This one has been bugging me for years... I hope I can explain what about the situation I find strange. But first, let's find out whether or not I travel by train enough to give an opinion. After all: if I travel once every decade, that wouldn't be a good source for information, would it?

I travel quite a lot by train. But I don't travel much by train. To clarify: I travel by train daily. One trip to Lund, then one trip to Eslöv. And then back again. That makes four trips per day. Four different trains. Yeah, I travel a lot. Every trip is 8-13 minutes long (depending on other trafic). So about 40 minutes a day. That's not very much. Back at uni, I travelled to and from school daily as well. As a kid, we often went by train, since my grandfather worked at the railroad company as an electrician. Quite a high status job at the time.

What, then, is 1st class? Well, when you go travelling, you often get the option 1st class or business class. 1st class has comfier and softer seats. It's nice in there. How do I know? Because I went into 1st class by mistake at one time, before they chased me out of there. Ok, 1st class is great, why don't I travel with it all the time? Because it costs more. I'm on a budget here. Also, I'm stingy about money. You know how it is.

So the train company has divided up a part of the train to be 1st class. They're charging more for this, due to the fact that it is better. Wherein lies the problem?!

Well... Öresundstrain, which is the trains we're talking about, normally go around Öresund. Hence the name. However, I've only ever seen Öresundstrains when they go instead of Pagatag. Pagatag are used by commuters, since they stop at all the stops. If you're going to go all around Öresund, you want a train that doesn't stop very often. Otherwise it'd take ages...

The main problem arises because Öresundstrains are BUILT to handle fewer passengers over longer trips. When you commute the train more often than not is packed to the brim. Me sitting is more of an oddity than the norm. And part of the train is empty? People are standing up, clutching each other for support, since there is NOTHING to grab on to for people who stand. The trains aren't BUILT to handle people standing.

Of course, should you, accidentaly, stumble on to the doors, and just fall into an empty seat (it can happen) you will be breaking the rules and they'll chase you out.

For normal commuting, 1st class is not an option. You travel for 10 minutes. You are NOT going to spend any EXTRA money to get a comfier seat for that amount of time. However, the trains still run the line that are for commuters... It does bug me, standing up and bumping into people while there is a whole section of empty seats just a glass door away. Oh well, I'm sure they make money from them on the longer trips. Otherwise they'd remove them, right?

This one has been disputed quite a lot in recent years. Since we only just recently (historically speaking) got the 8 hour work day, it's time to skip it for something else. The pun on "we want sex, we want sex, we want six hour work day" doesn't work, since in Swedish sex and six is spelled the same. Don't ask me why, I didn't construct the language. Still, it's a nice rhyme, especially when it's women chanting it... Yeah, I'm a testosterone filled male that thinks with my libido, what else is new?

So why would I want to change the length of the work day? Could there in fact be a list of facts that would support the idea of shortening it? Why, I do believe there is, yes.

Fact. A lot of people get "burned out" by working eight hour days. To them, this is too long time to work.
Fact. A LOT of people are unemployed. Don't ask me numbers, since those numbers are falsified. Example: I'm not unemployed, I'm interning. That's not a job, meaning I should be counted as unemployed, but I'm not.
Fact. If three people turned their work day from 8 hours into 6 hours, one unemployed person could step in and work those 6 hours. So if unemployment is 33% it would be fixed in one swift stroke.

The problem of course would be that hiring more people would cost a LOT more than it currently does. This is because not all the money spent on wages by the employer goes to wages for the employee. There's fees and taxes and so on. In other words, if you get four employees instead of three, the amount spent on fees would go up with one third.

Also, if nobody is unemployed, there would be no threat that the employer could fall back on. As it is, if the employee says "pay me more or I'll quit!", the empoyer can simply say: "don't let the door hit you on the way out". This is because there are thousands of people willing to take his place. Since we're a world economy (supposedly) that number could be millions. Tens of millions? This way, the wages are held down to a manageable level.

You might think that getting higher wages to all would be a good thing? Well, you'd be wrong. If all employees got higher wages, the companies would have to raise prices on their goods. This is because their expenses would go up. Of course, the employees would then have to demand more, since all the prices have gone up. Which of course leads to the companies raising the prices again...

