my berlin st*ry - part I

Up until now, you could be forgiven for thinking I was living a carefree existence in Berlin, happily unemployed and drinking heavily at every given opportunity. But you'd only be half right. Somehow, I have managed to omit my employment situation from this here blog - most probably due to a lack of accompanying photos.

Aaaaanyway, I have been working, and one of the 'jobs' I've had thus far was an 'internship' at a big touristy bookshop called Berlin St*ry. (There will lots of asterixes throughout this post, so that my ex-boss doesn't discover my blog during his daily google vanity search.)

My first impressions of the place were all good. I was delighted at the prospect of work (it was my first gig) and thought this big, touristy bookshop seemed like a friendly workplace. I would be speaking German to the customers and my co-workers so my language skills should improve, plus I would be receiving regular pay, so I knew that I'd be able to cover my rent etc. I convinced myself to overlook the fact that it was 40 hours a week, with no proper weekends and that I was being paid a pittance (approx. 3.5 euros / AUD$5.80 per hour). It was an 'internship' after all, not a job, so the fact that I was getting money at all was apparently a bonus.

However this glossy sheen was soon stripped away to reveal a rusty, hypocritical workplace, run on exploitation and manipulation. My ex-boss (who shall be referred to as 'Big W') had somehow fostered an atmosphere of blind loyalty amongst the shop staff ('We're all part of the Berlin St*ry family') in an attempt to compensate for the below-the-poverty-line pay rates, lack of proper breaks, lack of proper weekends and the filthy condition of the shop.

(No professional cleaners were ever employed and the carpet was never vacumed, so that the books and souvenirs were constantly caked in a layer of dust and the air was stale and gross. After tidying the books, all moisture was inevitably stripped from one's hands, leaving staff with chalky fingers and hang-nails. Nice.)

This uber-team-mentality was also employed to compel staff to give 110% of their time and emotional labour, which most unquestioningly did. Staff lateness was also strictly controlled, to the extent that Big W would sit at home watching the shop's webcam, to monitor staff arrival. I had been late a few times, and on one occasion after a late night work meeting at Big W's house (see part II), I arrived 5 minutes late the following morning and was scolded by a co-worker. She told me that Big W had sent her an email asking whether I'd been on time. He must have sent it after I'd left the previous night! She was pissed off with me, because now she was going to have to lie to him and write that I'd been on time. And I thought the Wall had fallen in '89...



Above: The smiling face of hypocrisy, Big W (AKA 'Greylocks').

The other ridiculously exploitative nugget in this tale (beyond being over-worked and under-paid in the bookshop) was the Berlin travel guide that Big W wanted me to write. Ooohh goodie! I get to write a book! Extra money, prestige, future-employability - these were all things that crossed my mind.

However, my enthusiasm was gradually dampened, and eventually sodden, as I discovered the conditions under which I was to 'write' 'my' book. Big W mislead me in order to get me onboard this crazy project but it was soon revealed that I was just compiling the guide. Moreover, Big W's definition of 'compile' equated to 'commit borderline plagarism in order to produce a 'new' book as quickly and cheaply as possible'. Oh yes, I was to pepper in my own personal anecdotes throughout, but pretty much everything else was to be 'sourced' from other guides, or translated directly from a guide he'd written in German some years earlier.

But wait. There's more.

Initially he suggested I write the book in my free time, because, you know, "it's not really that much work". Oohh no, of course not! Write a travel guide? Piece of cake. I'll drop it in your pigeonhole on Monday, sir. Oh and don't bother paying me for my overtime, I simply love Berlin St*ry!

So I made it pretty darn clear that I refused to write it in my freetime: "No sir, I will not write it in my free time." Clear, non?
"Oh ok, I will give you a few extra free days in which to write it," Big W replied.

Well I did get a couple of extra days, but this was only time enough to sketch out a plan for the book. Call me crazy, but to me, writing a freaking book is no small task. So the extra free days dried up, but I still had Big W asking me, "how's the book going?". To which I would reply,"it's not."

Big W seemed baffled as to my requests for time and money to produce this wonderful book, as he clearly thought books were usually produced by badly paid interns, in their free time, for no extra money. What a surprise for him, when I sat him down and told him I refused to 'compile' anything unless my working conditions were met.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I was dumped from the project. He'd asked a lacky in his 'publishing house' (ahem) to write the book in German, after which he'd get a professional translator to translate it into English. The reasons he gave me? Apparently I don't know enough about Berlin to translate the book and I don't know how translators should be paid. Whaaa???

No matter. By this stage I'd had a gutful of the whole shamozzle and was happy to handball it to whichever nut was happy to work for a pittance.

Stay tuned for part II. Oh yes. There's more.

der tisch geht unter : wg party

Der Tisch geht unter (the table goes under) was the somewhat confusing (yet intriguing) title of our WG party. We threw this party about 3 weeks ago; part belated house-warming for Rolf, Marie and myself, part uni-break boozefest.

My room (pictured above) was the main part-ay room, as it's the largest and contained the 'DJ booth' and the 'dancefloor'. Said booth was manned for most of the night by the infamous DJ Andy C (of Melbourne Uni Concrete Lawns fame), who overcame the technological nightmare of multiple ipods, data overload, a sluggish laptop and an overheating amplifier. Despite his many hours of pre- and during-party IT labour, the system had a mini crash and we were only able to play songs from Marie's ipod. This sufficed for the most part, although things got tricky when I was DJing and had to deal with the punters' (frequently colloquial) requests, when I myself had no idea what the playlist contained. The phrase, "No, I don't have any traditional German drinking songs" was oft repeated.

Below: DJ Andy C still smiling despite having spent hours trying to create a monster playlist mere hours before the first guests arrived...


Below: Samuel briefly takes the reigns, Andrew continues his role as IT technician, and a deckpest crouches, troll-like, examining the playlist.


Technology aside, I think everyone had a pretty rocking time. I think we had somewhere between 100 and 200 guests throughout the night (and early morn). My room unfortunately bore the brunt of muddy shoes and disrespectful, drunk, friends-of-friends, and the sound of smashing glass was disconcertingly frequent. But the whole place had this great club-like atmosphere. At times I kind of forgot it was my room, what with the sheer number of unfamiliar people bopping around, although I did feel the occasional stomach pang of Host-Angst when a caught glimpses of people stomping their boots on my sofa (Rick James style).

Below: Approx. 3 billion people in my room. Cool!


Below: Samuel (still relatively sober at this point) and Fran (with her new fringe!).












Below: Marie (with her colleague from the gallery) and me (fending off a deckpest who insisted on scrolling through EVERY song on Marie's ipod, before dismissing the playlist wholesale).












In true Berlin style, the party powered on until daybreak. By about 5am, most of my friends had left and I was starting to run out of steam - but there was still a considerable drunken contingent intent on bellowing ACDC songs to the tune of someone strangling Samuel's acoustic guitar. Their growling and screaming was highly entertaining and Andrew captured some of the hilarious audio on his camera. However, they were in my room, and didn't end up leaving until 6:30am... Ohhhh noooooo.

Some people say the subsequent clean-up could be classified as 'extensive'. And they'd be right. Or would they? The answer: Yes.