How it feels to be made redundant

As they were taking you on, good times were rolling. Returns were high, risks were underestimated, salaries and bonuses were enviable. Then the housing bubble in the United States burst and fallouts flied even to Poland. The industry faced a slowdown and felt the pressure to economise. To make things worse, just before the outbreak of the crisis your company was about to fully merge with another one. Unfortunately, due to Competition watchdog’s objection, the takeover was only partly brought off, the buyer picked the best divisions and rest was put up for sale. It soon found a new owner; the sucker was ready to pay over the odds for the piece of shit which used to be one of the leading and most reputable players on the market.

The new owner introduced its principles and began to turn the business around, despite really adverse market conditions. Faced with the choice either to shape up and keep your mouth shut, or to ship out and begin to look for a new job, on the market flooded with supply of similarly profiled professionals. You soldiered on and they appreciated your effort. Soon you got promoted and received a pay rise, while over 10% of the staff were laid off during the first wave of employment restructuring. Then ensued the second wave of lay-offs. Several people around were fired, but this was not your problem. You held down the job and performed well, so you did not need to be afraid.

As the economic recovery begin to fade and sovereign crisis in Europe loomed more perilous, your company, despite everything, announced expansion plans. The whole market learnt who was going to be the growth leader, competitors looked with some disdain on your company and slowly began to downsize to retain profitability during economic slowdown.

Reality check came a few months later. There have been some mistakes regarding the strategy made, but executives found the scapegoats in those who had been fired some time earlier. Review of recent performance figures proved the growth strategy fizzled out (unless you define growth as shrinking). Time to bite the bullet has come…

Hearsay over the third wave of cutbacks had been heard long before, but the press release saying this would happen and unveiling details of the plan was issued during the trading session. Shares of you company soared at the news of cost-cutting plan, but retreated to pre-news level by the end of the day. After all investors and speculators know this boat is bound to sink.

Following the lay-off announcement and recent 10 PLN pay rises, motivation among the staff fell dramatically. Nobody felt what they were doing was making sense, the company was going nowhere. Instead, everyone began to fret over the imminent job loss and make fun of the under-performing business.

In a message to employees the executives promised people will be notified in advance of their redundancy, treated with dignity and will receive the proper support and a generous severance package.

As time went by, only the very last promise has not been gone back on. How your fateful day looked depended on your position.

If you were a rank and file, head of your department took you to a room where you also met your HR manager. They told to sit back and handed you an envelope containing all documents linked to job contract termination. They informed they were too many of you in the team and you were selected to continue your career outside this organisation. You could either agree on a conditions proposed by the company or leave with no severance package. So you agreed obediently and got informed by when you can still work and hand your duties over to another employee and sign up for a course “how to write a CV successfully” (you had not been on the market for over 10 years so you did not know or have forgotten how to do it).

If you were a manager, you the invitation for a meeting when they were giving you notice looked similar. Severance package also did, but managers were given a very short deadline by which they had to pack their stuff and go away. Usually it takes two days to close their duties and say goodbye to your colleagues, then you can take your due days off and are requested not to come to work at all. You are still paid and are not allowed to take up a new job with a competitor, but your employer clearly tells you they do not want to see your face any longer. Slap on the face slightly worse than 10 PLN pay rise.

You colleagues seem to sympathise with you, but deep down they are happy it is you, not them. After all they are no irreplaceable people, those who stay on will have it much worse since now. The company has to grow anyway, only labour force harnessed to propel the growth will be less numerous. This is not the tragedy, they will have to work even longer and harder, in other words, more efficiently. Touch luck…

While you are gone you realise you are out on the limb – nobody needs you, market is full of professionals like you, fired by other companies in the industry. Your severance package will help you scrape along and keep paying off your mortgage for a few months or even a year, if you decrease your standard of living. What then – who cares… Maybe on the occasion of the next wave of lay-offs, set to come next year, somebody will mention you and wonder how you are doing.

To make it clear, I have not been fired and I have been told I will not lose the job under restructuring programme this year. But next year opportunities may unfold, with a more generous severance package…

Any similarities between real companies and event are totally accidental. The story is an absolutely fictitious figment of my imagination…

The rear view mirror

Some nasty men claim women use it to tweak with their make-up and apart from this the mirror attached to the windscreen is of no use for them. In fact drivers who do not use all three mirrors to control situation on the road almost constantly are more likely to cause an accident than those who use it as prescribed. Apart from keeping track of traffic when the car is in motion, it is worthwhile to look in the mirror inside the vehicle to look at other car users while, for example, waiting for the traffic light to turn green.

Until some time ago, I could enjoy typical sights – women enhancing their make-up, men shaving their facial hair, humans of both sexes talking on their mobile phones, smoking or having their fingers exploring the contents of their noses. The times of ordinary views in the mirror are gone. It’s getting worse…

I can distinguish two types of drivers: most travel on their own, minority take passengers. The former appear either impatient or jaded. Those for who every second is precious would be the happiest if they could push other vehicles away, faces of the more bored drivers show less and less interest in what is going on around – they drive because they have to, it can be judged by their faces they do a routine activity. I usually commute on my own and usually lean towards the “jaded” type… Aggression behind the wheel is not a good advisor…

More interesting are interactions between people travelling in the same vehicle, and here my observations are more disturbing. The first instance is no communication at all – a car is moving behind me for a longer period of time and its passengers show no sign of conversation. I assume they are not strangers for each other / one another, so I suppose it would be natural to talk. It does not happen. I also quite often notice whole families (parents and children) occupying one car and each member of family is doing something else – a driver focuses on traffic, one of the passengers looks outside a window, another reads a book or fiddles with a mobile phone. In times when people spend most of the time outside home, commuting together seems a good opportunity to talk, but for many silence seems to be a preferable option. Or am I the only one to find this strange?

