Hello. Remember me? Yes? No? Maybe? Well, since I haven’t written a blog post in about ten-billion years (rough estimate), I thought it would be a good idea to re-introduce—or introduce—myself to some of you readers. My name is Jacqueline Bazarte. Most people call me Jacqui. Some people think I made up the spelling of my nickname (Jacqui), but of course I didn’t. You can blame my weird nickname on my parents’ love of French spelling. Actually, if you type in “Jacqui” in a Google search engine, you’ll get about 13 million hits (rough estimate) of people named “Jacqui”—making me and my name feel less unique. Aside from having a nickname that’s actually not so strange, I’m a hoity-toity recently graduated creative writing major who obviously loves adjectives and dashes. I graduated and got my MFA from the University of Mississippi—the future site of the 2008 presidential debates (USA! USA!). I also like parenthetical expressions (in case you haven’t notice). The last update some of you may remember from me was that I was leaving to work in Ireland for a short period of time. Well, it turns out that it was shorter than expected. Why? You’re going to have read the rest of this post to find out.
I assume that most of you can already gather that I’m back in the States. There are a few reasons for this. The first is that my part-time job at an art gallery quickly turned into an on-call job. This quick turn-around was very much due to the fact that the whole of the Republic is at a beginning of a recession. Thus, it didn’t matter how excited my employer was about my CV, it didn’t matter how good of job I was doing, it didn’t matter how much he and the other employees liked having me on the team. He just simply didn’t have enough hours or money to give to a newcomer in a small business. It was understandable, very frustrating I must admit, but understandable. Truthfully, I think it was very frustrating for all of us. I was frustrated by barely getting any hours and then nothing. My employer was frustrated, because he couldn’t give me any hours. The employees were frustrated by the threat of getting cut hours, so who got the cut hours? The newbie of course. Well, that’s the way it works with most businesses—in or out of the states. The only thing I wish is that the employer didn’t call me if there were no hours to give, but you know.
Of course, the job-hunt problems didn’t begin or end with this particular job. The main reason I took the bare minimum part-time hours was because there were no openings anywhere else. I sent CVs not only to employers in Clifden but also Galway City, Dublin, and Waterford. None came to avail. There were employers who didn’t get back to me, but I did get a lot of direct responses from walk-ins. These either included one of the following:
1) “Sorry. We are not hiring at the moment. I just got to warn you. It’s going to be very hard, love.”
2) “Sorry. We are not hiring at the moment. Things are so slow with the dollar being so low and all. Please give us a try again in August or September when the season will hopefully pick-up. Cheers.”
3) “Sorry. We’ve done all our hiring for the summer. There are a lot of students who need jobs. Good luck, dearie. It’s going be really hard.”
4) “Sorry. We’re a family owned business, but you can try this other bed and breakfast. Can’t promise anything, though.”
5) “Sorry. We see you have editorial skills, but this publishing company is looking for an accountant. We don’t have time to train anyone, but we appreciate you’re interest anyway.”
6) “Sorry. We are not hiring at the moment. Things are pretty slow with the lack of American travelers. We expected more tourists, but with the dollar so low…”
7) “Sorry. We need someone who can work longer than 4 months.” (The program allowed 4 months of work and one month of travel.)
8) “There is employment, but a strong knowledge of Gaelic is required.”
9) “Sorry. We are not hiring at the moment. If you have one, you can give us your CV and we’ll put it on file. I’m sorry to tell you, though. You’ve come during hard times. The Celtic Tiger is long gone.”
For those of you who have done this work abroad program before, you may remember that one of the recommendations of finding a job is to go to the local pubs, because you’ll find a lot of job openings by word of mouth. Well, I did just that and spoke to some older locals. The response was pretty much the same:
1) Oh dearie, I’m sorry to tell you, but you’ve come during hard times.
2) The Poles took all our jobs. Now there is an economic boom in Poland.
3) There aren’t many of you Americans traveling. You should thank your President Bush for making your dollar so low.
4) The Celtic Tiger is long gone.
So I would like to take a moment to thank America (including the work abroad program) for having such up-to-date information about the economic situation in Ireland. I remember all the information I read about Ireland (including the info provided by the work abroad program) before leaving went something like this: “Go to Ireland and reek the benefits of the Celtic Tiger” or “Upon coming to Ireland, participants will reek the benefits of the Celtic Tiger by easily finding a job.” I found, much to my surprise, it to be a very different story once I started to do the job search in Ireland. I guess it should have been a bad omen alert when, during the orientation in Dublin, participants were told that, after being cancelled for a year, the Ireland program just got restarted and the Garda was still unaware of its revamped existence. Even my employer was shocked to see that the work abroad program was still describing Ireland as still having the great “Celtic Tiger” boom. “Quite misleading,” is what he said and preceded to tell me that the immigration website warned travelers that, if they’re looking for a job, they should expect not to find one. Good to know all this after I get to Ireland. To be fair, though, the Canadian and Australian work program equivalent had the same description of Ireland’s job situation. Many from both programs had to go back early as well.
As for what caused the recession, it doesn’t seem, after speaking with many Irish employers, to be just one thing. It is true that I met very few Americans while traveling through Ireland—and Europe, for that matter. And I was staying in hostels the whole time—where there can be up to 18 people staying in one room. Besides travelers from the Isles and the mainland, most of the people I did meet where either from Canada or Australia. Also, with the 1 US dollar equaling 0.72 euros, I think it is pretty safe to say that dollar is weak and is affecting US travel, which in turn affects foreign economies that thrive on tourism. It also didn’t help that the US program gave a shorter work visa in comparison with Australian and Canadian equivalent. Both programs gave participants a one year visa, while the US gave participants a 4 month visa (plus one month of travel). It is also true there are many students to compete with for jobs in the bigger cities and many family owned business who are not looking to take on new employees in the smaller towns. Most of these employees are Irish citizens already having to face cut hours themselves. Thus, they have to take care of their own instead of giving jobs to in-coming Americans, Australians, and Canadians, which is understandable. Since most already feel that the Polish have overtaken most the jobs, it seems the last thing the Irish want to do is to give jobs away to more foreigners—especially during a start of a recession.
Despite these frustrations, I do not regret going on this trip. I mean, sure I was frustrated by the job situation, but I eventually handled it the same way a lot of my American, Canadian and Australian program counterparts did: travel Ireland and the rest Europe. This is exactly what I did—from Galway to Budapest. I must say it turned out to be a rewarding and educational experience. When making this trip, I wasn’t sure what I was looking for—except a change and break from America. Well, I definitely got more than that, and I am glad to say that I’ll be sharing all of this experience (and more) throughout the duration of this blog.
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