c14ism.com

Enter your target country:
How c14ism redefines Schultz’s 5-flag system.
How to Google hack a foreign work visa.
How to enter any foreign country.
The expatriate unemployment problem (pt.1)

Obtain employment: 
Legal issues encountered during foreign employment. (pt.1)
How to socially engineer your colleagues (pt. 1)
How to socially engineer your colleagues (pt. 2)
How to socially engineer your colleagues (pt. 3)
How mind control affects who gets hired.
How to tell if Human Resources is lying to you. (pt. 1)
How to use metaphors during the job interview.
The logical fallacy of false dilemma.

Further reading:
Purchase our complete manual.

Stages of emotional progression

There are no grounds for a relationship without at least some level of emotional connection, and the more similar the two people are, the more they are able to connect.  Unfortunately, you will probably not have the same nationalities, cultures, and living situations, which are three prevalent factors, and it will not be until after you have the job that you’ll have frequent enough contact to actually begin building a relationship with them, which is another prevalent factor, so your job will be to find, create, frame, and reframe facts, experiences, and situations to create similarities and then exploit them.  What you will most likely have in common is the expatriate experience of living abroad, so be sure to ask the interviewer if s/he has ever lived/worked internationally.

Provided you successfully socially engineer your employer using language patterning and hypnosis techniques and are able to establish at least a basic emotional connection, emotional progression typically occurs in three stages: 

1. Different: The employer sees you as different (nationality, gender, religion, way of thinking, etc.)  There is no real emotional connection, and s/he is unwilling in helping you.
2. Universal: The employer sees you as similar, however insofar as only sharing the commonalities inherent in everyone. There is a basic emotional connection, and s/he may be willing to help you provided s/he feels you are not the root of your own problems.
3. Alike:  The employer sees you as similar, and may be eager to help you even if there is no reward in doing so.

Word of Caution: 

Emotions depend on the situation and the individual person. And some emotions may not be socially acceptable.  Conversely, because the workplace isn’t a place where people typically show their emotions, if the employee feels s/he can trust you, and if you create the opportunity by evoking sympathy through emotional contagion, you may be just the outlet they need to vent about a stressful project, a demanding boss, or a lazy colleague.  Once they have vented, you have a friend and an ally.  Because the interview process is generally a formal and professional situation, the use and manipulation of emotion will depend on the individual employer.

There is a fine line between the benefits of empathy, sympathy, and compassion, and the disadvantage of pity.  Controlling how people view you has everything to do with mastering and using language patterning, social engineering, and perception modification techniques to your advantage.

Plan B to the emotional progression

If emotionally manipulating your colleagues is ineffective or not possible, and you cannot progress past the emotional progression stage where the employer is willing to help you, then give him/her a reason to.  In this case, the employer may be viewing your candidature with a “what’s in it for me” mentality.

So discover the employer’s emotional weakness, bias, emotional attachment towards a particular cause or belief, or even against a particular cause or belief that leaves him/her vulnerable to manipulation, exploit it, and sell yourself accordingly.  Negotiate with the employer an outcome that is mutually advantageous.

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There is no “I” in TEAM, unless you’re speaking French, Spanish, Portugese, or German…

Being a foreigner, living in a foreign country, speaking multiple languages, you will find no shortage of people who non-maliciously envy you - wish they could do what you’re doing and accomplished what you’ve accomplished.  

Your biggest threat will be defending yourself from malicious envy.  From your first day on the job, managers and co-workers may begin classifying themselves as either allies or enemies. 

Think about it, by overcoming all of the handicaps and barriers to working internationally and obtaining a job of equal rank to that of a national, you have by default established yourself as better, and more qualified, than him/her.  You beat the national at his/her own employment game.  You have stolen a job from the very people the country’s employment laws were established to protect. Of course you will have made some enemies.

Two common emotions you will encounter are jealousy and envy: 

• Jealousy Reaction to the threat of losing something/someone 
• Non-malicious envy: desiring to acquire or experience something that of someone possesses
• Malicious envy: wishing to deny someone else from acquiring or experiencing something. 

Not sure if you have the nerve to deal with jealous/envious colleagues? NEVER forget that as an expatriate your work visa depends on this job, and letting a saboteur cheat you out of your job is a guaranteed work permit rejection and a return flight back to your home country.

To protect yourself from potential saboteurs:

1. Anticipate and prepare.  You do not want to walk into work paranoid; however you cannot afford to naively believe that everyone will automatically love you. Refer to How to Google hack a foreign work visa for internet search tips to find information, or dirt should your threat push you that far, about anyone/anything.

2. Identify and assess threats.  Once you identify and turn the most influential threat (employee, boss, etc.  remember that just because the boss is in charge on paper doesn’t make him/her the most influencial), the other employees tend to sheepishly fall into line.  To win the most influencial person, determine:

• How influential are they?
• Can they be pacified?
• Can they be turned into an ally?
• Can you make them dependent upon you?
• Can they be blackmailed?
• Can they be eliminated?

For one necessary technique, refer to the excerpt How to tell if Human Resources is lying to you (pt. 1).

3. Build trust. Regardless of what upper management and the HR department who hired you thought about you, to the people you are working with you are an outsider before you are an insider.

4. Adapt and conform. If you do not present yourself as a threat to their power, status, or control, originally apprehensive co-workers should eventually concede or you’ll at least be able to maintain a productive working business relationship.  

5. Form coalitions. Coalitions are alliances made by individuals or groups who have common purposes, causes, beliefs, and/or backgrounds.  The more people you have on your side, the safer you are.

6. Make the threat dependent upon you. The deeper you integrate yourself into the company, the team, or a coalition, the less damage a saboteur can do to you.

If, despite your attempts to befriend the threat, you have found a true enemy, then the more ‘incriminating evidence’ you have against him/her, the more accommodating they will have to be to you.

There is no “I” in TEAM, unless you’re speaking French, Spanish, Portugese, or German…

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The exchanging of information and influencing of people through dialogue, debate, instruction, reasoning, etc is a common practice in everyday life – your parents, schoolteachers, counselors, pastors, and the movies you see in the cinema are examples of social engineering at work.  However, the more publicized dark side of social engineering is a collection of techniques employed to manipulate people into performing actions or divulging confidential information through use of trickery, persuasion, threats, deceit, and other culturally recognized unethically questionable methods.

A closely related and often dependent skill is the art of influence – the ability to manipulate or change the thoughts, actions, and behavior of others.  Influence manifests itself in many forms – innocently through the use of dialogue, debate, and human contact, questionably through the use of peer pressure and the methods outlined in our manual, or maliciously through the use of harassment, implied or outright threats.

The key to successful social engineering

Ultimately, your success as a job hunter relies on your ability to assess, exploit, and control humanity’s greatest attribute and weakness – emotion.

The key to getting the outcome you want depends on how you structure your communication and evoke emotion.  Emotion can be one of your greatest allies, enemies, or your enemies’ greatest weakness.  With a basic understanding of psychology, heuristics, language patterning, and hypnosis tactics, you can guide the employer’s reasoning and emotional direction, thus controlling him/her.

Exploitable weakness of emotions - Beliefs

Anyone with a strong bias or emotional attachment towards a particular cause or belief, or even against a particular cause or belief inevitably leaves him/herself vulnerable to manipulation.  This is because, whether they are aware of it or not, they viewing the world with a limited and subjective point of view.  By using a well crafted and reframed argument and presentation, you can effectively gain the employer’s confidence, influence his/her emotions, and convince him/her that hiring you will help further the employer’s cause, organization, or interests and provide some other benefit important to the employer.

Likewise, you can build rapport and identify and associate yourself with the employer’s cause, or you can identify and associate your competitors with the strong negative feelings. 

Circumstantial Justification

Similar to exploiting beliefs, you can argue and convince the employer that a particular idea, principal, law, company policy, heuristic, etc does not apply ‘in your circumstance.’  Additionally, you could appeal to the employer’s emotions.  For example, if you discover that HR employee interviewing you and the manager of the department you are applying to work for do not get along well, you could exploit the HR employee’s bitterness and spite to convince him/her that hiring you would be a way of getting even with the manager.

 Example:

You: “Do you know the name of the manager(s) I will be working with?”

(This sentence includes the presupposition that you already have the job. Additionally, this question is a remembering question, therefore can be used as a truth assessment technique.  Furthermore, you can research the manager’s names to find further information which will help you prepare for interview #2.)

Interviewer:   “You will be working with Mrs. X and Mr. Y.”

(Because you were paying attention to the interviewer’s non-verbal communication, you catch an undertone of bitterness and spite when the interviewer refers to Mr. Y, suggesting that perhaps the interviewer and Mr. Y do not currently have a good working relationship.)

You:   “How ironic.  A company I used to work with had a manager named Mr. X.  He wasn’t the nicest person I ever worked with, and sometimes the way he treated some of our clients made them purposefully do things just to spite him.”

 Coercion

This involves compelling the employer to reluctantly do something.  To do this you must first establish yourself as trustworthy so that the employer lets his/her guard down, thus allowing you access to the sensitive information that you need.  Law enforcement agencies and undercover police officers employ this tactic.

After employment this may involve obtaining incriminating evidence in case your employer threatens you if you do not pay the employer back for your visa, etc.  This is discussed in more detail under the section legal issues encountered during employment (pt.1).

This tactic is much more difficult to use during the interview process because interviews tend to be very formal and you are the center of attention, not the interviewer.  However during your pre-interview information gathering you may uncover some useful information about the interviewer or employer or during the interview you may discover a weakness, such as pride or arrogance, or catching the interviewer in a lie during contract negotiation thanks to truth assessment.

Conversion

A more advanced form of coercion, converting an employer or employee involves covertly changing an individual’s morals, integrity, and or beliefs over time by orchestrating a slow progression from the employer’s present belief to the employer’s desired belief.  The change is so subtle, and implemented over such a long period of time, that your deliberate involvement and end goal is never exposed.

While unlikely to be employable during the job interview process, this tactic, combined with the tactics outlined under the international job search method and social-proofing and perception modification sections of the c14ism manual are most useful when you first arrive in the target country and are establishing and building your social circle(s), and after employment.

Emotions

Thanks to your resume and cover letter, the employer already has an overall positive perception of you to build upon.  Thanks to the information gleaned during your pre-interview intelligence gathering, you have a general idea of what the company stands for and the ‘quality’ of people it hires.  Now, your job is to not only demonstrate that you are what the company looks for in an ‘quality’ employee, but also what the individual interviewer looks for in a ‘quality’ person.  This is accomplished through controlling emotions.

To manipulate emotions, you must first develop a clear picture of what the employer believes and considers important.  To do this you must be very good at reading and assessing people, and then selective in the information you presentation. 

For example:  Manager #1 may accept your being late for a meeting because you forgot to set your alarm clock, or because you failed to take into account daylight-savings time.  Manager #2 with his/her “What have you done for me lately” approach to managing, however, despite your impeccable performance on the job and all of the additional job responsibilities you have done to help him/her out in a bind, would consider this enough to accuse you of being unprofessional and threaten to punish you if it ever happens again. 

Therefore, your excuse with the irrational manager #2 must be differently presented and cater to his/her emotions and reasoning, such as displacing the blame or using the cold reading tactic called an unverifiable fact.

 “My apologies for being late. I got held up in the metro.  Apparently there was accident at one of the stations.”

The human mind (conscious and unconscious), philosophies, morals, needs, and desires are all intertwined and controlled by emotions.  From day one, society associates positive feelings and emotions and rewards with ‘good’ actions, morals and desires, and negative feelings and emotions and consequences with ‘bad’ actions, morals and desires.  Ultimately, these emotion à action associations form an individual’s philosophy.  Thus, a change in emotion ultimately influences an individual’s philosophy. So to understand how to socially engineer a person, you must understand the key emotions you need to manipulate.

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You’re sitting in your meeting for your work permit renewal with the Foreign Office of Immigration (F.O.I.), and your renewal is rejected.  

Why? Because due to seasonal market fluctuation beyond your control, the number of clients with your company dropped, resulting in your salary inconveniently dipping below the minimum monthly requirement for the two months preceding your work permit interview.  

As a result, your case worker informs you that you’re no longer legal to live and work in the country and must either return home immediately or risk being arrested, fined, and forever banned from entering the country.

Your problem seems pretty black and white. What are you going to do?

The fallacy.

The false dilemma logical fallacy escalates the decision making process into a good versus bad, us verses them, take it or leave it situation.  The argument is designed to trap you by narrowing your point of view into choosing between options X and Y, simultaneously disqualifying all other options.

Many expatriates, be it due to a (perceived) lack of sources, demotivation, closed-mindedness, or fear, unwittingly make life-changing decisions confined by this fallacy, missing opportunities to improve their situation, without realizing that other options may be right within reach.  

As fallicious as the false dilemma is, it is nevertheless the crucial part of the recruiting process since, as an unemployed expatriate selling your candidature to an employer, you’re attempting to place human resources into this position with the hopes that s/he will make the choice in your favor.  To accomplish this is all about timing, and forcing human resources into this position too early (before ‘all other options’ have been successfully disqualified or argued away) will cost you the job, and subsequently a work permit.