The second instance are arguing people – more and more often I can see in my rear view mirror couples falling out – yelling, waving their hands, their faces getting red. The same applies to parents driving their children to school. For smaller children the case is usually that the unruly offspring wind up their parents. Teenagers in turn behave seemingly properly but fall out over more serious issues. Shouts and gesticulation also in abundance.

Even leaving out the fact quarrelling distracts drivers and may contribute to dangerous situations on the road, my conclusions are unsettling – a malaise overwhelms the society…

I used to commute by public transport only, I still cover more kilometres in public service vehicles than by car each working day and I find populations of car commuters and public transport users entirely different. Generally speaking, those who get around by car are wealthier than those using the public transport. It does not apply to people who live in areas with excellent transport links into centre of Warsaw who use underground as a faster and more convenient for getting into town, but the regularity remains. Judging by what faces of people sitting in other cars and faces of fellow bus / tram / underground passengers express, I infer those who take the public transport are happier than car users.

Some explanations could be found right away – if you travel in a public space with your family, you are generally less eager to wash your dirty linen than in the private space of your depreciating tin. Going further, money does not have to bring happiness; in many cases wealth, if not accompanied by what really matters in life (bonds with family and friends, self-fulfilment, etc.) can bring discontent. The more you have, the more you want to have and the less you are satisfied with what you have achieved, the less you appreciate what you possess, while you should.

For an upbeat ending – I do not consider what I spot among fellow road users significantly upsetting. The sample I observe is not representative for the whole Polish society, although indeed people’s moods have seen better days. It seems the second wave of financial distress (debt crisis in the euro zone) will hit Poland more severely than the aftermaths of banking crisis in 2008. Poland’s GDP is not going to shrink, again, unemployment is unlikely to soar, but is poised to go up, but consumer confidence that kept the Polish economy afloat in early 2009 gives signs of dwindling. More people are afraid of losing their jobs, households are less eager to finance their consumption with debts, purchasing power is on decline due to cost-push inflation (higher prices of food, utilities and fuel, partly owing to excessive volume of speculation on commodity markets and “thanks” to weak PLN, which now, when corporate sector is not throttled by over-hedging, boosts our competitiveness), as growth of salaries has ceased to catch up with the pace in which prices of basic goods mount. Insecurity can be felt in the air (brutal lay-offs are under way in my company), so gloom is likely to prevail and because in economics agents’ actions bring forth a mechanism of self-fulfilling prophecy, I expect harder times than in 2008-2009, not in figures issued by the Stats office, but among ordinary people.

Next week – a short guide to being fired in a corporation – onlooker’s impressions.

In two weeks – road construction programme review at the onset of football championship – will Warsaw be linked to European network of motorways by then?

To the ones for who I’m better off

At times when nothings turns out the way I would like to, when life seems and endless way uphill, when again I feel out of luck, I try to put my problems into a different perspective, to discern how trifling they are compared to other people’s predicaments. I am dedicating this post to (order totally random):

- the ones who have experienced any kind of material deprivation,
- the homeless,
- orphans, or semi-orphans, who have sold at least one of their parents in their childhood or youth,
- the disabled and their families,
- the blind, the deaf,
- the ones who have not had the luck to be born in a democratic country,
- the ones who have taken out a 100% LtV mortgage loan in CHF in first half of 2008 and are now stuck with outstanding debt twice as high as market value of their property (suckers…)
- culprits of traffic accidents,
- the ones who have to commute longer distances than me and travel in less convenient conditions,
- the ones who have never been abroad,
- the ones who haven’t been clever enough to get in to a renowned university,
- the ones who, despite their brightness could earn a university degree, but come from such poor families that it has been out of reach for them,
- the ones who have lost more than equivalent of their two monthly salaries on the stock market,
- the ones who have been through a bereavement after a departure of a close relative or friend for reasons other than old age,
- the ones who have suffered famine or, thirst,
- the ones who suffer from incurable diseases,
- senile old people the ones who are no longer self-supporting,
- the ones who have never experienced a reciprocated love,
- those who have hurt someone else really badly,
- the ones who have no savings,
- the ones who will never afford to buy their own property or a new car,
- the imprisoned,
- those forsaken or rejected by family and friends on account of being different,
- the mentally ill,
- those suffering from cancer,
- the ones who earn less than me (sounds absurdly, but it refers to over 80% of Poles employed under job contracts),
- the unemployed (especially graduates),
- those who will be fired in the coming year and have no financial resources to fall back on, or have financial liabilities to fulfil,
- students from poor families the ones who have to save on everything to pay for their education
- everyone who barely makes ends meet,
- live in countries where free speech is forbidden,
- the ones whose job does not bring them satisfaction,
- families of addicts,
- the ones who have lived through warfare,
- those who have run up debts they will be paying off till the end of their days,
- children bullied by their parents,
- the ones not capable of mastering a foreign language to a level of fluency,
- the ones who have to look after their ill relatives day and night,
- the ones who cannot have children, but want offspring like nothing on earth,
- who have lost all their belongings in a natural disaster,
- the obese,
- the (secondary) illiterate,
- those who cannot afford to go on holiday and spend it at home (more than 50% of working Poles),
- the ones who have been libelled or slandered,
- the ones whose mistakes led to irreparable losses (including human lives),
- the ones who have complexes on account of their appearance or cannot stand their own reflection in the mirror,
- blue-collar workers who have to plug away outside when in temperatures of –15C or +30C,
- exploited workers, underpaid for their job.

So every time when your life is not a bed of roses, think it could be much worse and think how much you can still lose. The list above could be longer, but based on the above, over 90% of people in my country have it worse than me. I keep it in mind and the awareness of this holds me back from griping about my fate. If your life is not ideal, judge, whether you have more to lose or to win. Be happy with what you have, take pleasure in everything you can, grasp every small joy, look at the bright side of life. Be aware there are billions of people worse-off and try to sympathise with them.

Europe is quivering, while Poland is holding strong.

It has been kind of nerve-racking week on financial markets. Last weekend abounded in political events that could affect the future of the eurozone – presidential election was held in France and Greeks elected members of their parliament.

