.....But Still Not Happy!

Claudia's complaints about the work were the same as before. One that endures to this day is: "my English is crap." To which the obvious and correct reply is "Oh, come on, your English is perfect" to which the follow-on is "But so-and-so has only been her two days and her English is much better than mine." Well, 'so-and-so' would be just about anyone non-English speaking and she was never correct with that statement. It would be based on a word or phrase that the other person had used that she did not use and it would make her think that the other party had a better vocabulary or grasp of the colloquial. It was infuriating. Early on I had got her to write down every word that she did not understand completely and once she had a list of probably a couple of hundred words and phrases, I sat down and went through them with her giving her examples in the correct context. Probably a full third of those words I had too look up myself because they were words that you would only encounter a couple of times a year unless your reading tastes were very high-brow. Words that you might ignore when reading a book because you got the general idea and were too lazy to get a dictionary. It was an excellent exercise that I really enjoyed because I was learning something too. I felt that if Claudia could use even half the list in confidence, her English would be way ahead of the average English speaker's. Alas, her motivation and interest quickly headed south and that was the end of it. I just had to put up with five years of the same whine on a weekly basis.

The other thing, and this I could understand better, was about where others were with their lives and careers. I had grown used to being older than my peers, I knew that I had sacrificed a career for an interesting life and I never had the option of getting the level of education that I could have attained had I grown up in a country with free terciery education or if I had wealthy, indulgent parents. I accepted what came with all that. Claudia, on the other hand, had great difficulty with it all. It hurt and upset her to see people her age with a career that had already taken them a good few steps up the ladder. She felt inferior when she looked at younger women in business suits dealing confidently with clients and initiatives. She felt she had studied something silly with no thought for it's future application in a structured career. That last one may be true, but it was something she would just have to accept or grab a hold of and build on. She couldn't. While at work she could maintain a wonderful work attitude and be a dream employee, inside her heart was torn and her spirit wretched - because there were people out there who were doing better. All of this went far beyond normal moans and complaints about work. I knew that then, but I consoled myself and her with the same crap your Gran would come up with. "You'll be fine. Something better will come up someday, you just have to keep plugging away." Bollocks, really. Most of us end up having to accept what we have or at the very least we lower our expectations in life.

XYZ Recruitment had a Christmas party at the end of 2003 that Claudia attended with me in tow. It was great to see how well she integrated in a large office environment. Everyone spoke to us excitedly and I got the impression that Claudia had, in the course of a few short weeks, managed to win over everyone in a special way. When people come over and introduce their partner and the conversation goes: "Oh, I have been dying to meet you. So-and-so has told me so much about you and what you have been doing. " or " So-and-so keeps telling me about this wonderful German girl who keeps everyone on their toes, so nice to finally meet you." It was so gratifying to hear and for a short time even Claudia could lap it up, But it would not last. Before the end of the evening she had already complained that she was just a silly receptionist and that all she had to do was smile to visitors and transfer calls and that brought on the tears of misery and frustration at herself again. The evening, fantastic though it was, couldn't end without her pissing on the cake, so to speak. Her friends from that place are still writing and telling her gossip, jokes and how much they miss her, but she can't bring herself to reply. It just becomes another burnt bridge.