{"id":2868,"date":"2016-04-19T19:27:50","date_gmt":"2016-04-19T19:27:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artapolitica.ro\/?p=2868"},"modified":"2016-11-22T12:34:59","modified_gmt":"2016-11-22T12:34:59","slug":"cautam-chirie-zi-de-zi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artapolitica.ro\/gazetapolitica\/en\/2016\/04\/19\/cautam-chirie-zi-de-zi\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cI was searching for rent every single day\u201d (fragments)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ana S.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 2010, Ana stayed in Oslo, Norway, for 5 months. The discrimination she was subjected to prevented her from finding a job, despite her bachelor\u2019s degree in Design. She had to live with 11 other migrants from all over the world in a tiny apartment. She made a living out of selling her handmade jewelry. In 2015 she left for England, where she is currently living.<\/em>
\n<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019d found this recruiting company called M. S. Wranghel online. Actually, a friend found them, we were searching together, we wanted to leave for England. Eventually I left and he stayed in Romania.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t leave just like that, I looked for job offers, I studied the market. I was looking for reviews of recruiting companies \u2013 you\u2019ll always find both good ones and bad ones, you can\u2019t really tell which of them are for real and which are bogus. But I hadn\u2019t found anything bad about this company on any forum, except maybe one or two bad reviews. And the girl from Wranghel I talked to seemed ok, she was from Timisoara, that made me feel more comfortable, seeing as there are nicer people there (laughs).<\/p>\n

I talked to her on Skype and on the phone a lot and she really seemed nice. I had several Skype interviews with the prospective employers from England \u2013 it\u2019s all a sort of Babel tower, there\u2019s a recruiting company in Romania working with a recruiter from England hiring me to work for a \u201ccare provider\u201d.<\/p>\n

In the initial contract, which was completely different from what I signed in England, I was meant to be a part-time \u201coffice assistant\u201d, part-time \u201ccare-giver\u201d. But they said the care-giver part started only after a training which I could choose to go through or not, and without the training I could have stayed on as a full-time assistant. The training was 1500 pounds and once you went through it, you had some sort of qualification, you were officially a \u201ccare-giver\u201d. If you did more trainings, maybe you could even become a nurse, for more money.<\/p>\n

The thing is, once I got to England, in Slough, it was clear to me I wasn\u2019t going to work as an office assistant, only as a care-giver. It was the same for all who had come there through various recruiters, not just the ones from Romania. The recruiter from England was part of the deception. A girl from Bulgaria had been promised the exact same thing. And she hadn\u2019t been an office assistant for a single day, event hough she\u2019d been there for 9 months. She was like most of us there, without any money, and we had to take the jobs we were given because we had no other options.<\/p>\n

Initially they told me I had 2 days a week off. Except during the one-month training \u2013 which it became apparent I was required to go through \u2013 there were no days off. It was 7 days a week, between 10 to 16 hours a day. A sort of slavery.<\/p>\n

The worst part was the distance between patients. They said initially that the distances could be covered, if you didn\u2019t have a driver\u2019s license, in 15 minutes walking. But it took about an hour, and the time I was spending on the road was not being paid. So out of those 16 hours, 6 were spent on the road without being paid for it.<\/p>\n

Then I uncovered a bunch of other issues: they said they\u2019d offer me accommodation until I could find something. But I was paying for it. As I was paying for my uniform. And when you\u2019re paying for all this, you really don\u2019t feel like or really don\u2019t have anything left for thousands of bus fares between patients. I didn\u2019t even know where I had to go. They were just saying I had to be at a certain address at a certain time. If I didn\u2019t have google maps, I had no idea how to get to those places.<\/p>\n

Accommodation was in a hostel, 25 pounds a night. On my floor there were one-person rooms, but also rooms for two or more people. This hostel was just for people coming to work for this company and who couldn\u2019t find anything cheaper yet. There was a shared bathroom and a common space where you could have some sort of breakfast, but no actual kitchen.<\/p>\n

Once I started the training \u2013 even though I didn\u2019t want to be a care-giver \u2013 I had to pay back the 1500 pounds if I decided to leave. Because they \u201ctrained\u201d me and \u201cinvested\u201d in me. And you had to stay and work for them until your debt matched your labor time. The Bulgarian girl could leave after 10 months working for them. And she was just going to leave, she was getting ready, when I wrrived. They would deduct money for everything. If they gave you a company car and you used it to get to the patients, the gas was coming out of your pocket.<\/p>\n

So I decided to leave before the training. They didn\u2019t want me to leave, there was a big fuss, but they couldn\u2019t keep me. Even the people from the recruiting firm in Romania tried to convince me to stay.<\/p>\n

But I decided to go to London, I thought there were more opportunities here than in Slough. I just came to London. I knew two people here, I thought they were my friends, but they didn\u2019t help me with anything.<\/p>\n

I saw how the rents work here, that you can\u2019t get anything if you don\u2019t talk to people first, because owners have these stupid rules: no people sleeping over, no people after midnight, no people visiting etc. Rents are very high, few can afford to live on their own, so you have to share a flat and these issues come up.<\/p>\n

When I arrived in London, I called all my friends. The cousin of one of my friend\u2019s husband had been living here for 3-4 years, she was friends with an Italian couple. She talked to them and they were very nice and took me in. It was supposed to be for a week, but in the end it was a month and a half. They were living with another Italian couple. I was sitting on the sofa in the living room. In the meantime I was looking for jobs and rent.<\/p>\n

I started working as a hostess for this crappy American restaurant. I had a contract, but no health insurance. I was constantly looking for rent on all the flat-sharing sites. I got stood up by real estate agencies \u2013 you had to pay to see the newest ads. You know, when you arrive in a new place you think the people are different, they\u2019re awesome, no corruption\u2026Not true, corruption is everywhere.<\/p>\n

And as a single girl, all kinds of shit happens to you. Many owners asked for my Facebook profile, they asked me to talk about myself, they asked to see me, since I was from Romania, from the East. And there were all kinds of propositions, from going out for coffee to\u2026the weirdest was when one guy started taking photos of me in his apartment when I came to check the place out, and he was trying to get me to take my clothes off.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ana S. In 2010, Ana stayed in Oslo, Norway, for 5 months. The discrimination she was subjected to prevented her from finding a job, despite her bachelor\u2019s degree in Design. She had to live with 11 other migrants from all over the world in a tiny apartment. She made a living out of selling her handmade jewelry. In 2015 she left for England, where she is currently living. I\u2019d found this recruiting company called M. S. Wranghel online. Actually, a friend found them, we were searching together, we wanted to leave for England. Eventually I left and he stayed in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[92],"tags":[124,125,118,158],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artapolitica.ro\/gazetapolitica\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2868"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artapolitica.ro\/gazetapolitica\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artapolitica.ro\/gazetapolitica\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artapolitica.ro\/gazetapolitica\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artapolitica.ro\/gazetapolitica\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2868"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/artapolitica.ro\/gazetapolitica\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2868\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3850,"href":"https:\/\/artapolitica.ro\/gazetapolitica\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2868\/revisions\/3850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artapolitica.ro\/gazetapolitica\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artapolitica.ro\/gazetapolitica\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artapolitica.ro\/gazetapolitica\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}