The latter has drawn much more controversy than the former. The south-European nation has already had enough of severe austerity programme pursued by the previous government and this time backed mostly the parties that have opposed aggressive retrenchments, without which Greek government would have gone bankrupt long ago. Votes have been scattered among many parties, yet they have failed to form a coalition. Today leaders of victorious parties and the president are making a last-ditch attempt to bring together a government. Most observers hold the view the talks are doomed to bring no coveted results and new election will be called for June.

It is almost sure the same parties will win the election, only share of votes gleaned by each of them might differ. At the end of the day, populist politicians elected by irate Greeks will be trying to pull back from the spending cuts that on one hand reduce the pace in which Greek public debt increases, but on the other send the Greek economy into a deeper recession.

Greek bondholders have already agreed on a debt swap with a haircut of 53.5%, yet even such debt relief has not put the Greek government out of trouble. Its indebtedness is whopping and its capacity to pay it off in foreseeable future is highly questionable. Since the very inception of the Greek crisis, it has been clear that insolvency of Greece is just a matter of time. One of the rating agencies downgraded Greece’s rating to C, pointing out, rightly, the big write-down is in fact a form of controlled default. The full default, encompassing freezing almost all public spending is conceivable. This scenario can materialise if the new government backs out of austerity measures on which financial drip from the EU and the IMF is conditioned. If access to this money is cut off (such move is at creditors’ discretion), Greece will be unable to service its debts and maybe this is what many Greeks want. Probably they do not care they would bear a brunt of insolvency, since suffer anyway, so why not spite creditors? When I look at that uncivilised nation, I cannot believe those barbarians accustomed to living beyond their means claim to be heirs of cradle of democracy. No, these must not be the descendants of ancient Greeks.

So called ‘financial markets’ are totally aware Greece is even no longer on its knees; it is lying with its head buried in the sand and breathing through a pipe held by the EU and the IMF, consequently I dare to claim a full-blown bankruptcy would not trigger a sell-off similar to that witnessed in August 2011. There is no evidence for it, but at the end of last year I predicted an ‘earthquake’ on financial markets in the second quarter of 2012. I can concede my mistake if WIG20 does not fall below 2,000 points. Now it needs to go down by some 7% - 8% to hit that barrier so the this can done within a one-day solid tumble.

In France Mr Hollande deposed Mr Sarkozy from the presidential office. Markets’ reaction was anything but amiable. Many feared the new president would soon set out to follow out his leftist agenda, including increasing tax rate for the richest and imposing an extra tax on profitable companies which lay off workers to push up their earnings. I have never really liked Mr Sarkozy, his celebrity-like style of wielding power was not my kind and I will not cry after him. With time some elements of leftist agenda take my fancy. Marginal tax rate of 75% is an exaggeration which will rather cause the wealthiest people to migrate to the UK than help raise tax revenues, but to my proposal of tax system based on flat rate and high tax allowance I would add a higher tax bracket for individuals earning more than six times average salary. I also cannot resist liking for an additional tax on companies firing staff to boost profits. In the coming week my company is announce who will be laid off. At least they pledged to give very generous severance packages and some employees are coming forward to leave…

But wait, wait, who gave ‘financial markets’ power to punish people for the choices they are making? I know yields on government debt should be correlated with risk of its default, I know valuation of stocks depends on tax rate, but do not some price movements express markets’ displeasure? Who gave them authority to mete out punishments? Is this part of legacy of Thatcherism commendable?

Meanwhile on Wednesday the central bank of Poland raised its benchmark interest rate by 25 basis points, to 4.75%. While many European economies are threatened with recession, for Poland inflation above central bank’s target of 2.50% +/- 1.00 p.p., is a bigger problem than economic slowdown (projected GDP growth in 2012 is ca. 3%, 1.3 percentage points lower that actual GDP growth in 2011). Again I’m proud Poland’s monetary authorities have proved a forward-looking wisdom. Given the fragility of economic conditions with our trade partners, it is not clear whether the hike was just a one-off move, or a beginning of the second part of monetary tightening cycle initiated in January 2011. For sure higher rates mean good news for savers who keep their money in banks and slightly worse for all borrowers.

Depositors can cheer up even more, as Polish banks have begun to adjust their funding structure to Basel III requirements, taking effect on 1 January 2013. In practice this means many banks will have to match maturities of their assets (what they lent to households and enterprises) and liabilities (what they owe depositors or creditors). For many banks this might be a bit of a problem, as they finance long-term assets (i.e. 30Y mortgages) with short-term liabilities (i.e. up to 1Y time deposits). This means banks will be competing to garner long-term deposits from the market by bidding higher interest rates and will have to cut down on long-term lending, which essentially are mortgage loans. This means excellent news for the housing market. Property prices in Warsaw have fallen off the peak in early 2008 by some 15% in nominal terms (30% in real terms) and the market is stuck in a standstill. Banks, in order to comply with supervisor’s regulations, have curbed mortgage lending, creditworthiness criteria have been tightened, and buyers have finally noticed property prices are still steep, especially when compared to earnings. So the market may be heading only in one direction. The process of adjustment will take a few months, as sellers are unwilling to take on board that their hapless assets’ (for which many of them paid over the odds) intrinsic values are much lower than asking prices and buyers refuse to pay so much, or their mortgage applications are turned down, so few transactions are finalised. This also proves mortgage availability is the key driver of price trends on property market. May the adjustment run well and property prices should decrease by some 20% within two years – the substantial decline which began in 2011 will continue (transaction price of 1 sqm in Warsaw dropped by 11% year-on-year in April 2012), but fundamental factors point the pace of decline should speed up! Great news!

