and, with a flourish, put it on top full of fish. There was a bang, fish, ice and polystyrene scattered in all directions, and then we all spent 30 minutes cleaning up the consequences, because we had to collect broken boards from pallets, pieces of foam plastic, fish and repack everything again into 24 boxes. The plant was standing at that time. When this happened several times, Kevin was banned from going near the robots. But that's all he got away with. If I had done this, the minimum would have been dismissal on the same day.
27. There was a very interesting guy from St. Petersburg. Or rather, he was born there, but his parents took him to France. He said that they were very rich, that they had a huge hotel on the Cote d'Azur, that he was tired of the sweet life and decided to taste hardships and hardships. And that he needs hard work. However, he refused to come to us and went to do light work during the trial. Most likely, his parents sent him to try what another life was like. He was too sad all the time.
29. One evening, a local young guy who worked as a cook in our cantina (dining room) was caught by the police when he masturbated under the window of a house where a girl was changing clothes, having forgotten to draw the curtains. All local newspapers wrote about this. However, after that, he calmly continued his work at our factory in the kitchen, and during breaks, when he put food on plates, meeting the gaze of someone, he simply smiled shyly.
30. There was a secret girl named Jen at the factory. She looked very good, despite the fact that she was already well over 40. She walked around the workshop and grabbed all the young men by the penis with her hands. And she stroked the girls’ butts. During breaks, she showed naked photos of herself on her phone to everyone who wanted to watch and complained that she didn’t have a boyfriend. One Pole decided to help her. She agreed and invited him to her home. When he arrived, she called the police and he was taken away on charges of attempted rape. One day she pissed off one of our guys and he threw a fish at her. Jen ran to the office, and he immediately received a warning.
31.Many locals ate on credit all week. Because on Monday they have no money. Friday's wages over the weekend, down to the last penny, ended up in pubs. Therefore, all week they ate on credit, on Friday, after payday, they paid what they owed, and the difference over the weekend was again left at the pub. They always feel absolutely calm because next Friday there will be a salary again. And if not, then the state will still not let them die and will pay benefits.
32.If a little snow falls, everything is paralyzed. Schools are closed. Half the locals don't come to work. And if they come, they leave in the middle of the day, because they have to get home by car while it’s still light.
33.Our people sometimes “forget” to pay at the store. They take a stroller full of food and alcohol and take it past the cash register. Even if they are stopped, they say that they forgot their wallet in the car and will be right back. There is no crime on the island. Cars are parked with the windows open, keys in the ignition, expensive phones and bags lie on the seats. The houses are not locked. On weekend mornings, while you are sleeping, the postman comes into the hallway and leaves letters and parcels. Once in the store there was an incorrect promotional price tag for mayonnaise. When we were charged twice as much at the checkout, we asked why that was, since the price tag had a lower number. The shift supervisor came, checked the price, they returned the full amount printed at the checkout, and gave us free mayonnaise. Because it was their fault.
34. There was such a Gunar. And he had a girlfriend Iveta. They lived together and just drank hard. After getting drunk, they constantly fought and sorted things out. When she came home and saw him sitting on the sofa with a can of beer, she simply kicked him in the face. And he regularly threw her out of the house. One day a friend came to them, and the three of them began drinking. Having gotten drunk, Iveta began to perform, and they tied her up and put her on the sofa. Having finished, the guys went to smoke. In T-shirts and slippers. And Iveta untied herself, locked the door from the inside, and called the police. Later, Delphi will write that a Latvian citizen was arrested in England for the forcible imprisonment of his girlfriend. They have a serious article, by the way.
35. It rains constantly on the island and a strong wind blows. There are times when in the morning you see your car, but you cannot approach it. The oncoming flow of air is so strong. There is almost no sun. Over time, an absolutely depressive state sets in. When there is a strong storm and the ferry does not reach the mainland, there is no food in the stores. Even bread. Therefore, you should always keep a supply of cereals and pasta at home. And in the freezer there are buns, like French bread, that can be baked in the oven instead of bread. Sometimes such fog descended on the island that planes from the mainland could not fly in or land. Accordingly, no one could fly away from the island. My friends, a couple from Riga, bought plane tickets from the island to Glasgow, and from there they had a plane via Amsterdam to Riga. The island was covered with fog, and the guys realized that they might not be able to fly away tomorrow. They decided to take the ferry into the night. But before that, they went to the airport and tried to return the money for the plane tickets, because they were told over the phone that there would be no flights in the next 24 hours. At the airport, they explained that they had two more planes, to which they were told that the money would not be returned to them, and that the company would provide them with a flight, but... when the weather gets better.
36. It is much easier to get a house from the local government on the island than on the mainland. It is enough to come to the local government with suitcases and say that you have nowhere to live. It would also be preferable to be kicked out. If you have a job, everything gets resolved very quickly. Svetka’s sister and her boyfriend got their house this way.
37.Interesting and unusual for us is the system of re-registration of cars upon purchase. You look at the car, hand over the money, write your address in the required column of the registration document and sign, after which you tear off the spine and leave. The previous owner sends the registration certificate to the department by mail, and you receive a new registration certificate by mail. It doesn't cost anything.