Have you ever heard of a country called Germany? They had that for a while, in the 20s. Do you want to know how rich I am? I have, in my collection, a few dozen German stamps worth a few billion marks each. Many of which had been printed as being worth millions and then stamped over them with the new number, billion. This is called inflation. When unemployment go down, inflation goes up.

The problem is that at the moment, a lot of people can't afford to buy unnecessary stuff (food and rent is necessary, the rest isn't). This means that companies go bankrupt, ending up with more people being unemployed. They in turn can't afford to shop either... From what I gether, the Swedish inflation will be 1.7% for 2009. (http://www.privataaffarer.se/nyheter/direkt/telegram/?id=920999). Compared to the goal of 2%, this is very low. Even here we can see unemployment having an impact.

Would more people in the work force be a good thing? For the avarage person, I would have to say yes. Crap jobs are better than no jobs. In my own opinion, a job is worth ten times more than an internship that pays twice what a job pays. The reason being that I would FINALLY have my first real job. I'm 33 years old, is it too much to ask to get my first job in the next few years? I believe that I'm not alone in that situation either. Take a few million from those "projects" that the government spends billions on each year and actually HIRE people. Then we'd see actual change. As it is, sending people to courses abroad, spending millions on teachers and such for it, does not solve the problem. But that is just one man's opinion.

Today's subject is another one of those things I don't understand. I'll add something to the subject line though: the charging of all commuting. This includes buses, trains and, up north, boats. What about it don't I understand? Surely the transport will cost money, gas isn't free and there is the driver and conductor and what not. That's not hard to understand, right?

Well, today's post is actually about three items, relating to the main topic. They are thussly:

Expensive. They charge more and more each year. If you are lucky enough to be able to afford a car, the cost of driving is almost as low as commuting. If you travel to hard to reach places, like Eslöv, you actually make money on driving. Also, in that example, it takes a fourth of the time. If you manage to find someone living close to you, you can car pool. That's good.

Robberies. This one has been in the news quite a lot recently. So much so that even I have heard about it. Apparently, what with there being no jobs and social services telling kids below 30 to move home to mom and dad, young people are quite desperate for cash. Robbery is a way of transfering money from one place to the next. Buses have lots of cash, don't they? So that is what has been happening lately. The bus company have therefore decided that very soon, NO buses will accept cash payment. The logic being, of course, if the bus carries no money, there is no reason to rob it. The problem arises that people in the future (2010 was it?) will HAVE TO carry their bus/train card with them at all times. No longer, if you're out partying and you drink too much to drive home, will you be able to go by bus home. Ok, so I don't party around, but I see it as a potential problem.

Environment. Sweden, among others, believe that if they emit less green house gases, global warming will be halted. Yeah, a country with 9.000.000 people will make that big a difference compared to the other 6.800.000.000 people... Kind of strange the way people think, isn't it? Anyway, one way of helping the environment is to drive less. By having a lot of people using the same transport, you cut down on emissions. That makes sense, doesn't it?

Ok, let's get to the part I don't understand: why not make buses, trains and boats free? Supposedly, those in power WANT us to travel that way. The cost of paying for that is surely LESS than the money spent on marketing campaigns and meetings with other word leaders? No money on the bus = no robberies. More people will commute if it's free, I'm 100% sure of that. Less trafic = fewer traffic jams. I can only see one downside to this:

Higher taxes. Sweden either has the highest taxation in the world, or close to it. Raising the taxes even more would upset people who don't commute. And, of course, those who are in power never go by train, do they? No, they go by everywhere in airplanes and limousines. And they're the ones that are telling us we should pollute less...

No, make travel free. People will then travel more. Less pollution, no robberies (on buses) and easier to take the bus on impulse.

So, I was walking along earlier today. Since the weather is getting worse and it gets increasingly darker, my mood is going downhill as well. Being a pessimist at heart, winter is not my best season. To chear me up, I started telling myself that I was good, I was smart and so on. A bit of encouragement, you know how it is. Other people have coaches or psychotherapists that tell them these things, I tell myself. But then I got to thinking... Regardless of how smart I want to believe I am, there is one thing I don't understand...

Yes, in the title I've added a 1. This could become a series of posts wherein I explain things that I do not understand. Of course, I might grow bored with it after one post. Oh well, who knows.