Kabaty crash site

Probably no other country in the EU can boast about such long weekend falling on such beautiful season of year, as Poland, which has bank holidays on 1 May and 3 May. This year arrangement of days was extremely favourable – with days off work falling on Tuesday and Thursday, half of the country were on holiday and the rest ticking over. Given the limited number of paid holiday, I decided to stay ‘on duty’ at work over the whole week. This strategy has several upsides – little is going on in the office, one can knock on later, knock off earlier and go out for a lunch for an hour, traffic on the roads is sparse. The only downside is that public service vehicles run according to weekend timetable and if someone saves on fuel, getting to work partly by public transport is longer than door-to-door trip by car.

This year not only the calendar was on Poles’ side, also the weather couldn’t be more conducive for leisure. An unusual for late April / early May heat wave arrived to Poland on Friday before the long weekend and lasted whole seven days. For most of the weekend day-times were hitting +30C and sunshine was not disrupted by a single raindrop. In early February, when temperatures were dropping below –20C, I promised myself not to grumble about the heat. Indeed, below minus twenty it was worse.

Looking around and judging by the picture painted by the media, it can be inferred that Poles are off for a care-free week-long barbecue, devouring warm sausages and sipping cold beer. Not a good form of pastime activity to be endorsed. Popular culture promotes unhealthy lifestyle rather when physical exercise!

OK, I also ate some sausages, drank a few beers, but haven’t succumbed to the notion that life’s easy. Even at the time when almost everyone’s laid-back, pushes aside mundane worries and laps up beauty of the spring, more serious issues must not disappear from the foreground. It’s not about seeking troubles intently, it’s about discerning complexity of the world and remembering about its sadder side.

On Thursday I finally celebrated cycling shake-down day in season 2012. Head down, it kicked off late, the first opportunity was missed on 17 March and then either weather or some timesucks were keeping my off my bike. For starters, I ventured where I had planned to go since my trip to Las Kabacki two months earlier. And the time for the trip could only be slightly better.

Next Wednesday Poles will be commemorating the 25th anniversary of the most tragic airplane disaster in the history of Polish aviation. Many of would argue the Smolensk crash was the most terrible, as many of the fatalities were eminent statesmen, however in terms of death toll the Kabaty plane crash was almost two times more tragic (183 vs. 96).

Shame on me, I have to admit this was my first visit to the place where Il-62 hit the ground. This time before setting off I checked on the map how to get there and didn’t roam in vain in search of the monument as I did in March.

Getting there is a piece of cake. Inhabitants of southern part of Zielony Ursynów and adjacent villages are in a privileged position. You just need to turn into ul. Jagielska from ul. Puławska and walk / cycle / drive (the last should be deleted, as inappropriate) some two kilometres east to find a green gate closing off a path to the forest (to the right – photo taken while riding, hence blurred). Cycle or walk two hundred metres into the wood and soon you reach the destination.

If you’re heading from proper Ursynów, you’re still in the luck – your trail will be longer, but you ma enjoy a pleasurable walk / ride through the forest (especially delightful on a sweltering day, when trees give shelter from the heat) and signage should lead you to the place.

The crash site is commemorated by a small, inconspicuous clearing (here for a moment unattended). The place is arranged to play host to few visitors and brings out a conductive atmosphere to contemplate the fragility of human life. I have to say all tourist stopping over there behaved appositely.

Two artefacts on the site are a stone plaque, with names of all fatalities inscribed on it and a cross. Photographs of both objects prove my photographing skills are inadequate – I didn’t manage to snap up-to-the-mark shots on a sunny day in a shaded place. With hindsight a good incentive to tweak with my compact Canon’s settings or a reason to upgrade. The first name on a plaque is captain Zygmunt Pawlaczyk who piloted the ill-fated plane. There is a street named after him in a nearby Ursynów. Many people owe him they are alive, as captain Pawlaczyk, having realised he wouldn’t have a chance to land the plane in Okęcie airport, decided to drop the plane into an uninhabited area, without risking lives of more innocent people.

The cross has been put up by members of a local parish in Pyry. A small Jesus crucified on it, a small wreath laid in front of. In a few days there will be lots of flowers and candles all over the place and then someone will tidy it up and only silence and rare visitors will haunt the place.

A notice attached to a tree informs two masses commemorating the victims will be administered on Wednesday. I’m looking forward to seeing archival TV coverages of the disaster. Few can be found on youtube although TV reporters have covered the story quite informatively. Censorship apparatus in late 1980s eased off and news of the crash appeared in the media immediately. Truth wasn’t said in the context of co-operation with Soviet engineers, probably accountable for the glitch which led to a engine breakage, who wriggle out of helping Poles investigate true causes of the engine breakage and denied their responsibility for the faulty part.

I’ll surely be visiting the place at least once a year, and on one of 10th days of April in the coming years I’ll take a trip to Smolensk. Regardless of political views, each Pole who can afford to travel there (provided Russian visa is obtainable) should to pay homage to the ones whose lives were shattered in the Smolensk muds…

Indecency stretched to the limit

Some of the readers of this blog know my name and surname; some of the readers know where I work and what position I hold. For the rest of the world, I try to appear as an anonymous ex-student of economics, employed by one of “Polish” banks. Rationale for concealing my identity? A down-to-earth reason is that I need publicity like a hole in the head and generally tend to avoid situations when the world revolves around me. The other motive cropped up out of the blue in 2010, when I had to familiarise with some of the internal policies (containing several dos and don’ts) set out by the corporation I work for, including the blogging policy.

At first glance it seems absurdly silly that a company may require its employees to stick to regulations concerning limitations in blogging, but if a company wants to avoid adverse publicity from its employees, maybe this is the case. I plead I haven’t learnt by heart all the drivel written there, but I keep in mind that: 1) as an employee I can’t write anything about my company nor my job (event if doesn’t involve letting in on any secrets) and sign it with my name, even if I don’t mention the name of my employer, 2) as an anonymous Internet user I don’t have to refrain from mentioning my employer’s name but I’m not advised to spread negative opinions about its business. So to comply with all the regulations there’s no author’s name, nor a company name.