This is why as an expatriate you must learn to think outside of the box, regardless of the situation presented to you.  Behind every rule is an exception.  For every law there is a loophole.

How to create a false dilemma.

“The pitchman must make you applaud and take out your money. He must be able to execute what in pitchman’s parlance is called “the turn”—the perilous, crucial moment where he goes from entertainer to businessman.”  

- The Pitchman by Malcolm Gladwell.

Whether directly stated or implied, the conditional either…or… always appears with this reasoning. 

Examples:

“You must either return home immediately or risk being arrested, fined, and forever banned from entering the country.”

“(Either) Sign this form acknowledging the customer’s complaint was your fault. (or else…)”

Logical arguments are based on the structure:

Premise. Premise. Premise… Therefore, conclusion.

As an unemployed expatriate, your ultimate goal is to procure a working contract which leads to the work permit by placing human resources into an “either you hire me or you don’t” position, a good job candidate, however, doesn’t begin by launching into an unwarranted false dilemma without first establishing sufficient premises.  Instead structure your argument (your arrangement of premises) in such a way that by the time you’re asked the “what is your work visa status” question, the interviewer has readily accepted the false dilemma you presented to him/her. You’re hired.

Premises should be strategically scattered throughout your cover letter and curriculum vitae, premises that will entice human resources to call you for an interview, if for no other reason than to hear a little more of what you have to say.

To learn how to use psychological warfare to construct and argue premises, refer to our manual The Controversial Manual to Living Internationally.

How to defend yourself against a false dilemma:

“(Either) Drive the speed limit or you will get a ticket.” Some false dilemmas you don’t really have a choice in unless you are willing to suffer the consequence.

“You can either work the next five saturdays or the managers at this company will make life really difficult for you.” Some false dilemmas you could argue, but choose to accept to make live easier for you.

For all the rest, there are ways of avoiding, or at least minimizing, their effects:

1. Anticipate. Forseeing a problem in advance is your greatest form of defense, because by knowing about it in advance you can adequately prepare for it.  

In the opening example a simple telephone call or visit to the F.O.I. website would have provided you with a list of all of the documents required to renew your work permit.  Knowing that the F.O.I. requires your last three paychecks, you’d have ample time to find a part-time job, obtain a letter from the company explaining the situation, and/or consult a lawyer to figure out how to avoid rejection, thus allowing you to form your defense long before you find yourself face-to-face with them.

2. Research. This goes hand-in-hand with anticipation. Research all problems and sides of the argument to make sure you’re not caught off guard. 

3. Learn. Rhetorical techniques, psychological warfare, communication techniques, all of which are covered in our articles, displayed in our true stories archive, and explained in our manual, are important in learning how to be more persuasive.

How to use a false dilemma as a weapon:

The better prepared  person almost always wins. As discussed in our article How mind control determines who gets hired, controlling the job interviewer’s decision making process involves capitalizing on weak points in the person’s argument.  Ignorance is definitely a weak point.  By steering the job interview onto topics the interview may be unfamiliar with, you can strategically narrow the interviewer’s P.O.V. Perhaps by the end of the job interview they my not give you the job, but the interviewer will be so impressed with how you handled yourself you should confidently expect a follow-up interview.

*If ever you are in question, consult legal counsel in the country you are living in.  A 45 minute conversation with a credible legal expert can change the course of your life.

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Personality, Intelligence, and culture

You may have a specific education, skill set, and job you are aiming for, however because you are a foreigner without a full-time working visa, your top priority is to obtain a full-time working visa.  This may mean having to accept a job that you dislike at a company you do not particularly care for in order to obtain it. 

Under these circumstances, not only do you have the difficult task of discerning the required personality factors for the individual job you are applying for, but you also have to discern the degree to which personality factors correlate to the individual job in terms of your target culture.  Solving this problem will involve:

• Having a thorough understanding of the desired personality factors for the sector of business you wish to work in.
• Thoroughly reading the job description of the job (the announcement itself and inbetween the lines) to understand exactly what the individual company is looking for in a candidate.
• Having a thorough understanding of the desired personality factors acceptable in your target country.

Personality factors and psychometric evaluators

Humans are complex and diverse, and for a company to require you to ‘define’ yourself in a cover letter and a CV, and then qualify/disqualify you based on that incomplete snapshot is unfair.  Therefore the job you are applying for should dictate which part of your personality you reveal to the Human Resource manager and the psychometric evaluator.  

The specific measurement used to evaluate you will depend largely on the individual psychologist’s educational background and training, his/her psychological preference, and the job you are being considered for.  Before taking any psychometric test, you will be contacted by the psychologist who will be administering the test to set up the test date.  If prompted, s/he will give you the name of his/her company, telephone number, and email address.  Armed with this information, conduct an intelligence gathering campaign against the testing company and its psychologist to understand his/her school of thought.  A correctly guided internet search can yield useful information such as the name of the university where the psychologist attended, any awards, certificates, and affiliations, any complaints made against the psychologist or its agency, or anything else that you can use to your advantage.

Determining your personality factors

Using the same or similar personality profiling techniques  The best way to determine effectively prepare yourself for your job hunt is to:

1. Take the Myers Briggs personality test and the Machiavelli personality test to get an idea of your dominate personality traits.
2. Determine the personality factors required for the job/company/country you want.

CAUTION:  As mentioned, being a foreigner trying to survive in a foreign country may require applying for and accepting jobs, or employment with companies you may not necessarily like.  On the other hand, you must know who you are, what your goals are, what you want out of the experience, and what you will not settle for.  It is one thing to be a single mother who has children to feed and bills to pay, regardless of whether she has the job of her dreams or not, but understand that forcing yourself to drudgingly do a job you do not like without having a defined reason or a long term objective for doing so will not only make you miserable, but your lack of enthusiasm and drive will show in your job, and considering the employer paid nearly 1000€ to sponsor your visa, you will most likely be fired.

If you find yourself in a situation where your options are not exactly what you enjoy doing or what you had in mind, ask yourself these questions:

1. What are the long term benefits of this opportunity?  Are they worth it?
2. Does this job/company ultimately move me closer to reaching my long term goal(s)?

If no, would this job/company put you in a better position to move you closer to reaching your goal(s)?  For example:

1. Upgrade your visa status so you can become eligible for your desired job.
2. Increase your salary so you can take advantage of the currency exchange rate and pay off your student loans and other debts in your home country quicker.
3. Provide you with more free time after work so you can focus on finding a better job, traveling, pursuing other hobbies and desires, etc.
4. Put you into contact with people who can help you that you never would have been in contact with.
5. Provide you with invaluable international working experience which will give you an advantage upon returning to your home country.
6. Enrich your work experience by working in complimentary business sectors.
7. Etc. 

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The ideal method of insertion is to convince a company in the target country to hire you or obtain a job in your home country, and then apply for a transfer to offices in your target country because in both of these options the company will handle all of the necessary costs to set you up in the country, making your insertion relatively stress-free. 

However, even after crafting your CV , if it doesn’t yet adequately demonstrate the qualifications to convince the company to come to you, then you will have to go to the company. 

There are several ways to do this, however the cheapest and most productive way is to become a student.

Be it continuing your higher education or just to study a foreign language, becoming a student simultaneously accomplishes multiple objectives:

1. Universities are happy to enroll you if you are willing to pay, making it among the easiest and simplest way to obtain a visa and a right to work.
2. A semester or two at a foreign university adds depth to your CV, making you more attractive to employers.
3. Total immersion is the best and quickest way to learn a foreign language, and speaking more than one language will make you more attractive to employers.
4. Potential employers will be more open to your candidature because you are already living in the country.
5. Potential employers will be more open to your candidature because you will have at least some education in the target company, which was one of the advantages that nationals had over you.
6. Upgrading from a student visa with part-time working papers to a full-time visa with working papers is significantly easier than going from no visa without right to work to a full-time visa with working papers.

Worst-case-scenario:  Even if you reach your pre-established cutoff date, your round trip plane ticket is about to expire, and haven’t found a job or have another justifiable reason to remain in the country, upon returning to your home company, your acquired foreign education and experience you will give you the upper hand over 90% of your competitors, and companies will be fighting each other to meet you. 

Organize your plans

Before you just jump on a plane, you have to have a plan.  Where there is no vision, you will perish.  Improper planning reduces your chances of survival and success drastically.

Establish a goal and timeframe

You have to decide why you are going over to the target country, and what you expect to accomplish there.

Likewise you have to decide how long you are going to allow yourself to become financially independent.  If you do not, then you risk:

• Losing focus of your goals
• Running out of financial resources
• Becoming trapped, stagnate, and/or depressed

Once you have decided how long you are going to stay, purchase a round trip plane ticket to correspond with your timeframe.  Round trip tickets can be valid for 6 months to a year, and provide you with an ejection plan if your money runs out before you have found a means of supporting yourself, or as a worst-case scenario. 

Buy a round trip ticket:

1. Is generally cheaper than buying two one-way tickets.
2. Will take the stress off of you while you are living in the target country because you won’t have to maintain a budget for a return ticket.
3. The date of return will be a deadline that continually keeps you motivated to find a job and keep sending out CVs.
4. If at your cutoff point you have not accomplished your goals, then you already have your return ticket home, so you won’t have imprudently put yourself in a position where you don’t have the money to leave or the means to remain.
5. If you do reach the cutoff date and are in a position where you are financially independent, then the return flight home is a sunken cost.  Or, more prudently, you coordinate your work vacation with the return ticket home and revel in your achievement.
6. Typically, return trip tickets have an expiration date of six months to one year.  This is a sufficient amount of time to live in your target country and look for work.

Important:  While enterprises accept CVs and hire year round, there are peak and low seasons.  In France, for example, peak seasons for recruitment are August-November and February-March.  The lowest time is during the summer months when everybody is on vacation.  Maximize your efforts by entering your target country just before peak recruitment seasons, that way when recruitment gets into full swing, you will fully ready for it and not have any unnecessary hindrances.

Take a leave of absence

Many companies offer a “leave of absence.”  If you are employed by a company who offers this, then instead of quitting, consider taking a 6 month to year long leave of absence.  If you achieve your goals in your target country and decide not to return, then simply contact your previous employer.  If worst case scenario, you return, you have a job waiting for you.

Organize your assets

Before moving internationally, ensure you have enough money to support yourself in a worst-case scenario.  To have an idea of how much you should save before you leave, consider the expenses for installing in your target country below:

Upfront expenses:                                     

• Administrative costs to obtain visa
• Minimum monthly stipend - before a country will grant you a visa, they require proof that you have the resources to support yourself while you are living there and will not become a burden on their system
• Tuition at school which provides working papers - before a country will grant you a visa, you must have a school/company/family apply for your visa
• Round trip plane ticket - generally round trip tickets cost much cheaper than two single trip tickets
•  Apartment - before a country will grant you a visa, you must show that you already have a place to live.   This may be a receipt for several weeks at a hotel, letter from a host family, contract from a landlord, etc.  Landlords generally require 2-3 months down payment up front
• Other           

Monthly expenses once installed in the target country:

• Administrative visa upkeep
• Doctor’s appointments
• Birth certificate and other important document translation
• Cost of living
• Rent
• Utilities
• Food
• Social life
• Laundry
• Public transportation
• Job hunting expenses
• Internet
• Printing
• Mailing supplies
• Cell phone so that employers can contact you
• Student loan and debt payments
• Other

Establish a foothold

After arriving in your target country, your #1 objective is to find a temporary job that will cover your cost of living and expenses.  Considering your student status, the quickest and easiest employment will be as a bartender, hotel security guard, English teacher, nanny, etc. This part-time job will probably not cover all of your expenses, but it will lessen the blow to your savings, allowing your to spend your money where it where be the most productive, and it can be put on your Curriculum Vitae showing employment in your target country. 

When choosing a part-time job, look for a job that will meet both your financial and your business networking needs. 

A job as overnight hotel receptionist will meet your financial needs and you can probably use your time to send CVs and do job searching, but you will not be able to meet people and begin networking. Also, if the employer notices you sent the email at 4:00am on Sunday morning, this may be either used for or against you. 

A job as a barman at a club will meet both your financial and networking needs, but the people who frequent clubs may not provide you with the contacts you need to find a corporate job, nor will you have adequate time to socialize the customers either, as people often to go clubs to forget about their job. 

A job as a waiter at a café in the center of the business district will meet both your financial and networking needs; however the businessmen you are serving may heuristically label you as a waiter, and not as their next Marketing Assistant.

