Whenever I’ve been abroad I’ve always liked to watch what the locals were doing, their trends and how they went about their workdays. It always seemed to me as if the Spanish retail girl in Barcelona carried on with her work much differently than the ones I’d seen in Miami, Los Angeles or even St. Louis. It always felt as though as a whole the people were working to pay off different things or like everyone was saving for a big two-year backpacking excursion somewhere. Totally unrealistic, right, but I’m sure there is some truth in the statement. I mean, I bet they aren’t paying back hordes of credit card debit or Sallie Mae student loans. Let me not focus on retail alone though, I feel this way about many professions abroad. People just seem to carry on so differently and really where I’m trying to go with my musings is to this NPR piece on dumping the trash in Paris.
To be more precise, the unemployment rate is higher than normal and with a garbage collector’s position, citizens can receive security, full benefits, a pension and a relatively nice paycheck from the government job. There are so many people applying now that the city has even instituted a written-exam. So I guess anyone dreaming of moving to Paris without a plan or without any real knowledge of what the employment trends may be, might want to take a listen to the piece. Sure – Paris is glamorous and all, but there is something about working with the public’s trash that doesn’t thrill me so much.