If someone wishes bad on me, feel free to send link to this post to the HR department of my company. This would surely help bring forward the inevitable bitter end of the shattered relationship between by employer and me. Anyway I would appreciate if you let me put myself out of this misery on my own and only after I find a better place, which is not that easy, hence I soldier on…

This might be a matter of corporate culture. They vary across the world and companies and models of socio-economic order. In American companies direct relationships, hire-and-fire approach, flexibility and opportunities to climb the ladder of career quickly are quite typical. You can like it, or detest it, fit in, or struggle to find your way inside a specific business. But is decency, a backbone of moral fibre, a part of corporate culture? Back in 2008 when several banks at the verge of bankruptcy had to be bailed out from taxpayers’ purses, executives’ bonuses and salaries outraged everyone. Do you remember where cries of anger were the loudest? These were the United Kingdom and the United States, not only because deregulated banking industries have grown too big too fail there, but also because (Bank executive’s salary / average salary in the national economy) multipliers in Anglo-Saxon countries were incomparably higher the in more civilised countries.

Many times I’ve asserted on this blog I’m glad I live in Poland, not in the United States. I also stressed the soundness of Polish banking system, prudently managed, wisely regulated and lacking depravities typical for developed investment banks. My general take on the Polish commercial banking has not changed. I still hold it as a whole in high esteem, there are just some exceptions that prove the rule…

One of the differences between Polish and American banking is a position of banks and its employees in the national economy. Financial sector in Poland is not a significant contributor to wealth creation as in Anglo-Saxon countries. Moreover, Polish commercial bankers, unlike their colleagues from investment banks, are ordinary people who don’t earn zillions and whose conduct is usually governed by moral principles, not only by pursuit of profits.

In Anglo-saxon investment banking, weaselling into the industry was (is?) one of few ways to grow rich quickly and legally (this doesn’t imply ‘in morally acceptable way). In Poland, if your expertise is above-average, you can count on above-average earnings, but don’t expect appallingly high salary. In investment banking, profits are distributed between: executives, employees and owners, the rest of the society and the state do not benefit from their activity. In Poland these are only executives and (foreign) owners that reap profits from banks’ activity.

To cut this long considerations short, I’m getting at the question whether a company can prosper at the expense of its employees? How long can you exploit workforce before they show you their middle fingers and quit? How big gaps between executives’ and rank-and-files’ remunerations are acceptable? Bigger responsibilities and higher qualifications must mean the higher your position, they higher your earnings must be, this is natural. Only the size of disproportion in earnings can be a matter of a dispute. How should employees’ contribution to a company’s prosperity be rewarded?

The other story is how executives participate in an austerity programmes they pursue in their companies. I know one company which has been more or less successfully turning around for a while. It has changed its strategy, pulled out from unprofitable business lines, laid off over 10% of its staff and continues to terminate contracts with employees. This year to show financial standing of the company is improving and to appreciate the contribution of employees to this success, most of the staff were granted a 10 PLN before tax pay rise. Getting it? Ten zlotys minus income tax, even too little to get hammered in despair! Some people who heard about it told it was a joke, I call it a slap in the face, especially if from the annual report of that company (quoted on the stock exchange) you can learn that its executives remunerations have increased by 30 – 50%. Pay rise of 10 PLN vs. pay rise of 1,000,000 PLN – just fair? This remuneration model is a sort of ‘privatising profits and socialising losses’.

The answer to the question I asked in a civilised world must be ‘no’. On a properly functioning market best employees would refuse to put up with such uncivilised treatment and would flee to work for competitors. Things aren’t so simple when labour market in a specific industry is characterised by over-supply of workforce – this is visible in Polish banking. A good banker will find a job, but room for salary negotiations has shrunk…

Not long ago my opinion on activity of trade unions was similar to this espoused by Mrs Thatcher. I thought trade unionists were spongers with endless unfounded pay rise demands, paralysing growth of businesses. I still see many times they act with detriment to their companies, but where I work things look much different. In pathological situations, such as described above, trade unions are the only organisation capable of standing up for indecently treated employees. Oddly enough, trade unions’ bargaining power is bigger in companies where employees are treated well…

Much has changed since I wrote my summary some three months ago (not only the temperature which is now some 50 degrees higher than then). I have been assigned more duties and given more responsibilities. This has upsides – new challenges, learning & development opportunities and downsides – no measurable reward in return. With each next week I feel more encumbered and less motivated. With a bold face I face new challenges take up more tasks, try to complete them all, but seeing to appreciation of my efforts I can’t see my future where I work. I’ll grind my teeth and wait until I hit two-years’ experience as an analyst, after which I’ll be fulfilling all the criteria in most job openings. Best people I work with are on the lookout for better places to work. If they quit, there’ll be no reason to stay in, and without them this ill-run boat will sink. I’m worried about the number of fatalities, but given the way it is managed, it will meet a well-deserved fate.

So bitter… Am I getting acrimonious?

Wedding after-thoughts

And so the season of knot-tying in 2012 kicked off. For no apparent reason, each such ceremony brings forth several more or less incongruous considerations in me.

Before the event I thought my friend’s wedding would be a great opportunity for our class to meet up. Unsurprisingly, as I pitched up to the scene, I went through a reality check. Albeit I can’t say this was a big let-down, par for the course, given six years that have elapsed since we went separate ways. There were five of us, including me, all boys, the four other still staying in quite close friendship with the groom. So most bonds in my high-school class have broken up…

The number of guests generally wasn’t staggering. Actually this was the third consecutive wedding I attended with a quite low turnout. So the ones that come over are usually family and close friends, plus, judging by the behaviours of some attendees, some onlookers. It’s nice to have a crowd, but I’m bracing myself for a sparse one on my own wedding… Fellow bloggers will be invited anyway.

A wedding is supposed to be a once-in-a-lifetime ceremony. So how the hell can somebody turn up half an hour late for it? Prudent people take precautions and try to anticipate hitches when they plan. I set off from home 50 minutes before the beginning of the mass in the church and my journey went on smoothly until I got stuck in stationary traffic on Dolinka Służewiecka. Eventually, instead of being 30 minutes earlier, I came less than ten minutes earlier, but still was punctual.