By far, the most strategic job you can obtain is be as an English teacher in the private sector:

1. English teaching companies are always hiring
2. Competition is limited because nationals do not apply in this market
3. Qualification/skill/etc. are negligible
4. Interviews are (almost always) in English
5. Working with businessmen will familiarize you with the mentalities, ideologies, and customs of the enterprises you want to work for.
6. Clients will take you more seriously than they would if you were a bartender.
7. Clients you take on will range from lawyers to accountants to marketers to financial analysts.
8. It gives you an inside view into the mind of the corporation and the employee mentality.  This information will prove invaluable during the psychometric testing.
9. Clients are typically established businessmen/women, or people who can be socially engineered to help you with your CV, give you job search advice, or introduce you to your desired network.

Most private English teaching companies ask for some form of certification (TEFL, EFL, etc), however they will not turn down a candidate who has a Bachelors, a minor in English, or with some form of teaching experience as long as you are competent and have a visa.

When making your move into your target country, act swiftly, disciplined, and immediately begin sending out CVs.  Set a goal for yourself that you will apply for a certain amount of job offers per day, and make a certain amount of new friends per week.  Once you have reached your goal, reward yourself. Even if your hard work does not bear the immediate fruit of job interviews, the small rewards will keep your mind focused and motivated.  After couple weeks you will become tired and complacent, you will develop a social life, and visa and school requirements will begin slowing down your job hunting, so be prepared for it.

Advancement

Objectively, once you are able to at least make ends meet, then you can continue in this position indefinitely, and then can distribute your CV using the controversial job search method until you have achieved your ultimate goal, or until your cut-off date arrives and you have to make a choice.

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The more you know about the customs, rules, and laws of the target country, the better equipped you will be in protecting yourself from potentially irreversible legal repercussions.  Thoroughly researching the country, it’s laws, and the company will be the only way you can fully safeguard yourself. For tips on how to conduct research online, refer to our post How to Google hack a Foreign work visa.

As previously mentioned, if you can convince the employer that you are worth the investment, most large companies will cover your visa costs no questions asked.  They will most likely have human resource people and lawyers in place to facilitate the process.  It will be the smaller companies who will be more reluctant and cause you the greatest problems. 

Working contract

Thanks to your understanding of the target language and the research before hand, you will be able to read over the working contract and know if it is a legitimate and fair contract.  All discrepancies should be dealt with before the contract is signed.  Special attention should be paid to net salary, and how either party may terminate the contract.

Visa trafficking

In nearly every country, when a company agrees to hire you, they are, by law, accepting to cover all costs incurred to obtain your visa and legal right to work in that country. 

A company may negotiate to pay you less money to compensate for the cost of your visa, or hire you contingent on an “off the record” verbal agreement or understanding that you will reimburse them for the cost of your visa, or they may approach you after the fact with the bill and ask you to pay it.   If it is the former and you are happy buying your visa and right to work, then so be it.  But if it is the latter, then regardless of what the company tells you, or what “arrangements” were made, you are only lawfully bound by what is contained in the contract that you signed with the company.   To force you to out-rightly reimburse them is against the law.

Money laundering

If your employer does insist on a reimbursement, they will attempt to obtain it off the books: either by demanding that you pay cash, or by forcing the numbers of your monthly salary, etc.  Depending on the country’s laws (which you should have researched beforehand), the company may be guilty of laundering, and defrauding the government, and violating tax and other laws.

Contract hostage 

Before your visa and working paper’s expiration, and a few weeks prior to your date to renew when you need updated or special documentation from your employer would be the ideal time for the company to push for their reimbursement since, in order to renew your working visa, you will need them or your visa may be rejected.  Whether openly or implied, a company may threaten not to renew your contract unless you pay for your visa.

How to protect yourself

Depending on your personal goals, financial situation, etc., you must decide how far you want to go to defend your rights.  If you do not feel it is worth the trouble to defend yourself, and prefer to just pay the bill and appease their demands so you can continue working without escalating the tension between you and your employer, then do so.  It would be imprudent to come this far only to give up because of a visa bill.  As a last resort, if the cost of the visa is the only thing keeping the employer from hiring you, then offer to pay for it, or negotiate sharing a percentage of the bill.  This should be used ONLY as a last resort, as it may degrade your perceived worth you have demonstrated to them thus far, and the employer may accept your offer, and then begin demanding more compromises from you.

You must also consider larger picture when choosing your action.  Just because you now have a working contract and a monthly income doesn’t mean you are taken care of.  To protect themselves, companies will give you the most basic form of contract and for as long as possible, allowing them to terminate your employment if you do not turn out to meet their expectations, or the expectations you promised them.  Therefore consider a contingency plan.  What would you do if suddenly you lost your job?

Because you are a foreigner, your landlord may require a three month deposit and a three month notice before allowing you to rupture your contract and vacate your apartment.  What are you going to do if, shortly after signing a lease that requires a three month caution with a landlord, your company changes their mind and hands you your two weeks notice because they either received the bill for your visa in the mail and decided they didn’t want the hassle, experience buyer’s remorse, because you refused to reimburse them for the money they paid for your visa, or for any other reason?  If you have nothing to bring to the negotiation table as a counter proposal to their firing you, then they have an easy out of their contractual obligation, and you are left in some serious financial trouble.

First, consider the fact that, by demanding you reimburse them, they will naively feel that they are in the position of advantage because:

• You are depending on them to provide you with a pay check to cover your bills and cost of living.
• You are depending on them for your legal status, and without their support you must legally return home. 
• They are not expecting you to have done your research, and know about your rights.
• While by demanding you reimburse your visa they are abusing you and breaking the law, they are not expecting you to retaliate, or have the means to pose a threat to them.
• And most importantly, they will not be expecting you to have any incriminating evidence against them.

Remember that the company is in business to make money, and as soon as you are no longer useful to them, or are causing them more damage than good, they will logically let you go.  Being that you are living in a foreign country, and dependant upon them to provide you with a salary and working papers, your loss of job will do more damage to your life than theirs, and you must plan for this. 

IF the company forces you, are you going to fight or give up and return home?

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How much more could you get done if you completed all of your required reading in 1/3 or 1/5 the time?

Increasing reading speed is a process of controlling fine motor movement—period.

This post is a condensed overview of principles I taught to undergraduates at Princeton University in 1998 at a seminar called the “PX Project”. The below was written several years ago, so it’s worded like Ivy-Leaguer pompous-ass prose, but the results are substantial. In fact, while on an airplane in China two weeks ago, I helped Glenn McElhose increase his reading speed 34% in less than 5 minutes. I have never seen the method fail. Here’s how it works…

Four Hour Week

Derren Fact: DB can read at speeds of over 65,000 words per minute with the right book, a very strong coffee and with a recall rate of just over 94%. However after 5-6 minutes he starts emitting smoke from his ears and always states that he does not enjoy it.

Congratulations, you got a job interview! But what good is getting a job only to be screwed over on your working contract, signing for less than you feel you deserve for the sake of “getting a job”?

 Why is this important to you?

Video: Are job applicants telling the truth?

Because as an expatriate you are already working with several handicaps – a language barrier, a cultural disadvantage, a limited understanding of the country’s employment laws and employee rights, etc.

 And because you may not understand everything that the employer is telling you, how can you be certain that the employer is telling you the truth?

 How can you be certain that the employer isn’t attempting to take advantage of you?

 How can you be certain that the employer, whose job is to cut costs and maximize the company’s revenue, will look out for your interests when it comes to negotiating your salary and contract?

 You can’t. But his/her body language never lies. If you know how to calibrate it and read it, his/her non-verbal communication will tip you off as to whether s/he is being upfront and honest with you or not.

 To notice unconscious non-verbal communication and use it to your advantage, you must first heighten your senses to notice it, learn how to “test” the person and monitor his/her unconscious non-verbal reactions, and finally map his/her non-verbal communication. The only way to do this is through study and practice.

 Non-verbal communication happens whether you are aware of it or not. In fact, even before a statement has been communicated verbally, the body has already revealed the answer, be it via hand, facial, or bodily gestures.

 The basics.

Humans, like computers, store different types of information in different areas of the brain, and in order to verbally respond to a question or an internal/external stimulus, the person must first access the stored information before communicating it. The part of the brain that the person is accessing can be observed by watching the movement of the person’s eyes.

 There are several different areas of the brain a person can access information from, and subsequently many different combinations of ways that a person’s eyes can move to obtain this information. However, for the basic purpose of truth assessment during a job interview, the information we are interested in is divided into four states:

• Benchmark: This is the interviewer’s normal relaxed state; how the interviewer acts under normal relaxed conditions.
• Gathering: In order to effectively communicate and/or respond to your questions, the interviewer will have to pause, think, compare, and gather the information from several locations in their brain in order to respond.
• Remembering: In this state the interviewer is recalling true, factual, concrete, or actual information that they have seen before in order to respond.
• Creating: In this state the interviewer is using their imagination to construct an untrue, un-factual, and/or abstract response.

To determine whether or not the interviewer is creating or remembering information, the last two states that are the most critical. When the interviewer is describing information, an event, or something that they have physically seen, heard, read, or experienced, they will first recall the information before they verbally communicate it. If the interviewer is uncertain or is making up an answer, then s/he must first construct their answer before verbally communicating it.

 How to calibrate the interviewer.

 Right-handed people generally tend to look to their left to remember information and to their right to create information, and vice versa for left-handed. However this is not always the case. One thing for certain is that the person will remain consistent in their own behavior. For this reason, your priority is to establish the interviewer’s individual states.

 STEP 1: Establish Benchmark

 This is the interviewer’s normal relaxed state: how the interviewer acts under normal conditions. This will most likely be the neutral state prior to the interview BEFORE s/he switches into interviewer mode (This should begin as soon as you know who the interviewer is, as s/he introduces him/herself to you, shakes your hand, and leads you to the interviewing office). Pay close attention to how the interview walks, moves, speaks, and his/her facial expressions and eye movements as s/he speaks to you. You won’t have much time, so pay very close attention.

 STEP 2: Determine the Remembering Cue

 In this state the interviewer is recalling true, factual, concrete, or actual information that they have seen before in order to respond.

 At an appropriate point in the interview, ask the interviewer several “test” remembering questions (see photo below) and observe how the interviewer’s eyes move as s/he accesses the information and responds. The questions should be relevant and legitimate enough to ask during a job interview, however not so important that you can focus more on the interviewer’s eye movements as s/he answers the question than on the actual answer itself.

 Sample questions to ask which require memory to answer:

• Where did you go for your last vacation?
• What year did you begin working for this company?
• How long have you been working in the Human Resources department?
• How many employees work in this office?
• Do you know an employee by the name of Mr. Deschamps?
• How many other Americans have you interviewed this week?

Correctly done, you should have noticed a pattern in how the interviewer recalls answers to questions. If you are uncertain, perform STEP 2 again, or move to STEP 3.

 STEP 3: Determine the Constructing Cue

 In this state the interviewer is using their imagination to construct an untrue, un-factual, and/or abstract response.

 Perform the same test as you did during STEP 2, only this time focus on the interviewer’s creative side of the brain.

 Sample questions to ask which require imagination to answer:

• What do you think of the World Cup results so far?
• Where do you see the company in two years?
• What’s your opinion of the proposed budget cut?
• From a HR perspective, what advantage do you feel your company has over your competitors?
• How would the company cope financially if the current economic recession worsens?

Correctly done, you should have noticed a pattern in how the interviewer creates answers to questions. If you are uncertain, perform STEP 3 again, or move to STEP 2.

 By the end of your interview, you should now be able to easily distinguish between the three states – benchmark, remembering, and creating – and be in a strong position for the negotiation phase.

 Tips.

 One “test” question will not be enough to accurately verify each state. So be sure to ask several questions in a row to make sure the eye movements are consistent. You cannot be confident that you have correctly identified the state until you have consistent responses. If, for example, after asking several remembering questions you are still unsure of the results, wait a few minutes, and when the situation presents itself, fire off a few more questions and double check.

 As you construct your “test” questions for the interviewer in preparation for the interview, avoid using the verbs “to believe, to be aware of, to know, to think, and to understand.” These verbs change how the interviewer interprets the question, and distort his/her non-verbal answer, ultimately making your assessment unreliable.

 Before you calibrate your interviewer.

