Niamh Lynch moved from Dublin to Madrid to begin her career as a translator. Top dog in the office Well, most employees of the financial world returned to the office this week. I expected them to be refreshed after their summer holidays and full of resolve to work more efficiently, prompting them to do things like establishing bilateral accords with Nicaragua, inevitably meaning more work for me, but no: once again I have spent my working week checking FaceBook and playing ‘who's got the tea towel?’ with the office dog.
We're quite lucky to have an office dog, actually. She is a lovely black Labrador who arrived as a tiny puppy and is growing more enormous every day. She is always up for a game or a cuddle when it gets quiet, and is relatively well-behaved, at least in ways I think are important, like not widdling on my handbag or eating important translations. I do feel sorry for the one or two of my co-workers that I know are afraid of dogs, and I am not sure if anyone is allergic to her, but as she belongs to the owner of the company I can't see anyone complaining. That's another benefit of having your own business, not to mention of living in Spain. As the boss, you can bring just about anything along with you to work and not many are going to grumble. As for living in Spain, I am sure that in other countries having a dog in the office would be against about fifty health and safety regulations, but in Spain these types of rules are seen merely as suggestions as to how work might be carried out in an ideal world. They are obviously regarded as something completely irrelevant to ‘real men's’ work, as evidenced by the thousands of builders that plunge to their death from scaffolding and get crushed under errant bulldozers every year. Dangerous deskJoking aside, workplace accidents are a real problem in Spain. Almost every day, two or three horrible accidents grace the evening news (complete with lurid pictures of what remains of Pedro – the Spanish news is more graphic than Irish people are used to). My mum is a facilities manager and, when she worked for a large company, spent 90% of each day making sure the whole place complied with EU safety regulations, as well as dealing with it when they didn't. My favourite anecdote was when she received a complaint from a senior manager - the corners on a desk in his office were ‘dangerously pointy’. The corners. Pointy. And this man got to management level! I suggested that he could go on some desensitisation training – walking blindfolded around a room with lots of desks, very close together, but my mum didn't take my suggestion up. Obviously that story illustrates an extreme, but at least the concept of health and safety is alive and kicking (maybe even too much) in some parts of the world. Call the policeWhile I'll admit that danger in the workplace obviously tends to affect builders and manual labourers rather than translators, I am still concerned on behalf of all those workers. It is slightly baffling, as Spain is surely subject to the same EU. laws as Ireland, but I suspect undocumented workers (who aren't willing to risk their jobs by complaining if they don't get a hard hat) and a macho attitude (nobody wants to be the nancy who actually asks for a hard hat) has quite a lot to do with it. In my old work, myself and the girl who worked in the same room could see builders working on the scaffolding seven storeys up across the road. The workers would attach their hard hats to their trousers instead of putting them on their head, and carefully unhook their safety ropes once they had reached the open platform that served as the seventh ‘floor’. One day, unable to take it any more, my colleague rang the police. The policeman thanked her for her concern and said that if one of the men fell off the top of the building they might call her back to get a statement..... In Ireland, one of the workers would have called the police weeks ago to complain about the shocking danger of his job, and while he had the phone book out, also called his union representative, lawyer and the local newspaper. All I know is that I have to take extra care in work. With all those heavy dictionaries and that big stapler, you never know what might happen... Read Niamh's previous blogs If you would like to become a Prospects blogger and you left uni either this year or in 2006, please make contact. |