Attire and general appearance. Maybe I’m too conservative, but I’m of the opinion casual clothes, dishevelled hair and dirt behind nails are not the apposite type of look a wedding guest should present. Dark suit, white shirt, impeccably knotted tie and properly polished patent leather shoes are a must. Maybe some people refuse to wear such clothes because they feel ill-at-ease when they put them on, maybe for some people occasions to wear elegant outfits are so rare that it makes no sense to keep them in the wardrobe, but gosh… The way you dress reflects upon your respect for fellow people and bears testimony of your sense of situation. Being overdressed maybe be as bad as being underdressed, but in the case of wedding, I’d focus on the latter risk.

Get-together with high-school classmates reminded me, again, people are made of different substances. In primary school I met children from my neighbourhood, from wealthier and poorer families, whose parents were university graduates or vocational school-leavers, from “normal” or pathological families. In middle school my entourage stayed roughly the same. Then I got in to a relatively good high school in Warsaw. More of my classmates had wealthier, better educated parents, lived in Warsaw or on the suburbs and virtually all of them were clever or hard-working. Then I went to Warsaw School of Economics, where I encountered the pick of Poland’s youth interested in economics, finance and other similar sciences. The further I went, the more high-flyers I could meet on my way. Some of my friends from primary school ended up as hairdressers or roofers, some are housewives. My high-school classmates are set up well in life mainly thanks to support of their parents. What I owe to my mother and father is negligible to what they got, but I don’t envy them. If better shapes you up, if you achieve something in life with your bare hands, but most people would prefer to live conveniently and have their parents paying for that.

And one more thing – what’s so poignant about weddings that so many people cry? Again, the bride interchangeably wept and laughed and this time several men shed tears. Why? Leave out crying is considered unmanly, but I can’t discern the reason. What’s so moving about two people of different sex promising each other love, faith and staying together till death tears them apart? I can only admire them for their bravery. Simply I never met somebody with who I would want to share my good and bad days, with who I would like to grow old. Once I met a girl I felt would make a great wife and good friend, which is essential for spending the rest of life together, but never felt something people call ‘love’ could last until the end of my days.

My mastery in economics doesn’t allow me to know the price of everything and the value of nothing, but I feel as a downright cynic right now. I saw some marriages breaking up, saw some of them swearing before God they wouldn’t part. Having observed this, marriage vows, especially spoken out in a church (where they swear before God, not before a clerk in a registry office) resound to me like hollow words. Now, you’re in love (incidentally, yesterday’s wedding was organised in haste, due to bride’s pregnancy), you’re intoxicated, one day infatuation is gone and you’ll have to share ups and downs of ordinary life, put up with habits and traits of your spouse. Time puts people to tough tests and maybe this is the reason why I would be wary to promise ‘forever and ever’…

Yesterday I had the impression my classmates haven’t grown up since we finished school. Time to get off their backs. Having written the paragraph above, I proved my own immaturity. Bartuś, time to grow up…

Manners, they matter

Last Monday I mentioned the wedding invitation I’d received out of the blue then. My first reaction was to attend the event, but on second thoughts… I turned down the invitation, just like three-fourth of the invited with the appalling five-day advance notice.

I don’t know whether anyone recalls the commemorations of 90th anniversary of regaining independence by Poland, held in Teatr Wielki in Warsaw in November 2008. The celebration was staged by late president’s office and heads of other states received invitations two or three weeks before the event, so most eminent politicians whose calendars are carefully filled in many months’ advance, failed to show up. The absence of many figures was the price paid for ignorance of diplomatic protocol. But at that time bad organisation resulted only in a diplomatic slip-up, but some seventeen months later, the Polish (and Russian as well) bylejakość (what’s the English for this???) led up to a huge tragedy…

On second thoughts it occurred to me this I would have to bring forward handling lots of things I’d had planned for the current weekend. If I was to attend the wedding, I’d have to think about a small gift (or chip in with someone), iron a better shirt kept in the chest of drawers for special occasions, vacuum-clean my car inside and wash its bodywork (after being washed in early November 2011, it’s surprisingly clean)… And given the scarcity of time in the evenings on weekdays, this would have to be completed by early afternoon on Sunday. The outing began to seem impractical.

Having in mind the form (creating the event of facebook and putting all friends on the list of invited guests) and the jaw-dropping advance notice, I decided to take advice of a few friends (all not knowing the host of the wedding and thus not invited). They all in unison advised me to decline the invitation. Firstly due to the form, secondly on account of when it had been sent.

One of my friends as a matter of principle doesn’t attend weddings for which she receives invitations on facebook. She argues she feels like wypełniacz kościoła, literally ‘church filler-in’, or more deftly, ‘crowd-maker’. Others told me by inviting so people so late, my high-school friend had showed little respect for other people’s time. And I have to say my time is precious enough not to waste it with someone who doesn’t respect it.

No wonder so many of the potential guests refused to show up. Actually most people usually plan something for the weekend and if at the beginning of the week such information comes up, some are likely to be reluctant to drop everything. Maybe many noticed the same what I did – it’s no effort to mark all names on friend list (for my friend 378; who said one’s tribe can’t count more than 150 people?) and invite them. I’m not talking about the costs now. In these times virtually everyone turns thrifty and saves on whatever they can, so I don’t hold it against them that they hadn’t printed invitations and hadn’t sent them out to everyone in beautiful envelopes. It’s always nice to be handed such invitation and I even keep the ones I received, but being notified in a more modern way is not the reason to take umbrage. But that very invitation wasn’t personal at all. I’m not sure my friend realised she had invited me at all. It’s always to have a crowd in the church, it’s always nice to deceive oneself that you have a lot of friends (half of them would be hanging around and backbiting you, but good impression for aunties remains), but Good Lord, etiquette matters.