 Practice makes perfect, and the more you use these assessment techniques, the better you become at employing them. However even if used properly, there are several factors in using eye accessing that could distort its accuracy, especially if you are not well practiced:

1. Preferred leading systems - Like bodily movements and words used in conversation, people have habitual movements that, despite which type of question asked, a person’s eyes may habitually look in the same directions at some point while processing the information. This may cause you to misinterpret the nature of their answer.
2. New experience - You asked the interviewer a question in which you expect a “remembering” response; however the interviewer’s eye movements are not consistent with your expectations. This may not automatically mean that s/he is lying to you. Perhaps you asked the interviewer a question that s/he has never thought about, or you linked two pieces of information that s/he has never put together before, and in order to correctly answer you, s/he would have to first “create” meaning to the question by combining several pieces of information that s/he had never combined before. This may also cause you to misinterpret the nature of their answer.
3. Incorrect information - If laws and rules have changed since the interviewer last checked, or if s/he is answering your question based on what seems “logical” or his/her concept of “common-sense,” then it is possible that the interviewer may actually believe that, to the best of his/her knowledge, the answer s/he is giving you is the truth.
4. Habitual - “What is your name?” “Where do you live?” “Where do you work?”  Some questions are so simple, and are answered so frequently that no eye movement is needed. The answer is automatic. Consider that interviewers may conduct upwards of a hundred interview’s a week. As a result, many of their responses will be the same prerecorded messages that they have repeated over and over and over again, and they no longer have to think about to answer. This can lead to difficulty in determining which part of the brain s/he is accessing. In order to learn, practice, and perfect this Truth Assessment technique, and to prepare yourself for the difficult task of using this tactic during a job interview, begin practicing it on everyday people: the waiter at the café, television interviews where the people are not acting or reading from off of a script, etc.
5. Foreign language - Because multiple languages, accents, and mentalities are at play during the interview, it is possible that an additional step before the employer gather’s information may be added in-between the benchmark and gathering states, where the employer first translates and makes sense of your question or comment, and then proceeds to gather the information.

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It’s common knowledge that, by combining boolean search, google, and common sense, you can gain access to sensitive documents and files you shouldn’t have access to. In fact, it isn’t uncommon to read in the news stories of how corporation’s websites and other confidential data were compromised due to results accidentally being made freely available to the public online because of somebody’s negligence.

Immigration laws are constantly changing and new laws being proposed, and as an ethical and law abiding expatriot who isn’t going to use the tips and tricks taught by c14ism to peform illegal acts, it is in your best interest to stay abreast of any and all laws which could affect your work visa and eventual employment in your target country.

The possibilities:

By correctly using boolean search and google you’ll have access to:

• Laws that currently affect you
• New laws that will affect you
• Explanations of possible loopholes/exemptions you can use to your advantage
• Advice from other expats who were in similar situations as you
• Lawyers and non-profit organizations who can help you
• Telephone numbers, mailing and email addresses to people can answer your questions
• Blogs and chat forums that have already addressed your problem
• Important documents, applications, and other paperwork you will need
• Government offices and departments with special information and/or priviledges mainstream offices and department’s don’t want the general public to know

The command codes:

 The results:

Now that you have the necessary codes, you can string them together to find some interesting results specific to your goals.

 For example:

 site:gouv.fr filetype:pdf cerfa yields a printable .pdf list of every official cerfa application available on the official French website.

site:de filetype:doc immigration law yields word documents concerning immigration laws available on websites with a german (.de) extension.

 Key tips to remember:

• English isn’t the only language used on the internet, so when searching for documents, remember to consider the equivalent word for the target language. For example, if searching the internet for a work visa application, the word “application” in English is translated as “demande” in French and “Anwendung” in German.
• Be careful not to stick your nose too deeply into where it doesn’t belong. Your presence in a restricted area could set off some red flags with some governmental monitoring agency, and before you know it inconspicuous carpet cleaning vans with unnecessarily large antennaes on top may begin appearing just up the street from your building at odd hours.
• If during your research you should uncover vulnerabilities in other people’s systems, such as an internal word document memo containing usernames & passwords (hey, it’s happened) an ethical person would alert the concerned parties immediately of the vulnerability.

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——-

ADDITIONAL LINKS:

7 Hacker and clever google tricks worth knowing

Google as a hacking tool .pdf

Google Search & Rescue For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech))
The best Google search secrets
10 Obscure google search tricks

“Metaphors are analogies between two objects or ideas; the analogy is conveyed by the use of a metaphorical word in place of some other word. Metaphors also denote rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via association, comparison, or resemblance.”

From a psychological warfare perspective, metaphors are an excellent mind control technique because the unconscious is extremely receptive and persuaded by stories and parables, and what better way to make sense out of something than by illustrating it in an example. Think back to all of the children’s books you read and Disney movies you watched as a kid to learn about socially acceptable morals and ethics, etc.

How you respond to the Human Resources interviewer determines if you get the job, and effective metaphors can easily be employed when you describe your previous job responsibilities.

One good strategy to answering questions is the S.T.A.R.technique whereby you describe:

1. a [S]ituation or [T]ask you were faced with,
2. the [A]ction you took to overcome it, and
3. the [R]esults you achieved.

But c14ism doesn’t recommend you stop there! Embedding metaphors into your answers have an even greater direct impact on the employer’s overall impression of you, whether they are aware of it or not. So use metaphors to reveal your personality, knowledge of a subject, and positive characteristics that you don’t want to directly tell the employer, but instead want to discretely convey.

If you’re applying for a job overseas, then your language barrier will be an added handicap, it is possible that the most efficient way for you to thoroughly get your point across, especially when it comes time to convince Human Resources to pay for your work visa, will be through the successful employment of metaphors.

Essentially, each metaphor you use should:

1. Begin by making a statement that catches the attention and creates confusion or anticipation in the mind of the employer.
2. Introduce the information you are about to explain, and correlate it with a subject that you have adequate knowledge and vocabulary about and that the employer will be able to relate to. For example, if the interview is for financial analyst, then reference your information to the stock market, etc.
3. Contain as many embedded language patterning tactics as you can realistically and naturally fit into it, without disrupting the flow of the story.
4. Not take up too much time that it dominates the interview, but not so short that it is inadequate and leaves the employer with more questions than answers.
5.  Thoroughly address and disarm any heuristics you want to overcome.
6.  Conclude with a strong ending that leaves you looking confident and positive, and the employer feeling like s/he just learned something useful.
7.  Influence the outcome in your favor.

Example:

HR: “Tell me about your last job.”

You: “My last job was detrimental to the company (1), and involved assessing the usability of software based on its qualifications and ease of integration into the company’s existing software (2) [S]. The biggest problem you face in having to assess so many applications that do basically the same thing. Some software seems easy to install compared to other software, but you’ll find that better software requires just a little more work and is more user friendly, efficient, globally adaptive, and have far better benefits than perceived costs; especially compared to all the other equally qualified candidates (3,5). It’s hard sometimes to distinguish ones that you don’t need, or may even be detrimental to the company in the long run, even if the perfect one for the job is sitting right here in front of you (3,6,7).[T] During the 18 months I worked for my team tested over 50 different software packages [A] and in that time the company experienced no computer problems due to incompatability. [R]”

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Decision Making Processes

The Decision Making Process is the process whereby Human Resources or the Foreign Immigration Office reaches a final outcome, response, opinion, or conclusion in response to information, situation, or dilemma (i.e. who gets the job/work permit). This process generally operates on a predictable cause > effect circuit whereby external forces are received (your resume + cover letter + work visa application), filtered through the internal processes, the responses calculated based on the available information (need, governing laws), the best response to the external force (candidate pool) is chosen, and then feedback observed based on the result of the chosen response (interviews #1 and #2, 90-day trial period). As external forces change, so the internal processes that yield the responses adapt.

Mind Control involves utilizing various (in)direct and/or subtle psychological tactics to influence and ultimately control an individual’s own thinking, behavior, emotions, consciousness, and thought processes that lead to the person’s decisions, i.e. his/her free will. This process involves controlling how an individual learns and internalizes belief systems, or heuristics, thereby seeking to control the individual’s:

1. Internal sources: decision making processes, belief systems, etc., by controlling his/her
2. External forces - environment, available information, communication, etc.

Controlling the Decision Making Processes is your goal, and your key to controlling HR/ the Immigration Officer.

Internal Processes

Logic is the foundational principles, beliefs, inferences, and rules on how an individual processes, assess, evaluates, and responds to external forces.

Reasoning is the cognitive process of rationalizing an individual’s logic, actions, and feelings to arrive at a conclusion.

Heuristics are unofficial, loosely applicable, and systematic methods of reasoning and problem solving designed to simplify the decision making processes and guide us through a learned set of thought process to arrive at an outcome which is as reasonably close to an “unbiased” and “sound” decision as possible. These thought processes, over time, have also come to be known as “rules of thumb,” “theology,” “common sense,” “educated guesses,” and “learned evolutionary processes” depending on which social circle you associate with.

While these heuristics can yield a perceived satisfactory outcome, in the end, many heuristics lead to costly undesirable outcomes, or even worse, desired but unrealized outcomes.

Fallacies are flawed components in the above mentioned logic, reasoning, and decision making processes which yield an inefficient, ineffective, meaningless or flawed outcome or choice. Many heuristics are an example of fallacies.

External Forces

External forces refer to any available information and/or stimulus in the person’s outside environment which involves use of the individual’s 5 senses – seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling, tasting, touching. Stimulus is communicated to the brain via the individual’s senses. Communication can be divided into verbal, such as spoken language, diction, inflection, etc., and non-verbal communication, such as body language. Both verbal and non-verbal communication is the process of information transfer from person to person(s).

Available Information refers to:

1. Knowledge communicated or received concerning a particular fact or circumstance, and is in the individual’s environment
2. Knowledge gained through the individual’s environment - study, communication, research, instruction, etc.

Mind control conditions, Methods, and Models

Level | Objective

1 | Limit/Control how external stimuli interacts with the 5 senses.

2 | (Re)define definitions, beliefs, associations, etc. derived from the 5 senses. 

3 | New stimuli (level 1) interacts with pre-existing beliefs, associations, etc. (level 2) to create more elaborate definitions, beliefs, associations, etc.

4 | Emotions and beliefs deeply integrate with external stimuli (level 1)

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In early 2001 while spending a year abroad in France as a elementary school English teacher, Steven met an American man in the south of France trying to open a business.  An unprompted introduction at a café because the server accidentally mixed up their orders turned into an on-the-spot job interview resulted in Steven being offered a position on the ground floor of the business venture. To top it off, the company would provide Steven with working papers!  The endeavour seemed too good to be true.  Steven eagerly signed the contract and three months later threw himself into a 15 hours a day, 6 days a week work schedule to get the business off the ground and up and running, and within a few weeks the company was already turning an extraordinary profit!

Steven’s transition from public school English teacher to businessman responsible for market research analysis and public relations was challenging but he attacked the job with fervour.

“A month and a half later, I hadn’t yet received the official documents from home office, based in Malaysia, which I needed to officially register the company with the French authorities and to obtain my work visa.  Everytime I emailed the company about the important documents they gave me some dubious email promising that “this procedure is normal and that the situation is being dealt with…”

Now two months into the venture with an expired visa, a dispondent headquarters, and an increasingly sketchy business model, Steven started getting suspicious.

One night after work, now approaching three months after his first day of work, and still no closer to a working visa than the first day he had is fateful job interview, Steven started doing some online investigating.

Several hours later, at 4:00 in the morning, drunk and fatigued from lack of sleep,  as Steven sat in the office with a candy bar, his twelfth bottle of beer, and the glow of the computer screen illuminating the dark room, Steven had his answer:

“The ‘headquarters’ was actually a shell company that lead to a P.O. box located somewhere in the mid-west United States, all accessible business credentials and certifications either eventually faded off into a deleted/expired webpage or simply did not exist, and the 1000’s of internet advertisements and blog posts under a handful of other names all lead back to the same P.O. Box, website, and email address.”

Steven had successfully helped open a profitable and illegal business!

“I couldn’t believe what I was reading!  The operation crossed so many international borders, and protected itself by so many layers of ‘credible sources’ and ‘guinea pigs (such as yours truly),’ that, although illegal in nature, it was virtually untouchable juristically.  Furthermore, if this illegal business were raided by the police, “The Man” had meticulously set it up so he could deny any association, leaving me to take the fall.  It was diabolical, really.  “The Man” had left no stone unturned. I had no other option but to delete all traces of my existence and involvement with the operation and abandon! Immediately!”

In the next three hours Steven deleted the company hard-drive, burned all incriminating papers with his name on it, and even wiped the office and company vehicule down to erase his fingerprints, and at 7:00 in the morning was standing at the train station with blood shot eyes, a hangover, and a cup of coffee looking up at the arrivals and departures board.

“At this point my only goal was to get as far away from this city as possible, and even leave the country. I just had to get the hell away from this!”

The train sitting at platform 1 was giving its final boarding call for Spain, and I boarded.

“At this point returning to the United States was out of the question, and Europe was big enough that I could find a job somewhere else, but how was I going to become legal again, and will this come back to haunt me?”

True Story.

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“Despite my low income living internationally, having my daily starbucks is not only a way to appreciate the ‘finer things in life’, it is one of the few things that I have to remind me of home.” 

And unfortunately, the ‘finer things in life’ come with a price. Joey, despite his low income, was spending nearly 130€ a month on coffee. But how does an expat balance such an expensive habit with the reality of a limited budget? Joey excitedly unloaded hiswallet in front of me.

“Fidelity cards! I collect fidelity cards. You want to save money? They are the way to go! For only 18€ a month I can watch an unlimited amount of movies at any UGCtheater location. For only 40€ a year I have free access to almost 200 museums in Paris. I must own at least 30 fidelity cards .”

One day, armed with his at least 30 fidelity cards, Joey decided to give his local swimming pool a try.

