A Job at last

A Job at last

Mum had been caught buying bread for us in the Eastern Sector of Berlin. For this offence the GDR Authorities put her into jail. When she came back home after having been incarcerated for about a week, she was full of beans. She regarded it as a big joke, that she had been jailed for buying a loaf of bread for her children!

The GDR law was that West-Berliners were not allowed to buy anything with East-Marks. In East-Berlin there were special shops for West-Berliners, were they could buy everything with West-Marks. One West-Mark was worth four East-Marks.. This was the official exchange rate! It was therefore very tempting for Mum to change her West-Marks into East-Marks and go shopping in the Eastern Sector as though she was a DDR citizen. Bad luck, that she was caught doing so. She did not feel guilty for trying to buy some low priced food for her children. Wouldn’t any mother do that?

Be that as it may, my brothers and I had to cope for one week without Mum. Tante Ilse, Mum’s sister, who lived across the road, saw to it that we were doing all right. Her husband, Uncle Peter, thought it was hilarious, that our Mum was in jail. He said: “What if somebody asks me ‘and how is your sister-in-law?’ shall I answer, ‘oh, she just happens to be in jail for a little while’ ?” For Uncle Peter it was somehow unimaginable, that anyone in his family should end up in jail. It was something just never heard of.

It so happens, that during Mum’s absence I did get my job at the FLEUROP Clearing House in Lichterfelde. The Boss, Herr Liebach, was not concerned that I wanted to leave Commercial College before doing final exams.

He said: “To me it is not important, whether you did the exams or whether you’ve done any University study. There are some University students who would be absolutely useless in our line of business. I judge myself, whether a person can be trained to do the sort of work that is required here. For instance, if someone is moving very slowly and takes ages to get a certain file from the shelf, for a person like that I have no use whatsoever. If you start here, you start from the bottom. You have to go through all the different departments, so that you are well aware of what everyone does. Then my secretary is going to start giving you dictations. If you’re good in stenography and typing and are able to produce business-letters ready for posting, you may end up here as a stenographer/typist.

He went on: ‘The first three months are a trial period. You start with a monthly salary of sixty Deutschmark. If you do well, your salary goes up a little each month. After the trial period you may get the chance to be fully employed with a fourteen months salary per year. The two months extra salary are for Christmas and for your two weeks holidays.Later on you may get three weeks holidays per year. We have a forty-eight hour week, working from 7,30 am to 4,45 pm. Saturdays we finish at one o’clock

When Tante Ilse heard about the low starting salary, she was up in arms. ‘What is that?’ she said. ‘This guy wants to pay you so little? You know what is on his mind? He wants to get you into bed! This is what he is after, I tell you.’

Good Tante Ilse. I don’t know what got into her. I was sure, Herr Liebach wasn’t like this. And the low salary, I didn’t mind that at all, as long as I could start there and did get some training along the way.

However when Mum was back home and heard I was only going to get sixty Mark monthly, she said immediately that I could not work for so little, because I would have to give her thirty Mark monthly. This was how much she got as student support for me as long as I went to school. She depended on this money. I said I was definitely going to give her these thirty Marks. ‘And what about train-fare?’ Mum said. ‘You need money for the S-Bahn when you have to go to Licherfelde!’ – ‘Never mind, Mum,’ I said, ‘I can pay for that out of my salary too. Most likely my salary’s going to go up soon anyway. So don’t worry. I really want to have this job.’