Everything written today will be based upon first hand experience, discussions with work mates and news I've read in Metro. I didn't just come up with it, is my point.

Today's non-understandment comes in the form of a question:

Why would anyone HIRE people today?

Being unemployed, my highest goal is a job. Not work. Work I do already. No, I want a job. Something that has a salary, which gives me a way to pay rent every month. Something I can point to in conversations: I'm a mega rock star with fifteen platinum albums! Or, what ever job I might be able to get. I can't sing, so I don't think that career path is for me.

Why was that my question? Well the answer to that comes in two parts. The first one I've tested for a few years now. The second one is common enough, I've tried going there, but have failed to, so far.

Internships from the job distributers. After you go unemployed for a while, the job distributers (Arbetsförmedlingen) get bored with giving you free money. They send you to work full time at some company or other. The pay? Almost non-existant. In my case, less than existance minimum. The expense for the company that gets this work force? None. Zero. Nada. They get a free work force and, if they're the less nice kind, they work you to death. Or sick leave, which ever comes first.

Outsourcing. I've tried becomming a member of different outsourcing companies. The idea is that companies that need workers NOW can get them NOW. You get salary. They pay for your services. The outsourcing company gets a percentage. All is good, right? Well... Had you gotten a JOB there, there would've been a lot of security about the whole deal. For instance, you cannot, under Swedish labour laws, fire someone right away. There is a time period wherein the employee must remain empoyed from the day he got the boot. This gives you a month or three to continue getting an income and look for other jobs. As an employee you can get experience and go up in rank. As a person who comes into the work place for a week, you're treated as hired help. Which is what you are. You work, you get done working, you leave.

If a company is only looking for the bottom dollar, which they should, that's the definition of a company, they will make sure to get as many interns as possible. Free labour? Why not! And if that doesn't work, at least get people who will only do the job and not actually have any demands about job security.

Again: Why would anyone HIRE people today?

From a pure business point of view, there is NO logical reason for ANY company to hire ANYONE today. It's the buyers market. And if, and this is pushing the suspension of disbelief to the max, the company DOES hire someone, they will in all probability go for the guy that demands the lowest salary. And he'll be happy to get it too!

Oh well, at least I have work. Getting a job might never happen, but compared to being unemployed and sitting and staring at a wall all day, it's pretty good. Personally I've put a computer screen in between the wall and me. Other people have chosen the oh so popular TV. That kind of life can be great for a month or two, but it will rot your brain in the end. Also, any skills you might have will become obsolete fairly quickly. Going unemployed for longer periods of time is heart breaking, it really is.

Anyway, anyone wondering what to get me for Christmas: A playboy playmate. A job! I meant a job! Oh dear...

A few days ago, I wrote a positive post about my current situation. A needed post since I had written so many negative ones. In preperation for that post, I came up with a stupid pun. It's not great or anything, but I feel it deserves it's moment in the sunshine. Although I haven't seen the sun for a few weeks... Isn't winter great?

So the pun wasn't used. Bummer. It goes something like this:

I studied business and administration in high school, thereby making sure that my future would be full of paper work. Now I fold boxes made of paper. My prediction came true, yay.

Hm, sounded funnier in my head. Oh well. Can't all be winners, eh?

So I got the suggestion of writing about Christmas a few days ago. I've dragged my feet on the issue. There is a reason though: Christmas is a huge topic and there are many, many ways for me to handle it. In the end though I will be lazy. I might get more into the season of Christmas as we get closer to Christmas Eve itself, but right now there are other things on the way. Quite a few relatives and former work mates have birthdays in December, for instanse. Happy birthday to you all.

Now what kind of lazy subject did I conjour up for today? Well, I got to thinking. What is most important about Christmas? There are many answers to that, of course, but sooner or later you realise that Christmas, how ever it is celebrated or what ever word used for a winter celebration, always ends up with HUGE sales figures. The Holiday season is the number one seller all year. This means that the most important thing is presents. I don't know about you, but as a kid, it was the only thing Christmas was about... Yeah, I was greedy as a kid.