“They were offering a special, 10 visits to the pool for the price of 6. Score! I paid the money, changed into my swimming trunks, and was on my way to the pool when the lifeguard blew his whistle at me.”

“You cannot swim with shorts on.”

Looking around, Joey saw every other male in the building wearing spandex bikini briefs and a swimmer’s cap.

“You can rent bathing suits at the entrance.”

“Rent a bikini?”

Although the idea of paying to wear a used man’s mankini was disgusting, Joey wasn’t going to lose a session of swimming. Joey was committed, so Joey returned to the entrance.”

“What size are you?” 

The lady asked Joey as he approached the desk.

“I don’t know, I suppose a medium will do.”

Shuffling through a box underneath the counter, she removed a pair of brown and black leopard skin print bikini bottoms and handed them to Joey.

“Ma’am, these are extra-large.”

“We are out of mediums. Take it or leave it. “

The water was warm, and the mankini was so spacious that Joey felt naked and uncomfortable. Upon completion of his third lap, as Joey pushed off of the wall, his sleek brown and black leopard skin bikini briefs, exhausted from having been tied so tightly around his waist, could hold no more.

“Having a swimmer’s cap suctioned to my cap and feeling naked anyway, I couldn’t feel the difference! How was I to know they had fallen off?”

Despite the lifeguard blowing his whistle.Despite the funny looks from the people on the side of the pool.Despite the feeling of unrestraint as Joey swam his fourth lap.

It didn’t actually dawn on him until he had finished the entire lap and returned to find them floating on top of the water patiently waiting for him.

“Hey! Somebody lost a pair of…”

True Story.

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Table soccer, or ‘baby foot’ as the French call it, is the take-no-prisoners competition whereby

“a ball is served through a hole at the side of the table, or simply placed by hand at the feet of a figure in the center of the table. The winner is determined when one team scores a predetermined number of goals, typically five, ten, or eleven in competition.” 

-Wikipedia

The Official ITSF rulebook thoroughly outlines the rules of the game, however I’d like to point out a few in particular:

4.1.1 If the ball is served from a position other than the middle player figure and the violation is discovered before the ball is scored play shall stop and the ball will be re-served by the same team. Once a point is scored, no appeal shall be made. The penalty for subsequent violations is loss of possession to the opponent for serve.

4.2 Before putting the ball into play the player in possession of the ball shall ask the opponent if he is “ready”. The direct opponent has three seconds to respond “ready”. The player in possession of the ball now has three seconds to begin to put the ball into play. Waiting beyond these time limits will be considered a delay of game (See Rule 25).

8.2 If the ball is declared dead (motionless on the table) between the goal and five-man rods, it shall be put back into play at the two-man rod nearest the spot of the dead ball. Play shall resume using the “Ready” Protocol (See Rule 4).

12.3 Any team intentionally marking up a point not scored shall not get credit for the point illegally marked up and shall be charged with a technical foul. Further violations of this rule will be grounds for forfeiture of game or match (to be determined by the Head Official).

and the most important:

15. Spinning of the rods is illegal. Spinning is defined as the rotation of any soccer figure more than 360 degrees before or more than 360° after striking the ball. In calculating the 360° you do not add the degrees spun prior to striking the ball to the degrees spun after striking the ball.

This shall hereby be considered a point of reference for all of my future bar table soccer excursions. Consider yourself schooled.

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“An all night party.” They said.

“A top notch night club.” They said.

“Open bar and cool people” They said.

Pulling out the stops, Ben ‘suited up’ for what his friend Marco said was going to be the party of the summer at one of his favorite clubs in town. At the party Mark introduced Ben to a few girls that went there often, and they ended up sharing the VIP couch.

“It was fun! It was the table right next to the DJ, and the owner gave the us a complimentary bottle of vodka.”

But then, it got wierd…

“From out of nowhere this crazy looking guy dressed in a black leather jump suit and a yellow feather jacket showed up and started freaking me out. Apparantly he knew almost everyone at the club. Everyone, except me, the guy sitting quietly at the owner’s table with five girls.”

The night continued and the crazy guy with the yellow feather jacket got piss drunk, would ask Ben a question and then disappear, and 10 minutes later would reappear and ask Ben another question.

“Marco, I’m going to the bathroom. Keep an eye on my drink while I’m gone.” Ben motioned to his friend as he got up.

But when Ben returned Marco and the girls were gone, and the only one on the couch was that crazy guy, just sitting there, staring at him. So Ben grabbed his drink and headed out to the dance floor.

“The next thing I remember was the world getting blurry around the edges. Then that crazy guy approached me on the dance floor and asked me for all of my money to take a cab, and for some reason I just took out all of my money and gave it to him. Then I blacked out.”

“I woke up at 8:00 a.m. the next morning on the stairwell of my apartment with McDonalds cheeseburger wrappers in my pockets, and no idea how I got there or where I had been. That b*stard had slipped me a roofie and stole all my money!”

Ben didn’t tell Marco what had happened, but over the next few months, knowing he would eventually see that crazy guy again, vowed he would get his revenge.

Five months later Marco invited Ben to the summer’s end party at that same club, and guess who else would probably be there…

“I decided that a punch in the face just wasn’t going to be enough for what he did to me. I knew this guy had a big profile and appearance was everything to him, so I decided to take that away from him. So here is what I did.”

How to make a perfume bomb:

1. Go to sephora and pick up a few perfume samples.

2. Follow this recipe to create the ammonium sulfide. Because you only need enough to fill the perfume sample, use much smaller proportions.

3. Carefully remove the perfume sample from it’s package without giving it the appearance that it has been tampered with, empty it, and dry it out. Quickly pour the ammonium sulfide into the perfume sample and put the top back on, and replace it back into it’s packaging. To mask the smell of ammonium sulfide, spray the sample with some perfume.

“Sure enough he eventually showed up. I waited until he got piss drunk again, and when he wasn’t looking I tossed the perfume sample onto the table in front of him. About 30 seconds later he saw the perfume, tore the package open, stood up and sprayed his expensive looking clothes, and then he sprayed it right in his face! The smell hit him so hard that he fell back and toppled over the couch as though someone had sucker punched him square in the nose. Nobody would go near him for the rest of the night.”

True Story.

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On December 3rd, 2005, while working part-time at a small bar in northern Paris, a 6’5” inch gorilla ducked into my bar - literally ducked in - filling the entire frame of the door. He wandered up to the bar, ordered an apple juice, and then found a table in the darkest corner of the bar and sat down.

 “Holy Sh*t, do you know who that is?” An American backpacker sitting at the bar asked. “I’m not positive, but I’m almost sure that that is Didier Azoulay, the bad guy in the Jet Lee movie: Kiss of the Dragon!”

“Come on,” I replied, “Why, in all of the bars in Paris, would a professional martial arts actor come into this bar and order an apple juice?” 

“I don’t know man, but you have to go and ask him! I have to know!”

A few minutes later after he finished his apple juice and was settling the bill at the counter, the American guy cleared his throat, signaling for me to ask. 

“Excuse me sir,” I asked him in French, “But my friend here would like to know if it was you that played one of the twin bad guys in the Jet Lee movie.”

“Yes, it was me.” He responded in English in a deep voice. 

“Hot Damn, I knew it!” The American guy shouted.     They sat and talked about the movie and what it was like working behind the scenes for a few minutes before Mr. Azouley left the bar, continuing on his way.

*Screenshot from ‘Kiss of the Dragon.’ Mr. Azouley is on the left.

Click here to watch a fight sceen.

To this day we do not know exactly what Mr. Azouley was doing in a small unknown bar on an abandoned street in northern Paris just after happy hour ended drinking an apple juice, or why he was there, but here is what I’ve pieced together:

• In Rio de Janeiro on Dec 1, 2005, just days before, A “death squad” killed four alleged members of a Rio drug gang, leaving a sign with the bodies, some of which had signs of torture, identifying the slain men as those responsible for the burning of a city bus in which five people died. (Source)

• That same day, the leader of Spain’s main opposition party, along with several other official’s helicopter “crashed” seconds after taking off from a bull ring on the outskirts of Madrid. Nobody was injured. (Source)

• The next day, in Buenos Aires, Dec 2, 2005 Aerolineas Argentinas pilots and technicians “reached an agreement” with the company Friday to end a strike begun more than a week ago, authorities said. (Source)

• And on December 3rd, that same day in Madrid, Spain, the “Spanish Police” broke up an international network of Nigerians who smuggled women into Europe and forced them into prostitution by intimidating them through witchcraft.(Source)

Coincidence? You do the math.

True Story.

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On November 16, 2005, Mike woke up at 7:00 in to go to his respective immigration office to get his student visa with all of the documents, plus photocopies, required. He arrived to find nine hundred other people waiting in line.

There were three lines at this prefectures:

1. Students,
2. Workers, and 
3. Naturalization.

Tracing the lines to the source, he saw that, being a student, he was supposed to be in line one. So Mike took his place as number nine hundred and seventy-three and patiently waited.

In fact, he waited in line for four hours in the cold rain moving fifteen to twenty feet per hour until suddenly the line began moving quickly and everybody began getting excited. Joy soon replaced defeat when he arrived at the front of the line to find several armed police officers standing next to a sign that read “the prefecture will not be seeing anyone else today, please come back tomorrow.”

“It turns out that the outlying suburb prefectures only see a fixed number of applicants each day (500), while the Paris central prefecture is unlimited.”

That night, before going to bed, Mike set his alarm for 4:00 in the morning and checked the next day’s weather- It was going to rain again. He skipped class for a second day in a row, but this time woke up at 4:00 am to took the first metro.

“There was no way I was going to lose another day of my life in that d*mn place!”

As Mike exited the metro at the prefecture stop, he looked to his right to see almost 200 people running frantically towards the exit.

“I just began sprinting. One man fell onto the train tracks and had to wait for everyone to pass by before he could climb out. He would probably not be getting an appointment card today. I climbed the stairs skipping four steps at a time, hurdled the metro toll booth, and was cold heartedly running past women pushing baby strollers, the handicapped, and the elderly. They would probably not be getting appointment cards today either, and would have to try again tomorrow. I felt like sh*t for doing it, but in this kill or be killed visa process game, there are no rules, no codes of conduct: only winners and losers!”

Despite Mike’s genetic predisposition of height, speed, and agility, all of his hopes came to a complete halt as he turned the corner towards the home stretch to find almost four hundred people already in line!

“This is f**king ridiculous! I couldn’t believe what I was seeing! Rumours were circulating amongst the ranks was that the man at the front of the door had taken a taxi at 1:00am and slept at the door!”

Again, Mike waited five hours in the same line as he had in the first day, but this time he knew he was going to get an appointment and would leave with his papers.

“At 9:00am the doors opened and what followed was one of the vilest and dejecting experiences I had ever witnessed! Grown men and women acting like children, climbing over walls and barriers, pushing, and arguing as to who cut who in the line. The crowd had pressed in so tightly that the mother in front of me was forced to hold her baby above their head for fear of being crushed! At the front of the line men were climbing over the ten foot barbed razor-wire fence and their wives threw over backpacks and sandwiches! They were taking this to a whole new level!”

“Police fully clothed in anti-riot gear and carrying machine guns stood above us on the walls. They weren’t doing anything to maintain order. They were arrogantly smiling and mocking all of us below them who were fighting and struggling to get permission to stay in France. They were enjoying every minute of our misery!”

But Mike’s bad day was about to get worse. It just so happened that between 2:00pm on November 16th and 9:00am on the 17th somebody high up in the French bureaucratic offices decided that they needed to change the line formation at the arrondisement prefecture in which he lived. So this government official spent his/her time writing up an official letter, signed and stamped it, and then distributed it to the prefecture staff.

“After four hours of waiting in that #%! d*mned line, I arrived at the front door ticket booth to take my appointment number and the government worker told me that I was in the wrong line and needed to be in line 2, not line 1.”

The government worker then pointed to a brand new yellow sign which translated: “effective 17 November 2005, all foreign students seeking the carte de séjour must be in line 2.”

“Despite my obvious and justified defence of not being aware of the policy change, nor privy to the mass distribution of emails sent out overnight at the governmental level, he simply told me to get in line 2 and motioned for one of the f**cking armed police officers to dispose of me!”

That evening Mike found an advertisement of a man renting his couch on www.craigslist.com, packed his bags, and moved to another arrondisement.

(The rest of Mike’s conversation had to be edited due to elicit content.)

True Story.

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For summer vacation 2004 I stepped off of the train in Barcelona and made my way to the backpackers hostel I would be staying at for the next four days. It was Spring break in Italy, and apparently Barcelona was the American spring break equivalent to Cancun, and hundreds of gorgeous twenty to twenty-five year old Italian university girls had descended upon Barcelona.

I was sharing a room with nine other travellers who were checking out the following day, and Sancho, a charmingly passive sixty-six year old Barcelonan who actually lived at the hostel. Three months prior a large thunder storm had uprooted a tree and it fell through the roof of his house. Having no family, living alone, and lacking the finances to repair it, he was forced to move out, and had been living in the hostel ever since while he looked for something else.