When speaking about financial aspect of weddings, it has to be underlined lavish weddings for 200 guests, costing tens of zlotys, an equivalent of price of a brand-new compact car, are becoming the thing of the past. This trend proves positive impact of the crisis (it can be seen negative by wedding-organisers whose firms may drop like flies). I attended three such weddings in 2007 and 2008 and remember them as a huge waste of money. Squandering fifty thousand zlotys for a one-night event to have some nice photos, film or memories for the rest of life (an upbeat assumption, as one of those three marriages broke up, for the other couple life’s not a bed of roses and only the third bygone newlyweds are living a happy life) still seems to me at least silly. Young people and their parents have finally realised that it’s better to spend the same money on a few square metres of own flat or in another wise way, for something durable, rather to throw it about within one night.

And actually what has put me off attending the wedding yesterday was how it would be perceived among my ex-classmates. This would have been a great opportunity to show off. Good clothes, good jobs, money, cars – no one would fail to stress how prosperous they are, or if in fact they aren’t, they would lean over backwards to pretend they are.

Next week I’m attending the wedding and actually not to keep my head down I’ll fit in to this hideous custom. Or should I defy it, leave the car at home, go by bus in my oldest, worn-out suit and tell my ex-classmates I earn peanuts?

A longer follow-up in two weeks’ time, when I plan to impudently violate one policy…

Easter break musings

A peculiar jumble of random thoughts that have haunted me over the last days… (and my 300th post)

Good Friday. One of those days in the office when everyone is counting down minutes till the shop closes. An unwritten rule states everyone is free to knock off at two p.m. The head of my department is the first to give a cue to go home at ten past two. He’s been puzzlingly laid-back over the past weeks, coming to work late, leaving home early. His light-heartedness gets more and more disturbing, chiefly in the light of my ex-manager’s promotion to a position in the international structures of our corporation. His devil-may-care attitude has two-fold implications: the pressure under which I am is not formally strong (I have to keep self-supervising myself), but one day this will lead to serious business failure and guess who’ll be to blame for it…

I decided to sit longer than others to catch up with some overdue work. Being one of few workers in the open plan gives the opportunity to overhear what can’t be loudly said when everyone’s around. And so I learn this year’s bonus and pay rise funds will be kind of meagre. Well, it’s best to save on human capital that keeps this boat afloat, but if the remuneration policy is carried on like this, best employees will seek better paid positions outside (provided the market doesn’t slump, which is conceivable) and the boat will sink. This would be a well-deserved end… Additionally after over a year I clearly notice those who spend the most time in the office to don’t work the hardest, or the most efficiently. Often when I observe some people I conclude they could easily do the job which takes them eleven hours a day within eight hours, if only they could better organise their duties. Sometimes I think sitting from dawn to dusk in the office is a sort of lifestyle or a way of filling in emptiness. But hang on, some of those people have families, but quite probably their wives and children prefer when they’re away from home. Stop, it’s getting too bitter. I strive to perform my tasks possibly efficiently and not keep late hours in the office to be appreciated by superiors. Wise managers mind the outcome, not the effort.

Who was the dim-witted one to hatch the idea that public transport should run according to weekend timetable? The journey from work to P&R Stokłosy, normally lasting 35 minutes has taken me a quarter longer. Fortunately enough, the worst traffic on ul. Puławska are over (I deliberately waited it out the office), but traffic remains dense. Just like before each Christmas, Easter, long weekend, many migrants living in Warsaw “go home”. There is a even a term coined to describe people who’ve come from provincial Poland to Warsaw in search for a better life. These are słoiki, literally ‘jars’. This offensive term derives from the fact that every time they travel to their relatives somewhere in Poland, they put empty jars into the boots of their cars and when returning to Warsaw, they bring supplies of food in jars. I’m not sure whether the term applies to rickety cars on provincial number plates, or to their drivers with poor driving skills, for whom traffic in Warsaw is too difficult to handle… Słoiki appear as scapegoats on TVN Warszawa forum, whenever a car on LLU, BHA, LHR, TST or other in-the-sticks plates causes an accident in the capital or, as in the linked article, when such clapped-out vehicle disintegrates on the road...

Saturday, chilly and drizzly, reminds me of weather on Saturday 10 April 2010. That day was also gloomy and ugly. The second anniversary of Smolensk disaster is nearing. Today Mr Kaczynski is about to speak to its followers. I don’t really care, I let things drift…

Sunday. There was no snow for Christmas, so may it be for Easter. 8 a.m., temperature +1C and little snow falling on the ground. Not a pleasant weather to go outside, but it’s time to set off to pick up my grandparents from Konstancin and then to visit the family in Ursus, Warsaw. The streets are almost empty, one can spot only cars on Warsaw number plates, so with my WPI plate I feel like a countryman. Family gathering runs its course as usual. For a good start again disputes whether Russians had planted a bomb in Polish TU-154 that crashed near Smolensk, whether anyone could survive an impact at the speed of 260 kmph, or how come engines were gradually reducing revolutions after the explosion. Not to mention claims who is an expert in physics and aviation. Neither impresses me my cousin, bringing his father on accelerating his car to 180 kmph, touching a birch with a wing mirror to see what happens. Hearing for the tenth time if Mr Tusk was a man of honour he would have shot himself in a head doesn’t make lose my patience. But the mere thought that one day I will have to take my girlfriend for a family round-up fills me with dread. But actually from what I’ve seen in many families such gatherings are not a bed of roses… Just recalled one day Toyah was taken aback when he found out most of my relatives, both on my mother’s and father’s side vote for PiS…

Then my parents and I go for a walk to ul. Piastowska and ul. Regulska to see the progress on S2 construction. Not much has changed here since the previous Easter. The level of pessimism in me has risen since writing last week’s summary on road building programme. We’ll visit the site next year to see the progress of works. I don’t expect it to be finished in April 2013…

Woken up by beautiful sunlight today to see –4C on thermometer. This also happens on Easter Monday. I logged on facebook to get the invitation for my high school friend’s wedding, held on Saturday, yes on 14 April 2012. Great to have the advance notice – I wonder how many of the invited will drop everything, abandon their plans to show up? I will pop over anyway, it’d be a pleasure to participate in such event. Wedding season 2012 kicks off a week earlier. Coming back to the form, have social media impacted etiquette so considerably? Would facebook be the way of informing people of weddings? Would traditional invitation cards become the thing of the past? And if somebody doesn’t sign up, would they be omitted or assigned the status of socially dead? Till now, I haven’t accepted, nor declined the invitation, just watching others’ reactions…

Roads to nowhere...

