Job Center Epic

So I had my second and as it turns out final session at the Job Centre in Wiesbaden. At the appointed time, I sat waiting outside my advisor’s office. One of her colleagues came past and asked who I was waiting for? When I answered she said:”Oh you must knock on the door, she is probably waiting for you already”. And as it turns my lady was waiting for me. On my previous visit, the advisor had come out of her office and invited me in. The point is: how was I supposed to know to knock on the door when my previous experience had been the exact opposite. This raises two points to consider. Often our past experience (the Past) leads us to draw the wrong conclusion about what course of action to take in a new situation (the Present). Plus, people very often expect us to interpret a situation in the same way they do. The “Theys” and “Thems” (the Critics) of the world are utterly amazed that anyone could act even think of acting in such a strange way (differently to the way they would). This is pretty common when people find themselves in a different culture to the one they are used to. I will provide another example from my own intercultural travels.

In 2010 I moved to the England after living in Germany for about eight years. In that time I had lived in Munich (München), Berlin and Nuremberg (Nürnberg). In Germany, if you have a bus pass (monthly ticket) you simply show it to the diver as you walk past. When I tried to do this in England, the driver became extremely upset. He thought I was not waiting my turn in the queue. He wanted to check my bus pass, perhaps because UK bus passes have photographs, while the German ones generally do not. Oh the fun of cultural differences.

 

I must however return to my Job Center Epic. Once again my advisor was extremely friendly. She actively engaged with whatever I told or showed her, offered additional suggestions about where I could look for job opportunities. I did find it strange that she did not take ask to see the application she had suggested I make. Perhaps a brief perusal of the covering letter would have been in order.  Perhaps she did not ask to see it because I had mentioned I did not really consider myself suitable for the position. I am not sure. She repeated some of the ideas that had been mentioned in our previous meeting. I felt that the meeting began to run out of stream, with me doing most of the talking about my ideas. No doubt helped by my mentioning that I was considering further study. At about 9.55 am there was a knock on the door. The next appointment was there and this person clearly knew to knock on the door. So my meeting and consultation drew to an end without me being offered anything tangible (a course or some sort of training) by the job centre. My advisor did promise to send me any further insights she might have by email. To which I responded by giving her my blog address. Good Morning Frau. X. if you are reading this.

I had sought out the Job Center hoping to receive some sort of training to make myself more marketable in the German Labour Market. But I think my problem is that I do not receive any unemployment benefits – so cost nothing – and why then should the Job Center finance any additional training for me – which would cost something. I might be wrong and am clearly biased. Perhaps my evidence is only anecdotal, but I feel that if I was actually costing the Job Center money; they may have been prepared to pay for my skills to be updated and so made more directly relevant to the German job market. Then again perhaps not, but this is the truth about how I feel. This probably means that I will still not appear in the unemployment statistics – and so remain invisible – and that I find rather annoying. I do not even have a customer number. So in one way going to the Job Center was not terribly useful, but I have at least investigated it as an option. I have realised that I will have to find my own ways of generating income in Germany. And strangely enough I find this quite motivating; to try and find my own solutions. This then is my challenge and to be honest I did not have high hopes before I visited the Job Center. It was an avenue that needed to be investigated and so I can now tick it off the list of options.