I threw my backpack onto the top bunk bed, stripped down to my boxer briefs, covered myself with a towel, and headed off to the showers, travel size shampoo bottle in hand when Sancho stopped me at the door. 

“Hey,” he seemed paranoid and spoke in a hushed tone as he laid in his bed reading a book.

 “Don’t leave your belongings laying there on your bed. There are thieves staying here.”

 “Really?” I responded.

 “Yeah! I have lost two hearing aides in the last week. Both times I went to the shower and left them on my bed, and when I returned they were gone.”

 “Your hearing aides?” I repeated.

“Yeah. Luckily the people in our room are leaving tomorrow, but don’t trust anybody here. You keep an eye on my things, I’ll keep an eye on yours. Deal?”

 “Deal.” I responded after shaking hands over our secret pact before getting up to continue on to the showers. “Thanks for the advice.”

 The following day I entered the hostel lounge room to find three German men who were on vacation. It was only 4:00 in the afternoon, yet they were already on their ninth case of beer. A wall of nearly seventy empty beer cans and counting were accumulating at the end of the table. The receptionist had scolded them so many times during the last three days for getting drunk, making so much noise, and leaving such a mess, that they unanimously decided to make this woman’s life a living hell by spending their entire last day at the hostel in the lobby drinking from the moment she began working to when her shift ended. As we sat there a young German guy, their drinking partner, entered into the lounge with his backpack on to say goodbye to his fellow alcoholic friends before making his way to the train station to return home. He was sent off with a cold can of beer, hearty goodbye hugs, and a farewell song sung at top of their lungs in German.
 
Fifteen minutes later the front automatic doors slid open and he limped back into the hotel lobby with a black eye, a bloody nose, one shoe, and a severely ripped shirt in his hand. He had, in the middle of the afternoon, on the busiest pedestrian walkway in Barcelona, with over three hundred witnesses, been jumped by four guys, and had all of his belongings stolen as he was descending the steps into the metro station.
 The drunken German guys, upon seeing their wounded comrade, began laughing so hysterically that the wall of beer cans toppled and fell with a violent crash, covering the entire floor, launching the receptionist into a fit of rage, which only provoked them further. 
I made my way upstairs to find Sancho standing amid a room full of college girls, all unabashedly preoccupied with changing and re-changing clothes and applying make-up for an exciting night out on the town. Lacy red thongs with matching bras, skin suntanned to perfection, belly button rings and immaculately placed tattoos, the plethora of seductive perfumes filling the air - It was as if Sancho and I had back stage passes to the changing room at a Victoria’s Secret fashion runway modelling show. Sanchos’ pace maker, if it hadn’t been stolen yet, was probably working at full capacity.

 The girls invited both Sancho and I to join them, but it was approaching 9:30pm, and though his spirit was willing, his flesh was weak, and Sancho’s bed time was drawing nigh. I on the other hand, jumped at the opportunity.

 A twenty minute walk, with periodic stops at local bars to catch their happy hour prices, and we arrived at an underground club at midnight. I had heard stories that Barcelona was infamous for thieves and pick-pockets, so I was keeping my drinking to a very moderate level in case something happened, and coupled with the German guy’s mugging experience in broad daylight earlier that day, and my going out with seven girls, suddenly my older brother instinct kicked in, and I felt more like a personal bodyguard.

 Alas, it was 6:00 in the morning, and the club was closed. As we made the twenty minute walk back to the hostel, we decided that a nightcap of café and donuts would be the perfect way to finish the evening. Seeing a dimly glowing light that resembled that of a diner at the end of an alleyway, the eight of us filed down the passageway to find to our dismay that not only was the diner closed, but it was also a dead end street.

 Disappointed, we turn around to find ourselves face to face with twelve violent looking men standing in a pack blocking our exit. The girls, slightly drunk, tired, and now terrified, began crying and backing into the corner. Armed with nothing more than two years of high school wrestling and four months of body bag practice in karate class, I stepped in-between the girls and the violent men, and before they had a chance to react, I went on the offensive.   To my advantage, the street was narrow, so the twelve men could only approach three at a time, making the odds a little more manageable. Months of training, conditioning, and repetitiously perfecting lethal karate moves were spent preparing me for this moment – I was a Caucasian Bruce Lee. I was Steven Segal without the pony-tail. I was Jean Claude Van Dam without the signature “splits in underwear” scene. I was unsympathetically kicking ass and taking names. 
The last three guys, seeing the damage I had done to the first nine, turned and fled. Moments later four police officers, having been alerted by a telephone call from a bystander two stories above us, arrived with weapons drawn. When they turned the corner they found me leaning against a trashcan out of breath, nine men lying unconscious in the alleyway, and a group of girls huddled in the corner. They lowered their weapons and began laughing, and then just turned around and continued on their route. One of the assailants had managed to land a well placed blow to my forehead, cutting it open with his ring, which left a scar right in between my eyes. Word of mouth spread quickly among the other travellers at the hostel, and by lunchtime the following day everyone had heard about my exploits.

I was a hero.
True Story.
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In preparation for my move from The U.S. to France, I either sold or gave away everything in my possession that would not fit into two carry-on suitcases.  I was sad to let go of my 25 year old electric bass guitar, but I nearly cried as I watched the new owner of my red ’94 Ford Probe pull out of my driveway.  I had bought her at a police impound auction in Georgia, and even though she was a magnet for cops, resulting in at least one un-ticketed pull-over every two months for the two years that I owned her, she was the most reliable car I had ever owned.
 
Finally, to avoid paying an unnecessary month of rent, Sotar, a Nepali friend of mine who was studying as a foreign exchange student at my university, offered his couch to me for a week until my flight to London from Atlanta, GA. Sotar, living the life of a typical foreign exchange student, was so scrawny and skinny due to severe sleep deprivation and an inadequate diet in order to save money, that any self-respecting mother would have had a heart attack.

One weekend, while aimlessly wandering the local shopping mall, Sotar was scouted by a modelling agency.  His monthly stipend of $500 that the university library paid him to stock the returned books suddenly quadrupled and he now draped himself with top-of-the-line clothing and so many gaudy accessories that any self-respecting mother would have disowned him.

At last, the day had arrived, my final day on the North American continent for the next year.  I woke up at 5:00 am the morning of my flight, and carried my suitcases three blocks to meet Rebecca, a friend who was going to drive me to the airport shuttle bus stop. As I carried the two 45 pound suitcases down the street, beads of sweat began forming on my forehead and excitement soon tempered into worry as I realized that there was absolutely no way I was going to be able to carry them both around Europe with me. This dilemma continued to haunt me as we sped down the highway at top speed to make it in time.  Construction on the highway had caused us to run late, and I arrived only minutes before the bus was about to leave. My friend, on her way to another meeting, dropped me off and continued on her way, so from that point on, I was on my own.

Now what? I asked myself as I stood at the passenger loading dock scratching my head looking at the two suitcases by my feet.

The bus driver, seeing me standing there with a confused and frustrated look on my face as the other passengers loaded their baggage and boarded the van, assumed that I must have been mentally challenged and didn’t know how the process worked, so he walked up to me and spoke in a very slow and enunciated manner.

“Put your suitcases (he pointed at my suitcases) into the back of the van (he pointed to the back of the van), and get inside (he pointed at the open sliding door of the van). I’m leaving in three minutes (he then tapped on his watch a couple of times).”

 
I paused just long enough to shoot him an evil glance, then, without thinking, unzipped both suitcases open and dumped their contents out onto the parking lot, grabbed only that which I felt I could not live without, threw them into one suitcase, and tossed it into the back of the bus as he started up the van to pull away, abandoning the other suitcase to its fate, never to be seen or heard from again.

True Story.
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With university graduation a mere four months away, Charlie decided to entertain the possibility of moving into a management position with his company.  So one evening while at work, he called the store manager he was working for and asked to speak to him in his office.
 
Once they were both situated in his small office he began his speech.

“I have some good news!” He spoke confidently and seriously,   “Five years ago I began working here with nothing more than a high school diploma.  Now, after much work, sacrifice, and discipline, I am sitting before you now with over five years of experience and a Bachelor’s degree in Business.  I know how the company works, I have been working closely with some of the managers, so I know what the job requires, and I feel that I have what it takes to do it.  In addition, I have a degree, which makes me more qualified than some of the managers who are currently working for you.  I would like to be considered for promotion to become a manager.”

 Charlie sat back in his chair confident and satisfied with his performance and waited for his boss’s response.  Charlie had spent hours practicing and perfecting this moving speech in order to ensure that the wording, emotion, and tonality came just perfectly so that he could make it as convincing as possible.
 

“Here it is,” he thought to himself. “Finally, after five years of all-night studying, final examinations, a thousand pots of coffee, and an exorbitant amount of student loans later, I was on the Fast Track to Success!”

His boss leaned back in his chair and, after a moment of reflection, became very serious. He leaned in closer to Charlie and put his arm on his shoulder, as one does when one is about to impart priceless wisdom or give someone an offer they could not refuse.

“Here is what I am going to do for you, Charlie.” He began, pausing for a dramatic effect, “in three months we will be looking for a department manager for the fabrics and crafts department.  Apply for the position in the Personnel Office, and if we choose you for the job, it would mean a $0.50/hour raise, and it’s the first step into a real position of power for you.  And who knows, in ten years you could very well work your way up to store manager, just like me.”

“Fabrics and crafts?” Charlie repeated as he shook my head in disbelief and disappointment.

“Ten years?” He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

Charlie exhaled as his body sank into the chair and the last five years of his working life flashed before his eyes.  Suddenly he felt duped as he remembered all of the motivational posters that were strategically scotch taped to the walls of the employee break room and placed above the computers in the human resource office where employees went for their bi-monthly computer-based job training and brainwashing sessions.    Those posters, promising career advancement and limitless horizons, were what originally attracted his attention and kept his loyalty despite the low hourly wage, long hours with no weekends off throughout his years of employment with the company.    Now? Those posters mocked his innocence and gullibility.  Now? Charlie was a prime candidate for Big International Conglomerates looking for new recruits with his age, education, and who wanted their shot at becoming Successful Business Men and Women; and the best that this schmuck would offer him was department manager of fabrics and crafts?
 For a minute Charlie thought about being angry at his boss, but then reality set in.

“To him I was just another nobody that happened to work at his store.  It wasn’t a question of whether he was taking me seriously and that my education meant nothing to him or not. The question was why should it?  I was easily replaceable. He could easily find a new employee fresh out of high school to replace me, and for a fraction of the cost.  This is Business 101.”

 Anger turned into disappointment, and then into resolution, and Charlie’s boss could see it in his eyes.  He had underestimated why Charlie was sitting in front of him.  Charlie straightened back up and looked his boss directly in the eyes, to which his boss pulled back in his chair not sure what to be prepared for.
 

“I would like a raise.” Charlie retorted. “I work in the most productive department in the store, I do all of the manager’s jobs when he is not there, I organize the lunch breaks, I make sure the surrounding departments are adequately covered, and it is I that all of the other employees come to when they have a problem.”

 “Well…” his boss cleared his throat and replied uneasily, “I am not sure that I can increase your pay.”

 “Why not?” Charlie replied bluntly, holding my eye contact with him. His boss had no response, and he refused to look him in the eyes.

“I’ll tell you what.” He said finally to clear the air, “I will talk with the District Supervisor and clear it though him, okay?” He was trying to signal the end of our meeting and get Charlie out of his office as fast as possible.

“You are the manager of a multi-million dollar revenue store, and responsible for over 500 employees, and yet you have to ask your boss if you can give one of your employees a mere $0.50/hour raise?” Charlie posed and then paused for just enough time to let him think about it, and then gave up.

Charlie wanted to show him that he was not someone to push around, but he didn’t want to appear to deface his authority and risk getting fired.

“Fine.” He said, “Please talk to the district manager for me.  I’d appreciate it.”

“You’re disgruntled, aren’t you?” Charlie’s boss asked him as he stood up and headed toward the door.

“Disgruntled?” Charlie replied despondently, not even looking at him. “Now why would I be disgruntled?”

True Story.

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It was my last night of a study abroad in Paraguay, and I was sitting on the front porch of my hostel having a drink when Brian, another American studying at the university, drunkenly dragged himself onto the porch and fell into the lounge chair opposite the couch with a big bottle of beer.

 “What’s the matter?” I inquired.

 “I am in trouble man.” He responded in-between mouthfuls.

 “This afternoon I went swimming in a nearby lake with some people from class, and one of the girls thought it would be funny to throw my pants into the lake.  My wallet, along with all of my credit cards, my driver’s license, and all of my money fell out of the back pocket and sank to the bottom of the lake.”

But You leave tomorrow.  What are you going to do?” I asked him. 

“That is why I am here.” He admitted. “Can I borrow twenty dollars?  I promise I’ll pay you back tomorrow before I leave.”