For starters, a disclaimer – it’s April Fool’s Day, but please don’t try to seek out any joke in this posting (with hindsight, there’s one, linguistic). The topic broached today is, in the light of the imminent European Football Championship, no laughing matter… I travelled recently around Poland, had the opportunity to see the progress of road construction works, found out about the advancement of developments I couldn’t look over in Skyscrapercity relevant threads and the summary of what I’ve learnt appears pretty dire.

Let’s bring this chaos into numerical order… A helping hand is lent by continually updated stats coming from the ever-excellent Skyscrapercity forum – map and table. For the sake of brevity and my limited time frame, only the most important undertakings are listed below.

A1 motorway – three sections between Toruń and Łódź are to be opened on 30 April 2012. I drove over the A1 near Stryków last week and the road is almost ready, with sound barriers installed and lamp posts turned on, but the last layer of tarmac didn’t seem laid (was in the evening, so I’m not sure), but on Friday I cut through it near Kutno, where National Road 92 and A1 are to cross and I’m sure they won’t make it…

A2 motorway – great to have a toll road (with some short free of charge sections) all the way from the German border east to Stryków, where on a big junction A1 and A2 one day will meet. But then in Stryków masses of football fans travelling from the western Europe will end their journey via up-to-the standard roads and will continue the drive to Warsaw through old, congested National Road 2. There’s no chance that two out of five sections of A2 between Łódź and Warsaw forsaken in June 2011 by bankrupt Chinese companies will be finished, or at least passable. Funnily enough, two sections near Warsaw are almost finished, so there’s a contingency plan that they are opened, as scheduled (the one closest to Warsaw even one month before deadline), but does it make any practicable solution. The motorway would end in the middle of nowhere somewhere near Grodzisk Mazowiecki. For the locals – a great link to the capital, for transit traffic – a useless facility.

S2/S79 expressway – what a botch-up. The section from Junction Puławska, through Lotnisko to Marynarska was, according to preliminary plans, supposed to be opened in December 2011 and then in April 2012. If it is ready in April 2013 it will be a success, given the current progress of works, chiefly the fact that digging the tunnel under Warsaw-Radom rail line, is just about to kick off… Shame! The section from junction Lotnisko to junction Konotopa, where S2 will turn A2 and meet existing S8 section has a bit of better progress, but if any part of the Southern bypass of Warsaw is opened by the end of this year, I’m a Dutchman. And the rescheduled opening day is 31 August 2012. I don’t believe it!

A4 motorway – running from the Polish-German border in Zgorzelec, through Wrocław, Opole, Silesia to Kraków was supposed to be finished up to the Polish-Ukrainian border. No such luck, road builders are in the forest…

S7 expressway running from Gdańsk to Zakopane is a big blend of single- and dual-carriageway sections. Some, including southern Gdańsk bypass and some section in Warmia, which could come in useful for me in August, when I’m heading to Olsztyn… I’m finding it hard to judge whether the Nidzica – Olsztynek section (crucial for me) will be opened for traffic… On the other side of Warsaw I have to admit the already opened sections of expressway between Grójec and Kielce superbly facilitate the drive to the former destination.

S8 expressway – oh, how to cut the long story short. Wrocław has a beautiful bypass, which incidentally has a status of motorway (and prime minister Tusk pledged it would not be a toll road). Heading towards Warsaw we come across a few kilometres long expressway being a bypass of Oleśnica, two expressway sections are being built between Wrocław and Oleśnica and between Oleśnica and Syców. There were scheduled to be completed in late May 2012, now they might be passable then, but finished in the second half of the year. Further sections of S8 between Syców and Łódź are to by built by 2015. Additionally there is a huge 100-kilometres long section of National Road 8 dual carriageway being modernised to fit the parameters of an expressway. Driving there between Piotrków Trybunalski and Mszczonów is a big nuisance and guess what – this undertaking won’t be finished before football championship as well (deadline of 5 June 2012 is out of reach)… Further north S8 looks like S7, i.e. you have a few kilometres of new expressway and then take a break to drive a section of old National Road 8 which takes you to another section of S8, on and on. New expressway sections of S8 north-east of Warsaw to be opened this year are the bypass of Zambrów and Białystok-Jeżewo section. But the most urgent ones, not started yet, are the bypass of Marki and a road out of Warsaw south, passing by the ever-clogged-up Raszyn and Janki…

The saddest thing about the whole Road Construction Programme is not that it was designed to serve the next generations, but only to modernise road infrastructure before the oncoming football fete. I also hold the opinion we shouldn’t be ashamed of how Poland looks (we’ll be, just look at how W-wa Zachodnia station), but it’s not a primary goal to make the roads passable for Euro 2012. Football fans will see a big construction site, or rather mess, so I don’t see any point in excessive hurrying to finish some works before the championship, if the haste would impinge on quality of the ventures. These roads should serve for years to come Poland and its economy, not to foreign footballs fans, who’ll come here for three weeks, spend some money here and return to their homelands.

I’m not a football fan, so in June I’ll surely watch a few games, but I’ve scheduled my summer holidays from 11 to 21 June and I’ll be glad to stay away from Warsaw. I’ll going by car, so I would appreciate anyway, if some of the roads I mentioned (sections of S8 from Warsaw to Wrocław under construction) had temporarily the status of “passable”… On 29 March the parliament discussed the so-called “passability law”, which is set to allow to temporarily use of unfinished, but passable roads (with some limitations), legal implications are unclear…