38. Local fish take 5-6 hours to ship. When we are the only ones working on weekends, everything is done in 2.5. The general manager always said on Saturdays and Sundays that if he had the opportunity, he would recruit everyone from the Baltic states. And at these moments I thought that all these guys would happily live and work at home if we were given such an opportunity. But in our country, fishing quotas have been cut and almost all fishing enterprises and the entire fishing fleet have been destroyed. We just probably need workers in England. After all, their factories are more important for Europe.
39.When I found a new job and told the factory about it, everyone was shocked. It turned out that Dorset County is the place where a huge number of the local population dreams of living. Well, the salary promised to be twice as much, which of course couldn’t help but rejoice. In addition, I was going to a world-famous premium superyacht manufacturing plant. So I packed my suitcase, my computer and bought a plane ticket.
40. The flight was delayed by 3 hours. I was sent through another city, so I missed the plane to Southampton, and as a result, the bus from Southampton and the train from Bormouth. I got on a different plane to Southampton, the bus driver took me on an expired ticket, and at the station the machine printed out a ticket for me for another time. That's how I ended up in Pula.
41.The next day I went to the employment agency. It was half Polish. But they only spoke Polish with Poles, and I had to communicate in English. Unfortunately, my English was still very far from perfect. At the fish factory we communicated little, and the courses were held once a week, and even then not always. All negotiations with the agency were conducted by my friend, and the Englishman was shocked at how I even got to them. On top of everything else, there was a completely different dialect here. And if on the island I already understood the language quite well, here I understood absolutely nothing. The only trump card was my CV. I had very good experience in fiberglass production, and the yachts that the plant produced were made from it. The agent said that with my knowledge of the language, most likely I would not be able to work at this plant. He said that he would go and call and if they agreed, then I would go to work. In principle, I was already mentally ready to go back. But the agent returned and said that he was told that there were many Poles in the workshops, and if I understood Polish, then they would help me at first. I understood Polish. And the next day I had to go to a new job. The tattooed guy across from me helped me fill out the forms. It turned out that he and I were going to the same job. It was Thomas. He was from Scotland.
42. There was no work for us that day in the workshop we were supposed to go to. And we were taken to another shipyard. She was huge. After a short safety briefing, we were taken to the workshop. There was nowhere to put my things; I was wearing jeans and shoes. I put paper overalls over my clothes and paper covers over my shoes. I was allowed to leave my jacket and bag in the supervisor’s office. There were no lockers here, like at the fish factory, in which personal belongings were placed and the locker was locked. Or rather, they were. But only for those who worked under a contract. Anyone who worked through an agency during a probationary period was not entitled to anything. Now I was ready to get to work. I immediately found two Poles, said that I was from the Baltic states, and asked for help getting comfortable. They told me to watch what they were doing and repeat after them. Then I did not yet know that they arranged all their people according to this scheme, even those who had no idea about this production. Former builders, doctors, and musicians from Poland worked there. Who was there! Although, of course, there were those who worked in this specialty all their lives. At the end of the day, Thomas and I were told that tomorrow we had to go to our factory. He suggested meeting near the bridge in the morning and going to work together.
43. It’s very good that we went together. There were only Englishmen there. There was only one Pole, and when I asked him to help, he looked at me not very joyfully. Then, of course, we became friends, but at first he helped me with obvious dissatisfaction.
44.But no one from the locals helped here. It was a school of survival. They simply told you: “Go and do it.” Nobody said what materials to use, in what quantity and in what ratio. Plus the Dorset accent was telling. And when the British saw that you didn’t understand them, they got terribly annoyed. They made faces, stuck out their tongues and made all sorts of obscene sounds. All this had to be endured. Because I needed this job and I didn't want to go back to the island. What struck me most was the attitude towards work. The shape of the yacht's hull was full of chips, which no one paid attention to, and inside the yacht there was a lot of debris and traces of dirty shoes, in which everyone climbed right inside. It is simply difficult to describe how much material and tools were thrown into the trash. If we talk about technology, this was the 80s of the last century at the most. Thomas was treated even worse than me. They constantly made fun of him because he was a Scot. Well, I got the same thing, because I came with him, and they thought that I was his friend. By the end of the week, Thomas invited me to move to the hotel where he lived. The hotel was several times cheaper than my hotel, and I moved to a room where the toilet and shower were shared and located on the floor. The room had an electric kettle, a washbasin, a plywood built-in wardrobe with a crossbar, painted white, and a small TV on which there were 4 programs: BBC 1, BBC2, BBC3, and BBC4. The first time I turned on, I found myself on a channel where political scientists in the studio were discussing how emigrants from Poland and the Baltic states were taking away jobs from the English population. Then they showed a story from a London job center. A young clerk in a suit and tie was giving an interview. Behind him, a huge hall was visible, in which there were a lot of tables, at which a lot of people were sitting. There were coffee and tea machines near the walls. People played chess, read newspapers, drank coffee and talked among themselves. Almost all the tables were occupied. The BBC correspondent asked the clerk:
Who are these people?
These are the unemployed. - he reported.
So you don't have any vacancies? - came the next question.
Well, said the clerk, we are inundated with vacancies.
So why don't you give it to them?
The answer killed me on the spot: - They don’t know how to do anything!!! They have no qualifications!!!
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