Love in times of flexible work

Read the first thousand words of the story

Aldo at work mounted the fifth blade of the Sradicator razor. The cut-throat competition in the industry had gradually pushed single-blade razors into archaeological museums, double-blade razors into industrial design retrospectives and triple-blade razors to gather dust next to flippers, masks and snorkels in summer-only shops in seaside resorts. The still fresh dominance of the four-blades had been broken by the Sradicator, which had become the master of the market, reaching five.
The Sradicator was a Dalai Lame product. Aldo’s contract with Dalai was one of coordinated and continuous collaboration. This made him a cococò worker who, thanks to his contract, could confront himself with the reality of the company and acquire a professionalism that would ensure him the possibility of a successful placement in the labour market at the end of his contract. The Head of Personnel had told him this during the job interview.
Stefi from work answered the phone whatever they asked. Depending on the contracts obtained, the company that employed her instructed Stefi to take orders for an electrostimulator or bookings for taxis in Antananarivo or whatever. Although she was employed by the company whose business it was to have the telephone answered, Stefi did not work for the company that employed her because the company itself, before employing her, telephoned another company that answered the phone and said yes we have it or no we don’t have it to companies like the one where Stefi then went to answer the phone and this was because the company that said yes or no had the business of having people like Stefi available to be employed by the companies who phoned to find out if it was yes or no for the time that these companies needed people like Stefi who were waiting for a call to say yes to the company so they could say yes we have it. And if you haven’t understood a thing about all this, the fault is certainly not with the writer of this story. The fact is that that “acca” made Stefi a coqucà worker, a collaborator when it happened.
When he wasn’t working, Aldo occasionally watched TV. More than anyone else, a prize show amused him. The contestant who told the biggest joke without bursting out laughing won. Once he had even considered applying to participate but, by chance, he learned that the Chief of Personnel had done so too. Aware that he could not compete, Aldo gave up.
Stefi’s parents were retired and always a little worried about their daughter whom they saw leaving at different times every week, if she went out. Stefi had tried to explain that the calls for electrostimulators came when there were TV infomercials on television while the calls for taxis in Madagascar were concentrated around the arrivals and departures of international flights. For his parents, however, this remained difficult to understand. Stefi often read a question in her father’s eyes, which was then the same one she was asking herself. So she would sometimes respond to that look by saying softly: “It’s a job, sure.”
Aldo considered himself lucky. Already on twelve occasions, each time full of anxiety, he had gone to pick up his last pay slip, but each time, the Personnel Manager had first given him the slip, then looked him straight in the eye to finally tell him: “Don’t worry, re-hired. Stefi, on the other hand, had already been called on twelve occasions by the Human Resource Manager of the call centre who, after talking to her for fifteen minutes, had told her: “To sum up, you are fired.”
Aldo on his fourteenth six-month contract and Stefi rented for five weeks went to work on the same train. At first they didn’t even notice each other, then it hit them, the train line was interrupted for repair work and for a few days the commuters had to use the substitute car connection. On the bus they were crammed in like sardines, what’s more, without finding the free newspaper on the seats. As sometimes happens, however, that difficult situation also had some positive aspects. One of these was Aldo and Stefi who, standing side by side and without a magazine, found themselves exchanging glances, increasingly less uncertain smiles and increasingly more affectionate words. To make a long story short, a new love was born.
At this point the situation was as follows: Stefi was wavering between diso and occupation while Aldo, on his fourteenth semester of work and what’s more consecutive, allowed himself the luxury of being optimistic. However, to the question that was secretly circulating among the production staff at Dalai, a question about who had enough cheek to use the five blades of the Sradicator without also shaving their pectorals (i.e. how much of a market was there for that mega-shaver?), Aldo replied that the sales so far spoke for themselves but that the most important fact, in the end, was another: a six-blade razor had no room. This would have prevented him and his colleagues from having the same fate as the workers who had toiled for competitor companies, gradually hired on permanent, part-time, fixed-term and two-year training contracts. Each new blade had corresponded to a type of contract, and today you could see them together, razors and workers: the retired permanent employees in archaeological museums, the former part-timers in industrial design retrospectives and the veterans of fixed-term contracts dusting themselves next to fins, masks and snorkels in the shops open only in summer in seaside resorts. Those hired on training contracts stood next to the big boxes with quadrilamas that no one used any more. Someone had broken the boxes to make signs with the words FACTORY OCCUPIED on them. Someone else had broken up the boxes to make signs with WE ARE NOT written on them.