One wonders, is there such a thing as the Christmas present of the year? Surely, in the competitive nature of things, there is such a thing? The answer is yes. This post will simply be cutting and pasting from http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%85rets_julklapp. I will of course translate the list to English and comment on the items. One thing before we begin: The Christmas present of the year is chosen from a list of criterias. The item has to be new, it has to represent the times we're in and be believed to be a big seller. Personally I'd just look at the sales records afterwards and give the price to the product that sold the most. But I'm not the one making choises here, Handelns utredningsinstitut is.

1988 - Baking machines. The idea of making things for yourself was a big thing back then.
1989 - Video cameras. High tech at the time :).
1990 - Woks. Why go out for Chinese food? Make it yourself!

1991 - CD-players. Before this we had record players. I suddenly felt old...
1992 - Videogames. Nintendo for the win! Personally, I had an Atari. That was like 25 years ago...
1993 - Perfume. Huh? I have no idea... People smelled worse back then?
1994 - Mobile phones. You could make phone calls when you weren't home? Really high tech!
1995 - CDs. *shrug* everybody changed from records to CDs.
1996 - Internet packages. I don't think I got onto the world wide web until the year after, but it IS a big change, isn't it?
1997 - Electronic pets, like the Tamagotchi. I think the idea was that kids would learn that pets require a lot of attention? Never got into it, probably too old.
1998 - Computer games. Now we're into my territory :).
1999 - Books, especially the bible. Well, the end of the millenium was comming, the Y2K scare was in full swing, maybe God could help reformat your harddrive?
2000 - DVD players. Another high tech gadget that everybody HAD TO have. Now everybody does.

2001 - Tools. Do it yourself was brought back. Handy men are expensive, so I can see why...
2002 - Cook books. A lot of chef's with their own shows on TV, showing you how it's done. And then they sold cook books to help you further. I have Tina's Food from the TV show with Tina Nordström. I don't cook, but some relative thought it was a good idea.
2003 - A cap. Sort of like getting socks or mittens. How's that "new"?
2004 - Flat screen TV. Again: new tech, everybody has to have it.
2005 - Poker set. There was a lot of poker tournaments on TV. I followed Celebrity Poker Showdown myself. It was rather amusing. Never bought a poker set though, since I have noone to play with.
2006 - Audiobooks. If you like books and you walk a lot, you can now bring your book with you. Nothing new as such, but I guess people got into it again.
2007 - GPS. If you ever get lost and don't know where you are, you NEED one of these. Sean Connery had one in the 60s James Bond movies.
2008 - An experience. The financial crisis had just hit, so people had to make due with experiences instead of toys.

And now for the final thing. Yes, the Christmas present of 2009 has been selected. If you haven't bought your Christmas presents yet, this is the one to get! The nail rug. What? Ok, I've seen them being sold in stores, but I thought it was just a gimick or something. The idea is that you lie on it and you'll feel a lot better afterwards. Sort of like the rugs that had magnets in them a few years ago. People are actually buying the modern equivelent of the iron maiden, a torture device of old? Do they work? I'm not going to look into it. My bed is soft, I like softness when I sleep. The idea of lying on spikes (even plastic ones) doesn't sound quite right to me... On the other hand, what do I know? Most of my non-work clothes are like 10 years old. Following fashion or trends have never been my thing. "I do what I like and I like what I do." (Dick van Dyke in Mary Poppins (1964)).

I did a good deed today, maybe. Well, I tried to anyway. This took the form of a question, statement of a problem and a suggestion of a solution. So let's start with the question:

Are you good at computers?

A guy at work asked me that a few hours ago. Now, in a job interview, I'd say yes. I'd show a paper telling my future boss that I have a bachelor's degree in Informatics. I'd point to the fact that I've been using computers pretty much my whole life. This was different though. I knew an exam would follow, regardless of my answer. If I said yes, it would be that more difficult to explain why I couldn't solve his problem. So I settled for: quite good.

Now we get to the interactive part of today's post. I will try to explain the problem the way he told it to me. Then it's up to you, the reader, to think about how YOU would've handled the problem. Remember: I had no time to ponder a solution. If you want to take time off to think about it, fine, but it can be interesting to see how our solutions differ, can't it?

