Billy

It was one of my first days in McDonald’s. I hate the job, I hate the whole concept of it, and I find everything that I do, hear, learn or earn there, completely uninteresting.

The worst part of it is that I have to feel lucky and grateful that I got that job in the first place.

I came to Austria some months ago without speaking a word of German. I guess this makes a big difference in a country where, not all, but quite a lot of people dislike immigrants, especially those clearly immigrant-looking who don’t speak the language. And, as the intrepid reader may have guessed already, that’s precisely my case.

It has never been better said that it makes a Hell of a difference.

As an example. In the past elections, one could walk in the streets and read slogans of one of the politic parties that read:

“Daham statt Islam” (at home instead of Islam) or

“Deutsch statt ‘nix verstehn‘” (German instead of “no understand“)

Not that I am Islamic or anything, but… I guess this atmosphere of mainly not shared but widely “tolerated” intolerance is what makes one feel so bad whenever you walk in a park, or enter in a shop, or greet a neighbour, and what you get is someone’s face looking at you with an open expression of disgust.

I am not a person who gets aggressive or rude myself. But day after day after day, it just makes me feel terribly low and sad.

The positive side of it is that as a consequence of this daily routine of people disliking you inconditionally, usually, whenever I cross with another immigrant-looking person, we both can’t help but getting a shy smile with the implicit message of “it also kills you inside, right? Try not to let it affect you, it is the same for all of us in here.”

~ by toxina on November 6, 2006.