“Well, I guess so,” I replied as I reached for my wallet. “But what are you going to do with it?”

“Growing up, my father taught me how to play poker, so I’m going gambling.”

“Good luck.” I replied.  “And don’t worry about paying back the twenty dollars.”

In his already drunken state, I didn’t think they would allow him in the door, let alone to gamble. With that he thanked me, left his empty bottle of beer on the coffee table, and staggered out toward the street. The rest of my night was spent hanging out and saying good-bye to all of the friends I had made during my last month and a half.

 Our vocabulary was limited, and our conversation consisted mainly of a broken combination of English, French, and Spanish, but we stayed up all night sitting on the couch on the porch discussing everything from religion to politics to travelling.  Whenever we were hungry, we would sneak into the kitchen and raid the restaurant’s refrigerator, carving off small enough amounts of cheese, butter, and slices of bread so as not to alert the staff of the theft.  All too quickly the sun came up from nowhere and the time came for me to leave.

 As we sat there enjoying the sunrise, the gate door to the property squeaked open and the outline of a man approached us from across the courtyard.  It was Brian, sober, smiling, and holding two fistfuls of cold, hard cash.  In eight hours he had turned my twenty dollar donation into over $4,500!

“Here you go,” he replied as he thumbed through the hundreds, sifted through the fifties, and finally stopped when he reached the twenty dollar bills.

“Here is your twenty back.”

True Story.

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During my five years of dedicated service to my company, I worked in the electronics deparment with a very diverse team of individuals:

 Stewart, who worked alongside of me in the electronics department, was a scrawny man with clammy skin, a raspy voice, a curly bleach blond mullet, and a proclivity to applying entirely too much brut cologne.  He had aspirations of becoming a Professional Wrestler, and even went so far as to enrol and graduate from a wrestling school and have a custom made spandex uniform designed to match his chosen wrestling personality.

 Sadly, just before his career was about to launch, his partner fell seriously ill, so Stewart abandoned his dream to take care of him.  However, using the money left to him upon the death of a distant relative, he had a professional size wrestling ring installed in his backyard, and every weekend he and his friends would don their homemade uniforms, matching alter-egos, and spend their Saturday afternoons subjecting each other to amateur wrestling moves or impaling each other mercilessly with trash cans, foldable chairs, used car tires, stop signs, household appliances, and various other a sundry.  Monday morning, Stewart would show up for work with a new bruise or bandaged limb along with a completely outrageous story as to how it happened.  I had been invited to partake of the festivities on multiple occasions, but regretfully had to decline, since somebody had to work the weekend shifts.

  Sally was a precious 72 year old woman who transferred into my department from the office supplies department because the hours suited her better.  Several years prior she had survived a severe heart attack, so her mobility was limited.  In addition, she was deaf in one ear and her eyesight was failing her.  To further complicate things, even though she worked in the electronics department, electronics to her might as well have been applied quantum mechanics.  She was content spending the evening working the cash register and tidying up the shelves or alphabetizing the CDs, and leaving Stewart and myself to bitterly field the 400-900 customer questions each night.

 Roger, a.k.a. “Rog,” was a short, chubby guy in his late twenties who worked with us part-time in the evenings and had a second job installing state-of-the-art car stereo systems at his friend’s garage.  He was absolutely worthless.  If he wasn’t talking on his cell phone, he was in another department flirting with the cashiers, or nowhere to be found; but he was so funny, and made so many stupid comments that we kept him around for comedic relief and to make the time pass by more quickly.  One Friday night as Stewart and I were making our way back into the store from having just helped Another Satisfied Customer load their newly purchased television into the back of his pick-up truck, Roger’s car pulled up in front of us, but it wasn’t Roger behind the wheel, it was an angry woman with three young children dangerously un-seat belted in the back seat.

 “Excuuuuuuse me.” She demanded as she manually rolled the passenger window down,“Is Roger working tonight?”

 “Roger? Working?” I responded in a joking manner, “He never works on Friday nights.”

“MmmmmmmHmmmmmm.” She responded as if she already knew the answer to the question. “That’s what I thought.”

With that she threw the car into drive and peeled off, leaving tire marks in front of us, and the three children bouncing around in the back seat.  Stewart gasped and stared at me in horror.

“You idiot!  Do you know what you just did?” He asked me. “Roger told his wife he works Friday nights so he can see his other girlfriends.”

“Well, I guess that means he is in trouble now, huh?” I responded as I laughed my way back into the store. “That’s what he gets.” 

Three hours later Roger’s wife found him standing in the McDonalds parking lot across the street talking on his cell phone.  She first tried to run him over with his own car, and when that failed she threw the car into park, and attacked him with a kitchen knife.  While he managed to get away unscathed, there was no sign of him for an entire week, probably from laying low to avoid his wife, and ultimately our manager had to fire him due to so many unexcused absences.

Jonny, our department manager, was a passive and unnecessarily energetic middle-aged man. His mother was from Tennessee, his father Alabama, and so his accent was a fascinating melange.  One Saturday night around 1:30 in the morning, he was awoken by a phone call.  It was a customer wanting to know if the 19 inch televisions were going to be on sale the upcoming week.  The following Monday morning he came in to work furious.  Apparently Sally had given the customer Jonny’s full name, and the customer looked his home phone number up in the yellow pages.

Willy, who looked like a cheap prototype of Eminem, was hired to replace “Rog” and to help during the Christmas season.  He would have had a permanent job with the company after the holidays if he hadn’t been so hostile.  But then again, three years in prison for aggravated manslaughter would do that to a man.  The toy section was located directly in front of the electronics department.  Willy loathed children.  Mothers, eager to enjoy a break from their undomesticated children, would drop them off in the toy department as if it were a super-daycare center.  At any given time, 15-45 kids ran or rode bicycles unhindered throughout the eight aisles of toy heaven.  However, it was only a matter of time before the flashing lights and sounds emanating from the electronics department lured them over, where they would take turns testing the limits of the speakers on the stereo systems on display or fighting over whose turn it was to play the PS2 or the newly released X-box. 

By his third day of work, Willy had had enough.  I returned from my lunch break to find the department silent and lifeless, and Willy propped against the register thumbing through a gun magazine with a smug look on his face.  Lying beside him was a pair of wire clippers that he had confiscated from the hardware department, and in the trashcan underneath the register were the cords to every single appliance on display in the department.

Jonny was furious, but he was so docile and frightened by the ex-convict, that he never confronted him.  Instead the 43 stereo systems and alarm clocks on display were removed and written off as damaged merchandise, new models were installed, and by the following Monday morning the department was back to working order.  Once the Christmas season was over, Willy was let go.

Finally, there was Marge, the overnight stocker.  Marge was so pessimistic, and complained so much, that you couldn’t help but intentionally do things wrong just to see how far you could provoke her.  She absolutely loathed her job, yet she had been doing it for over sixteen years.  Every night, Marge would make me follow her up and down the aisles of the department like a four year old child, using the handle of her broom to point out spots on the shelves that needed to be fixed before we could go home.  She was a nightly reminder to me as to why I was in university – to get a better job.  My biggest fear was that I would end up like her- stagnate, celebrating the seventeenth year anniversary at a job she hated, and working for a company she despised.

True Story.

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“blakmdjfkam jakldfjakl twenty akdjfakj kakjs klmasdfj he found me.”

Most of what Brad said made no sense, or was a combination of several languages; at least while he was talking to himself.

Jeremy had met Brad at the self-service laundry mat a two minute walk from his apartment.  Recently, due to one of the coldest winters in the past 10 years in France, Brad spent the better part of his afternoons in the laundry mat to keep warm because nobody was there to make him leave.  Brad lived on one of the two the park benches in the plaza just next to the metro stop where Jeremy entered each morning to go to work.

With 60 minutes until his clothes were washed, and a few spare coins in his pocket, Jeremy bought two coffees at the bistro next door and offered one of them to Brad.

“From what I understood of our conversation, Brad was in his 40s, half-Irish half-Russian, and living on the streets for at least 25 years.  He spoke four languages- English, French, Serbian, and Russian, had lived in at least 20 countries in Europe and the Middle-East, and had only been living in Paris for 9 weeks.  Apart from his abnormal decision to live on the street and his frequent tendency to talk to himself, Brad seemed like a reasonably intelligent man with an incredible story to tell.”

From that point on whenever Jeremy met Brad on the street, the two would stop and say hello.  One morning after a particularly cold night, as Jeremy entered the metro, he saw Brad sleeping on the ground next to his usual park bench and, having a few minutes to spare, decided to invite Brad for a coffee to warm him up.

“I called his name, and he didn’t respond.  The closer I got, the weirder I felt.  Finally I tapped him on his shoulder, and he still didn’t move.  He had died during the night – froze to death.  I was shocked.”

A little while later the police arrived and placed Brad’s body in a bag to be taken to the morgue.

“What will happen to him?” Jeremy asked the police officer.

“Well, since he has no identification there isn’t much we can do.  If a family member claims him, then he will be turned over to them.  If not, he will probably be cremated.”

“Life makes no sense.” Jeremy repeated over and over. “That man has been to more places than I can imagine, has experienced so many things in his lifetime than I may never hope to experience in mine,  and seemed so happy, and yet I’m the one with the decent job, the income, and all the possibilities, and I’m miserable.”

True Story.

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Marcus, 28, was both lucky and unlucky. Lucky in that he found a job within months of arriving in London.  Unlucky in that, despite his double major in finance and statistics and two years experience as an assistant financial analyst back in his home country, his job was emptying trash cans for a temp agency.  Lucky in that occasionally his clients included financial institutions, unlucky in that his was neither the position nor the pay for which he had applied.

“It’s funny really, when you think about it; the irony of the situation.  But the job didn’t come without its perks.  I got a first class ticket to the inner workings of my future employers.”

Marcus’ assignments lasted from two weeks to three months at a time, and that was more than enough time to gather the intel that he needed. 

   “I kept a notepad with me at all times and noted the names, job titles, and office numbers of each person whose trash I changed.  If they were sociable I’d talk to them for a few minutes and probe even further.  Usually, by the end of the first week I knew the organizational chart for the entire company.”

One fateful Tuesday afternoon, shortly after beginning a new contract for a financial hedge fund investment company, Marcus emptied the trashcan on the 4^th floor that would change his life.  In it were nearly 200 resumes and print-outs to at least 30 different jobs that were unfilled within the company.  Marcus had stumbled upon the Human Resource’s community trash can!

 “I know it was illegal, but I wasn’t going to spend the rest of my life in this job!  I took those resumes and job announces home and poured over them.  Some of the resumes even had notes and remarks on them from job interviews!  From that point on whenever I came across letters or memos mentioning certain software the company used, transactions I was unfamiliar with, or a list of clients, I’d research and study up on them, and then incorporate them into my resume.”

Marcus, negotiating with the other trash collectors from his company, procured the 4^th floor as part of his daily route to ensure he could stay up-to-date with the hirings and firings of the company, however made sure to stay as invisible as possible, lest an HR employee put 2 and 2 together and realize that their perfect candidate used to be the trashcan cleaner.

“As soon as my contract ended for that company I sent my resume directly to the HR director applying for a vacancy that hadn’t yet become officially listed as available.  I even included the classification number that the company used to classify their jobs.  Heck, I probably knew more about the company than they did.  Within 24 hours I was contacted and asked if I could come in for an interview the next day, which I readily agreed to.”

Because Marcus had applied for a job that hadn’t yet become available, this meant that the HR director was faced with a choice: spend thousands of dollars and countless hours tying up his department sorting through hundreds of resumes and conducting hundreds of job interviews over the next 5-9 weeks, or hire Marcus, a man obviously suited for the job, and be done with it.

The following day Marcus came in for the job interview, the only candidate for the job, and got it.

True Story.

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For Cherise, it started out as just another day of unemployment.  She got up, made sure the kids didn’t miss the bus, made a pot of coffee and spent the rest of her morning scrolling the online job announcement boards.  In the afternoon she would take the car into town to do something – anything – to take her mind off of life and its problems.

One afternoon, about a month and a half into unemployment, Charise wandered into EasyBuy.  She ordered some chicken tenders ($4.58), some potato wedges ($2.33), and 2 packets of barbeque sauce ($.25) from the deli section and sat down in the cafeteria where she grabbed a medium cup and filled it with coke ($1.20).  Looking around, she saw nobody else in the cafeteria and the employees with their backs turned cleaning the counter. 

Cherise wasn’t a bad person, but the idea of wasting her budgeted money on undercooked chicken and mealy potato wedges that had a funny taste didn’t feel worth it.  So since nobody was watching anyway she got up, threw the evidence in the trash can, and walked away.

“She’s left the cafeteria, go get the bags.”

From there, Cherise browsed the furniture department for ideas of how she would decorate her living room when she had the means, and then moved on to the jewelry department.  In the jewelry department she looked at the clearance sale rack and found a damaged watch marked down from $30.00 to only $9.90.  She tried it on.  It fit.  With her watch broken since three weeks, and this one with nothing more than a few measly scratches on it just sitting on the shelf, she reasoned that nobody would probably buy it anyway, so she removed the price tag sticker and wandered off.