Ok, the guy has a lap top. He's played a lot of games on it in the past (establishing previous behavior, well planned problem statement from that guy). Now he had installed a new game. Yes, he told me the name. Yes I asked again. No, I didn't recognise it... He told me the story of the game, but the plot of a game can take many different forms, so that doesn't tell anything. Regardless, he starts the game up. Nice introduction graphics, nice music and so on. He starts playing and is hit with Parental Protection. Or some such word. It freezes the game up and he can't continue. He thinks it's just a glitch and restarts the game a few times. Doesn't work. He uninstalls the game and reinstalls it a few times. No change. He changes account on the laptop so that he is definitely the administrator. I have accounts on my computer too, I never use any other than the one I use now. In theory, it's good to have seperate accounts for seperate duties. He makes sure that he is currently the administrator. Root for those who use unnessary lingo. Still the game does not work. He tells me that he's asked a lot of people but have gotten no help. I imagine that they've given him the advice to do the above, which I probably would've as well. Now I cannot give that advice, since he's already done it. He mentions that he was very near reformating the whole computer, which would be going a bit far. I agreed and I only had one advice to give him. Now then, what would you, the reader, suggest?

Well, I had pretty much no option but to tell him that I didn't know. I'd like to suggest that he asked others, but he already had. My advice therefore was an easy one: Google.com. If he's having problems with a game, chances are others have had the SAME problems in the past. Someone else will undoubtedly have used a gaming forum or other to ask the question. Google would be able to find that question and possibly direct him to an answer.

Was that good advice? Did I help him in any way? If it turns out that NONE of the other people he asked suggested it and he didn't think of it himself, yes, I did help him. But that answer is such an obvious one that I don't think I can take credit for it. Hopefully I see him again tomorrow, and I'll find the end of the story. Had I only understood the name of the game, I'd look myself. As it is though, I can't...

Oh well, you do your best with what you've got. This problem didn't have an obvious answer to me, so I suggested that he looked elsewhere. Any problem that exists after the late 90s should always be put to Google first. It's a rule to live by and many do.

The suggested topic I was given two posts ago? It's comming, I'm just thinking of a way to start it off. It's rather a broad topic. I might even make more than one post about it. Maybe not, who knows. Either way: something happened in my life today that I thought was interesting enough to write down, so I did.

Yesterday I promised to write wether or not I went on a walk in the middle of the night. Well, let's put that cliff hanger to rest: yes, yes I did. I did notice getting more tired than I remembered from previous nights. It might have something to do with the fact that I left at 10 pm. My deepest suspision though is that I simply haven't gone walking like that in a month. True, I walk for the same amount of time every day, but it's not the same as walking continously like I did yesterday.

Everybody knows what a cliff hanger is, right? Well, just in case not, I will describe it very shortly.

In the olden days of films, the 1920s and 1930s, movie theaters didn't show movies the way we know them now. Instead they were mostly serials. Since then, of course, TV has taken the role of a weekly story telling. Cliff hangers have become a norm in most TV in more recent years. The principle remains the same though. The main character is hanging over a cliff, unable to pull himself up. His fingers are going numb and he will surely die. It's scary, it's thrilling and you will find out how it ends... Next week. Same Bat Time, same Bat Channel.

I think, when I was first introduced to it, outside of my own home and TV, my teacher at the time told us about Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. That book was written to be published in the paper. This meant that every chapter would end on a cliff hanger. What will happen next? Well, you will just have to buy the next paper to find out, won't you?

Of course, cliff hangers has a longer story than the late 1800ds. One thousand and One nights for instance shows the queen telling the king a story just before going to sleep. Since she will be put to death the following day, she ends the story on a cliff hanger. Since the king just HAS TO find out the end, he let's her live one more day. As you can guess from the title, she does this 1001 times. From what I remember, she was then set free. Well, I haven't actually read it. Might be a project worth looking into one day...

I, like most of my generation I'm sure, grew up with cliff hangers in soaps. Every episode ended in a cliff hanger. In fact, even if I didn't know it at the time, every act was ended on a cliff hanger. Then the show would cut to an add. Why I didn't know? Because we didn't have advertisements on TV in those days. Now we do, which is why I don't watch TV anymore... I follow the Groucho Marx approach: "I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.". I find it as good an advice today as it was back in his time.

One last tidbit before closing. Thrillers. Since I read quite a lot I sometimes read thrillers. Their build up is very dependant on cliff hangers. Every chapter ends with you wanting more. You want to put the book down, you need to put the book down, you have work the day after, but you simply HAVE TO find out how the protagonist will solve the problem this time.

