"Volver a empezar"

Hi bloggers.

For those who can´t read Spanish or don´t know that was the title of a Spanish old film wich won an oscar I´ll translate it as "Begin the Beguine".

I choose the title as I´m starting again a new job. I could seem I can´t long on any job s I get tired and bored of doing the same thing again and again. You could also think as the England thing is finished I don´t see the point on staying with my old company. I´d be lying if I say it hasn´t has a bit of thruth, but the main reason is far from being my fault.

I´ve spend the last 4 days enjoying myself, and being sick (I have a cold). I´m unemployed at the moment, wich doesn´t mean I don´t have a job but I´ll start the new one on a week and a half. But at this time I´m making the unemployment list bigger (I feel sorry for Mr. Zapatero, our president, well I don´t feel really sorry). It´s not my own idea to leave my old job that soon, well, it was my decission to resign, and I did it on wednesday, but I didn´t want to leave the office so soon. Normally you have to tell you´re leaving 15 days before, sometimes it´s even more than 15 days, as they count as laboral days, so it´s three weeks. But they didn´t want me to stay in the office if I was leaving.

Let me tell you what have taken me to resign. Of course you´ll only get my point of view.

First of all let me describe how things went at England. I had a very good time and also a very bad time. As I talked with one of the only good bosses I had at my last company he told me he believes it was a mistake to send me to England without enough knowledge on both the job and the environment. I totally agree with him, except for the job knowledge. The office at the Abbey National bank it´s a viper´s nest. The banking offices are always full of bastards, because they had worked there for ages, and they see new people coming who would take their jobs as they have more IT knowledge and ambition. They are used not to work too hard, and when it seems the projects aren´t coming on time they normally accuse somebody else of their own faults. That happened to me, and also got as the main head to blame for any problem, I was the last one to come. What I did to solve that was just work as hard as I could and finish everything on time so I couldn´t be blamed. But it seemed not to be enough. But everything was told behind my back. I only knew somebody was talking badly about me from a second hand, taking the possibility of defending myself far away.

There´s also the problems we had at hotels. I don´t know who to blame for that, I believe it´s a mixture of both the hotel managers, my company and the travel agancy. On Mondays we came back to the hotel at night from work to check-in. We were tired and just wanted to go the room and rest. But on every hotel we´d had problems with the payment. They always wanted us to pay in advance as they hadn´t received a fax with credit card number and permission to be charged for our rooms. On some hotels they said it didn´t matter and everything would be solved on next days. On some others I had to argue for a long time before they allowed us to go rest. But I always felt ashamed, as I was a beggar who asked for a free room, or was trying to cheat them.

The last England problem was related to social security. I discovered last Monday, after the event who make me take the decission to leave, my company hadn´t talked to the social security about us going to work on another EU country. They should have asked for a TA-200 form, fill it and give it back to the S.S. (Social Security, not the german´s), then they´ll give them another three forms, the E-101, E-102, E-103, to be filled and taken to us to be signed, giving us a copy. Of course they didn´t. We didn´t have any medical problem or accident at England, but we could´ve had, and it could happened to us that the english hospitals could´ve denied service, or charge us for any treatment. They also should´ve given us the European Medical Card, and didn´t.

The last thing that happened was the worst. I would like you to tell me if I was wrong or not. Monday was my first office day after England. I came to the office as if it was my first day at the company. I´d rather knew my co-workers. I expected a good wellcoming, but I wouldn´t be surprised without any. What I didn´t expect was the welcome of one of the bosses and also the one who offered me the England trip.

I was talking with the secretary at reception about money and he came to me. He shaked my hand and I was expecting him saying "How are you?", "How things went in England?", etc. but instead he asked me "Who gave you permission to go to Galicia?". Well, I was a bit surprised about the question, but didn´t bother too much because it was them who gave me the permission. But them he told me off about it. He was talking to me in front of the secretary and also in front of anyone who walked in the reception coming back from having a fagg or drinking a coke. He told me I was cheeky and implied I was lying to them. I couldn´t explain myself at that time as he didn´t stop talking. The last thing he said was a threat, he told me "We´ll seek a way for you to pay for the trips you made, we might discount it from your salary". That left me on a shock.

Let me explain to you what happened on a friday, when I was called to be told about the trip I was going to do next thrusday (Monday was holidays). The explained quite a few things about the trip, they said they didn´t know enough about it as they were unexperienced about that kind of things. But they told me about the money I was about to receive and the things I was allowed to do with the flights. They told me I could chose between staying at England with the hotel payed or travel. I asked them about the weekend flight and also if I could travel to Galicia instead Madrid. There were two people there, and both with power inside the company. They said I could do it, but I´d had to ask our client at the bank.

When I was at England I asked him, and he told me I could and also asked the travel agency for the flights. I wanted a direct flight to Galicia, but they didn´t want because it was more expensive than going to Madrid and then to Vigo. I didn´t bother as it wasn´t my own decission. But I didn´t know it could mean a difference for my company.

After being told off by that guy, I talked to another one, one who was present when I asked if I could go to Galicia, and he told me he remembered them giving me permission. But he also told me the problem was I´d taken to flights instead a direct one. I tried to explain him it wasn´t my fault and also it was because it was cheaper.

Afterwards I decided to leave the company and started seeking for a new job. It only took a day to have a new and better payed one.

The problem is I was told off in public, in my own way it shouldn´t have been like that. If you want to tell something to an employee take him apart to talk privatly, specially if you have to tell him off. And also, you should give him a chance to explain himself, or at least ask somebody else about the subject without pressuming guilt. He told me with different words I was a cheater, a lyier and a bad guy, and he told me in front of anybody.

I think I was right on being angry and leaving the company. Please tell me if I was wrong.

Anyway, I have a new and nicer job. Let´s hope everything goes fine.

Farewell.

Manoel.