“Do you have a visual?  I couldn’t see what she took.”

“It was a wrist watch.  I’ve got the price tag.”

In the layaway section Cherise found an automated ‘job hiring center’ computer with a poster above it alleging that in less than 15 minutes she could apply for an exciting and rewarding career with an array of benefits.  12 minutes later having successfully submitted her application, Cherise headed for her car to make it home before her kids got back from school.

Cherise smiled at the people greeter as she exited the store only to be stopped by two unnecessarily large and intimidating gentlemen.

“EasyBuy Security.  We need to see your receipt for the food and that watch on your wrist ma’am.”

In the back the security personnel questioned her, and having forgotten her identification at home and scared to death that a criminal record would ruin her life, she lied, hoping they would go easy on her and let her go with a warning.

“What is your name?”

“Charonne.  Charonne Byron.”

“And your address?”

“Uhhh… 44, Howard Street.  I live in Calgon, the next town over.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Well, according to the resume you filled out on our computer, your name is Cherise.”

When the police arrived, Cherise was charged for theft of property of $17.06 to be reimbursed to EasyBuy plus 364 days in prison suspended UNLESS she got into more trouble over the next year, a restraining order telling her she if she ever stepped foot on EasyBuy property again that she would be arrested for criminal trespassing, and a criminal record that would haunt her for the rest of her life.

True Story.

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“I’ll have the blueberry pancakes with home fries and a mug of joe.” Sarah told the waiter.

Sarah met her husband in university, and due to a death in his family, she agreed to move to Paris, France so they could be closer to his family.  Sarah had majored in business and minored in Spanish, but the only job she could find was a part-time job as overnight receptionist at a two-star hotel.

“There is an American restaurant in Paris, and sometimes I like to go there after work on my way home.  This one particular Friday morning, I overheard a group of three men in the talking in Spanish at the table behind me.”

Two of the men were Spanish, and they were having a Q&A session with the third man, an American.  After a few minutes of eaves-dropping, Sarah realized it was a job interview.

The two men worked for an import/export company in Barcelona, Spain, were looking to open an office in Paris to extend their operations, and during their brief business trip to Paris they were interviewing candidates.  As Sarah ate breakfast she listened in on the interview.

“This job was right up my alley, but I’m wearing an old and faded rolling stones t-shirt and jeans, and look tired and horrible after work, how could I introduce myself? And when?  And is that even appropriate?”

The man’s job interview lasted longer than Sarah’s meal, so she stayed there drinking coffee, listening to the interview, and since the restaurant had wifi and she had her laptop, she read up on the company right there behind the candidates back waiting for him to finish.

20 minutes later the interview was over, the candidate, having been informed that so far he was the most suited candidate they had interviewed so far, shook their hands and headed out the door with a smile on his face.  This was her chance.

“Excuse me,” Sarah addressed the two men in Spanish as she spun around to face them. “That guy seems like a good candidate, but the problem is that because he’s American, you’ll have to spend a lot of time and money to negotiate with the French immigration office to obtain his work visa and then get him installed in France.  What you need is a person already living in Paris that already has a work visa.”

The two men looked at each other quizzically.

“And do you have somebody in mind?”

“Yes I do,”Sarah replied.“The message you received five minutes ago that made your blackberry ring was my resume.  I got your email address from your website.”

After reviewing her resume on his telephone, they conducted a mini-interview with her; she thanked them for their time, and then went home.  Three weeks later the company contacted her and offered her the job.

True Story.

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Having grown up as a preacher’s kid and massively influenced by the missionaries she frequently met, Rebecca majored in theology with dreams of becoming a missionary in a foreign country.  In 2001, at the dawn of 2002, Rebecca and three of her friends decided to celebrate New Year’s in Hong Kong, China.

 Sitting in the reception area of their hotel discussing their plans, an American boy caught their eye as he entered the hotel wearing a uniform, obviously an employee of the hotel.  He paused briefly enough to exchange the “Don’t I know you from somewhere” glance, and then continued to the reception desk to begin his shift.

 10 minutes later Rebecca finally got up and walked over to the familiar American boy.

 20 seconds of comparing their lives later, the answer hit him.

“Recolt University.”

“That’s it!” She exclaimed.

 John, the American boy, an alumnus from Recolt University, graduated in 2000 while Rebecca was a sophomore, and moved to China to get his masters in international business.  While they had never formally met, their university campus was small enough that they had crossed paths on many occasions, and even knew some of the same people.

 “I’d love to live in China!” Rebecca, now a senior about to begin her final semester, told John.

“Well,” he responded, “I found a job through the Chinese embassy that gave me a visa, and that is how I came over.  I’ll email you the website. It’s not too late and if you apply now, you could be here in China in September.”

 The two parted ways, John emailed Rebecca the website, and Rebecca applied for the program and was accepted.  John had a small apartment, and knowing from experience how difficult it is to get settled down in a foreign country, he offered Rebecca to stay at his apartment for free while she looked for a place to stay, as long as she didn’t mind sharing the bed with him.  Rebecca, being from a devout religious family that frowned on a woman living with any man but her husband, resolutely refused and checked into a cheap hotel until she could find a female roommate to live with.

  “I can’t believe how hard it is to find a place to stay!” Rebecca complained a month later over coffee.

  “I warned you.” John responded. “That’s why I offered to let you stay at my place for free.  And I also offered to introduce you to everyone I knew so you could make friends and maybe find a second job and make life easier.  But you never returned my calls.”

  “I know.” Rebecca responded. “But I wanted to make it on my own.”

“Well, welcome to the harsh reality that the American ideals of building your own empire by your own sweat and sacrifice is a lie.  You can’t do it by yourself.  Religion will get you so far, but you need other people to help you.”

 Two weeks later Rebecca stopped by John’s hotel on her way to the airport to say good-bye.  Unable to find a place to stay, having no more money to continue staying at her hotel, and still unwilling to share a bed with a man that was not her husband, Rebecca’s father bought her a return ticket home.

True Story.

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When living internationally, one of the best places to meet foreigners is at the local pub.  In 2005 I met a young 25-year-old Swedish man, whom we’ll call Joseph, a recent art graduate, in a bar in Paris France during happy hour.  I sat down next to him just as he was bragging to the bartender that he had just quit his job and was about to take a two-year paid vacation in England to launch his career in the film industry.  After 5 pints of beer, Joseph gladly told me his secret.

Shortly after graduating in late 2004 with a degree in cinematography, he moved to France in search of work.  Six unsuccessful months of unemployment later and his savings nearly depleted, Joseph decided to try a different, slightly more unethical technique.  He threw away his old resume and created an entirely bogus resume, complete with fake qualifications, working experience, and credentials.

 Even though France and Sweden are both members of the European Union, and only a few hours away from each other by train, there is still a language barrier between them because most businesspeople speak English or Spanish as a second language, not Swedish, and he knew he could use that to his advantage.  All of Joseph’s new references and contact information from “previous employers” were actually his friends back home in Sweden that had been instructed with what to say in the unlikely event a potential employer actually tried to follow up on the truthfulness of his claims.  Suddenly job interviews started piling up, and within a month he managed to obtain a managerial position at Dupont Bank levels above his qualification.  Even though Joseph had majored in cinema, he did remember a little bit from the introductory courses he took in micro- and macroeconomics, and since his job involved supervising a team of three, any difficult tasks he couldn’t handle, he could simply delegate them to his subordinates.  That is what managers do anyway, right?

 From day one of employment Joseph, knowing that France was a socialist country and having studied up on how their legal system worked, knew that there were legal employment-related consulting associations where he could call up and get counseling for free, and he began surreptitiously setting the company up for an eventual lawsuit.  Three months into his new job at Dupont Bank, and shortly after barely passing his 90-day trial period, Joseph approached the company with a lawyer and over 40 pages of legal violations along with accusations of discrimination charges, and he walked away from the company with nearly 20,000€ in out-of-court settlement fees, plus government assistance for up to two years while he was unemployed and “looking for work”.

 At that time unemployed could keep in touch with the unemployment agency via filling out a monthly online form, and as long as Joseph gave his friend a cut of the unemployment check to fill the forms out for him, Joseph could focus his time in England doing a paid internship for a film director he had found while he was surfing the internet during the few months he was working at Dupont Bank.

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Bianca had followed her boyfriend from Columbia while he did a year of studies for his doctorate.  Since tourist visas were only valid for three months at a time and she was planning on staying in Paris for a year, she decided to study French at a university that would also give her a student work visa instead of taking a chance and working in France illegally.  Having paid 1200€ for the first semester in tuition + accommodation for the first few months + the price of the round trip ticket, Bianca and her boyfriend arrived in Paris and shortly thereafter she began school.

Class was early in the morning, from 8:15 – 10:15, and although a student visa allowed her to work only 18 hours/week maximum, she found a Colombian business owner that didn’t mind letting her work full-time as his secretary and pay her under the table.  Unfortunately this meant that student visa related meetings would have to be scheduled in the morning during class hours before work.  But missing a few days of class is understandable when one is meeting with the government, isn’t it?

Despite studying at such a prestigious university, she was unimpressed with the large class size and inadequate structure of the lessons.

“The professor’s competency test each Friday was even pointless because while the professor was out of the room, everyone cheated. So the professor would assume that because everyone scored so well on the exam, they understood the lessons so he kept teaching at the same pace, while my grades kept struggling.”

To renew a student visa from one semester to the next, you need an official letter from the school stating that you successfully completed the requirements for the class, and did not miss too many days.  Without this letter, her visa renewal would be rejected and she would risk losing her job, and may even have to return to Columbia while her boyfriend stayed in Paris.

Bianca approached the professor after the second test and was brushed off.  When she complained about the cheating again after the third test, the professor wouldn’t even listen to her.  The following Monday when she the got the results of her test back, not only did she fail, but the test also included a note from the teacher:

“I am not unaware that many of the other students in class are cheating, and that doesn’t concern you.  You concentrate on the lessons and let me do my job.”

The professor did comment about the cheating, however took no action to prevent it, so the cheating remained consistent.  With each week that past she continued struggling through the grammar lessons, borderline between passing and failure.  To make matters worse she had missed six days of class because of meetings for her student visa, and her professor always made sure to point out that she was absent.

The week before her final exam, and two weeks before her meeting with the government to renew her student visa, she approached the professor to find out what her GPA was, and what her score would need to pass the class.

“The professor, without any remorse, told me that even if I scored perfect on the final exam, that she did not feel right about passing me, and suggested I re-take the course.  And then she pointed out that I had missed six days of class, which was one day above the limit.”

But Bianca wasn’t about to lose a year in Paris and throw away thousands of euros because of some inconsiderate language teacher, so she, on the advice of an Irish student in her class, enrolled at a school that was half the price of her current school, had smaller class sizes, and also offered student work visas.  All that she had to do now was figure out how to get the official letter from the university to renew her visa.

After the final exam Bianca defiantly walked into the professor’s office, removed her test from week three from her backpack, the test with the teacher’s stern note on it, and bluffed:

“Since our last conversation I’ve talked to a lawyer, another professor, and two administrators at this university about this unprofessional note you wrote me, and if I do not pass, I swear to God I will sue you and make sure you lose your teaching license.”

The following Wednesday, two days before her student visa meeting, the results of the semester were waiting for her in her mailbox when she returned home from work:  she passed with a “B”.

True Story.

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Ever since Svetlana could remember she wanted to become a model. Throughout her teenage years her parents entered her into a few local beauty pageants, however coming from a poor family in a small town in Southern Croatia didn’t give her much exposure. Finally at the age of 17 she had a break. One of her beauty pageants made the news, and a modeling agency based in Paris was interested in her.

Her parents, looking out for her best interests, made her wait until she had finished high school before taking the job. Over the next eight months her and her family saved enough money to pay for her flight and several months living accommodations until she was up on her feet with work.

At this time Croatia was not yet part of the European Union, so Svetlana needed a work visa to move to France, a 900€ investment for which the agency was willing to pay. The first few months she had several photo shoots with some local photographers to build up her book, and met many other models through her agency. Some of her model jobs involved attending parties at night, wearing specially selected clothes, and simply being present, smiling, and available to take photos with the guests. Apart from the occasional drunk or arrogant man, it was an easy way to earn a living, university was within reach, and her parents were proud of her.

Five months later, shortly after she turned 18, her assignments started getting a little sketchier, and she started feeling uncomfortable with some of the demands of her clients. After several strong requests to do what it takes to make the paying clients happy, the ‘model agency’ finally let her go on the grounds that she had gained too much weight and could no longer to her job.

“I was barely 18 years old, a long way away from my family, and on the street in a foreign country without a job. After a few difficult weeks one of my friends found me a job as a photographer’s assistant and shortly after I signed with a professional, legitimate model agency. I’ve been modeling three years now, and am half way through university. I never told my parents what happened.”

True Story.

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