To sum up: the answer was yes.

I was thinking the other day... I made the promise that I would write about any topic given to me (in writing, otherwise there'd be millions of them). I started thinking that I should write a disclaimer. Something along the lines of "Unless you tell me to write about subject X! There is no way I could ever do that!". But then I thought harder about it. My conclusion is that if I want to be a professional writer (that is: getting payed for my insane ramblings) I should try to be able to write about anything. Even the subject I fear the most. So, using that logic, I have chosen to take the bull by the horns and write about the situation I'm in, from a positive angle.

The reason I need to do this is that I've written so many negative posts about the current situation. Being a pessimist, that's not difficult. But surely I can think of something good, right? And so it begins...

I do only work four hours a day now. In theory that's fewer hours spent at work. That thought is rather invalidated by the fact that I'm actually away from home for an hour longer than when I worked six hours a day. Still, my lazy side HAS to view this as a good thing.

Walking. True, I stopped taking my every other day walk. However, that walk took me 1 hour, 40 minutes. Now I take four walks (to the station, from the station, to the station from the station) every, single day. It takes me a grand total of 1 hour, 40 minutes. So I go out more and get more fresh air. That's always good.

Work. There is a saying one of my teacher's used a few times that kind of fits it. "It's so easy a MONKEY could do it!". Of course, he was talking about visualising the effects on aggregated demand when a traded product had an increase in price over an international market. But I think it applies. The good part about that is of course that I can do it. And while the job is repetitive, it is NOT as repetitive as cleaning. True, when I cleaned I cleaned different areas on different days, but in the end it was always the same... At Sydbox I sit or stand a full day doing the same motion. Ok, sometimes for a full week. But the jobs do differentiate every now and then. Using different muscles each time. Mostly using hands and arms though... I wonder how we could introduce the folding of paper using our feet...

Pay. Eh, nothing to note here. It's the same.

Lunch. Speaking of money... Every other day at my previous work, we ate different items for lunch. Pasta, pizza, Chinese food. Here I eat my same old boring sandwiches every day. However, I have, sort of, started going to Burger King after work once a week or once every other week. The thing is, Burger King is right next to the train station. And I really like Whoppers... You save money on one thing and spend it on the next, such is life.

Socialising. This one is a bit difficult. A few weeks ago we DID do work where it was just the hands working, we were sitting really close together and the rest of the people were women. Women are chatty, so that lead to getting to know your co-workers a bit. The last week though... Yeah, sorting sheets of paper take up too much space and the chatty guy is behind me. I can't really talk to people that I can't see so I turned around a lot... You know that thing I got upset with someone else for doing? Oh well.

Getting a job. Every now and then I get depressed, feeling like I can't do this job for more than a week more. Then I start thinking that I could go on doing this till the day I die. I just need to occopy my mind with something while I do it. The problem is that Samhall, like every other company, isn't really hiring. Their boss, The Swedish Government, has put a certain number down: 19.000. The labour force in Samhall is never going to grow any larger than that. But who knows, there are quite a few older gentlemen and gentlewomen working, so early retirement is not out of the question.

Could I see myself working at the place I am now for years on end? In theory yes. There is however, the logistics problem. Like I've mentioned in the past, my free time in the evening is like four hours long (a movie, dinner and mail checking). If I started working eight hours a day instead of four, that'd be four hours less free time. No dinner? I'm a Skaning! Don't ever threaten a Skaning's dinner!!! The South shall rise again!

Where was I? I have no clue. Anyway, to sum up. The work is doable. The work mates are, for the most part, a friendly bunch. Not too many demands on me yet. Everything is rather ok. The idea that I'm doing this as work testing is a bit weird though... I'm testing to see if I can work? I just worked for 16 months straight, we know I can work already. Yeah, every now and then, I pause and ask why I'm here? What is it all for? Does God exist? Can we prove the Big Bang? What is truth? Why was Christian Slater in Star Trek VI? (the last one is a reference to Nostalgia Critic's Alone in the Dark review, view it here: http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/thatguywiththeglasses/nostalgia-critic/11343-alone).

I have been pondering lately though... On weekends I don't actually go out walking for 1 hour, 40 minutes. Maybe I could take up walking my usual walk during those times? It's 9.30 pm right now. And I have this strange urging in my feet all of a sudden... Tune in tomorrow when I'll tell you if I found a way do dissuade myself from walking or my feet won the vote (two feet over one me?).

I ran into my last boss' wife the other day. She asked me how I was doing and so on. From my story to her, it was rather apparent that she didn't like the situation any more than I do... I got the question of wether or not I liked it? Since I've been sort of brainwashed lately, I said yes. How the brainwashing has been done? Well, if I don't say yes to folding boxes, they'll put me back at cleaning floors, and THAT is something I don't want. Folding boxes and similar? Heaven compared to cleaning in my book...

The events of today's post actually started early last year. I had been working at a place where I didn't have enough education to do what I did, we didn't have enough work to do and I spent most of my time cleaning floors. In the end, I ended up with a depression. Partly because of the cleaning floor bit. I'll get back to that later. After being off sick for a month (with no sick leave, mind you) I went to work at Swede. There I worked at a production line for a few weeks. Dull, boring, the same work every day... Well, I needed something simple to get back into working, so that was ok. For a few weeks. Then of course, I got to Jonte Engdahl Motorsports Ltd. I liked working there, I liked the people and they liked me. Everything was peachy. Surely nothing could go wrong with that arrangement? If nothing had, this post wouldn't have needed to be written.

Today's post is a summation of what has happened these last two months. It all started on September 18th. A representative from the Job Distributers (Arbetsförmedlingen) came visiting. Not my new contact at the Job Distributers, I have still to meet her, but some other person. Not quite sure why she was working my case... Anyway, she told me that I was in a vacuum, a dead end. The solution? In her mind, I should go on. Discover new things. Get to jobs that actually fitted my university degree. You know the drill, the grass is always greener on the other side, some nutball has paved the streets with gold and so on. An interesting thing was that she didn't sell me on the idea. Uusally that kind of sales pitch is from a seller. She was merely telling me how things would be from now on. I had no say in the matter. So what did she promise? Let's see:
Joboportunities that fit my education: Systems operator, program designer, HCI expert etc.
Joboportunities that fit my interests: Librarian, bookstore clerk etc.
To get on to bigger and better things (unnice to the job I had, I thought).
Courses so that I could embark on bigger and better things (22 years in school isn't enough?).
Increase in pay. This one was mostly from those around me, trying to cheer me up.

Monday to Wednesday was unplanned by the Job Distributers. I chose to work those three days. I liked working where I was and I chose to do so.

On the Thursday, the 24th, I met up with the contact at Samhall.The green grass and the gold? Nope, didn't exist. My first job, which I got to chose, was either cleaning floors or raking leafs. Leaf raking would involve me freezing my ... extremities off. It would be hard work. He really tried to convince me that was the worse choice. I told him: ANYTHING other than floor cleaning! Where did I end up? Do you really need to guess?

Cleaning floors, work 1. So there was me, working at cleaning floors. I had not done the mandatory introduction course yet. A course which I was told HAD to be done BEFORE cleaning ANY floors for Samhall! Don't worry, I'll get back to that course later. Three weeks later in fact... So let's recap, a year ago I was doing work that I didn't have the skills or education to do and cleaning floors sent me into a depression. Now I was doing work that I hadn't been educated at and it was ALL about cleaning. Oh, also tables and white boards. Can't say that helped that much... Interesting incident: I started work at 6.30 in the morning. I couldn't get in, since the doors were locked. I had to stand out in the wind and cold until one of the other cleaning personell came and opened for me. All well and good, you might think? Nope. On Thursday and Friday the first week and Monday the week after NONE of the other cleaners showed up. They were all on sick leave. There was me, standing out in the wind (wind shelters, darn it, it was a school for construction workers, couldn't they build something?!) for half an hour. Then me leaving to go home. Sure, I could've waited on the janitor to lock up. But what were my duties? What was I supposed to clean? And all brooms and buckets were inside a locked room... At one point, I did look up at the beam right across the roofing. Pondering exactly how many strings I had to knot together to bear the weight of me... Chairs and buckets were a plenty on the inside, all I needed to do was figure out how many strings I needed. Yeah, suicidal after only a week. The Job Distributers sure are effective, aren't they?

Ok, I promised I would write about the course. Well, it took three days. Full days, mind you, eight hours. I can divide it up in three parts: stuff that was important for me in my work that I had already learned by doing. Stuff that was important for me in my work that I HADN'T already learned and stuff that was useless to me. The stuff that was important but I hadn't learned already? Wasn't used at Lernia, where I was cleaning. Three days that gave me nothing, except a diploma. A diploma reminding me that I had gone to a course and learned a lot of things that I was then not allowed to use. Great.

So that went on for three or four weeks. Cleaning floors, tables, white boards and toilets. Did I forget to mention toilets? Yeah, I wonder why that is... In my mind the cleaning was rather useless. Everything I cleaned looked clean to me BEFORE I started cleaning and then looked clean after. It might have something to do with me being male, but it might also have something to do with the fact that we cleaned it daily. Every single day. The same class rooms, the same toilets, the same hall ways, bore city...

Folding boxes, work 2. I name this folding boxes, because the box folding was actually kind of fun, comparably. You picked up a box, folded the up part, the down part, kind of forced the two sides into an upright position, folded in the up part and folded in the down part. If ever you seen a white box that contain a cupon for Allers Veckotidning, I folded boxes like that. Yeah, that job was fun... Lasted for three days or some such time. And I'm on my fourth week today. So what did I do this week... I actually explained it in a mail to my most avid reader the other day, but I'll repeat it for any new readers:

Pick up two sheets of paper from the right, put them in the middle.
Pick up two sheets of paper from the left, put them in the middle.
Repeat.
Go home at four.

Do you think it's impossible to get any duller than that? Ah, ye of little faith in Bhor, the god of boredome. On Monday, the boxes were coloured green and red (with white in the middle) in a sort of flower arrangement. Tuesday and Wednesday? Black. Ok, and white. Still: not even colours now!

Like I said, I went to school for 22 years straight. Not a single day did I study anything like the jobs I've done. Promise one is BS!
I have no interest in clean floors or folded paper. Promise two is BS!
The jobs I've had these last two months are jobs I had BEFORE Jonte's. It's not progress. Promise three is BS!
I did go on a course! One promise holds water! Wo-hoo! Three days of learning how to hold a mop... Oh dear...
But surely the increase in pay will make that feel better? Actually, I still live on existence minimum. And since I now work in Eslöv (that takes two hours to get to) I now have higher expenses. Sure, Social Services pay for my month travel card, but I didn't know that I would stay for a month the first week. That's like 500 bucks down the drain.

So let's sum up. I was at a place I liked being in. I did work that not anyone could do. I liked my work mates and they liked me. Nobody got hurt by me working there. Nobody in the world got it ANY better by me leaving. Why in the world did the Job Distributers have to pull me away from there? It makes no sense! Ok, so Jonte's couldn't hire me, that's a downer. So? So what? I was happy with getting existence minimum. It was a lot more than I had ever gotten before! Samhall won't hire me either. Apparently they hire like 30 people every autumn and 30 every spring. And what's to say they will spend the money on the paper folding place? And if they do, why on me, specifically?

Why do I get this feeling that the Job Distributers hate me?

An extra tidbit. A few weeks ago I wrote the following statement:

Any topic submitted to me in writing, either in a comment or in a mail (preferably mail) I promise I will write about here.

A rather bold claim, even if I wrote it in italic. It's gone rather well, actually. I've written three so far:

Boobs: http://gargnob.livejournal.com/115348.html
Candy: http://gargnob.livejournal.com/115713.html
Lesbian Twins: http://gargnob.livejournal.com/116488.html [Warning: R-rated post]

The reason I posted that claim is that folding paper only occupies my hands. My brain lies idle. Since I can't stop myself from thinking and I'm a pessimist at heart, I NEED topics to think about. Standing around all day thinking of boobs might not have been the healthiest of things, but it did distract my brain for a while. (I won't even get into that last topic).

What else... Oh, right. I work only four hours a day so far. When I start working eight hours a day, I will have to give up eating dinner. Yeah, it's a shame that the only NON-cleaning work is in Eslöv.. I'll end this post the way I usually end posts about my current situation:

Thank goodness I went to the university for nine years!