Changing Faces

Speaking of Christmas, this Christmas will also see some changing faces within our tight little work team. 2 years ago we picked up a couple of new graduates and they have proven themselves to be a good buy. Very dedicated and hard workers, loyal to the team and to the company. Good people too, and I'm happy to consider them to be my good friends. Sadly we're going to lose one of them through an internal transfer to another branch in the country. Internal transfers seem to be quite popular within Sweden. Certainly much more common than I found them to be in New Zealand. I think that there is a different mindset between the 2 cultures. In New Zealand they would look at the immediate workload before taking on a new employee. In Sweden they seem to view the new employee as an asset through which to procure more work on a longterm basis. Chicken and the egg, I guess. In any case, I'm going to miss my colleague. Aside from his excellent work, I've always found him to be a great companion when we've been away anywhere. Sensible, honest, and genuinely interested in other people. I like people like that, you always know where you stand with them. Once we had to rescue him from a restaurant toilet and once we had to sort his love life out by cellphone from Hungary, but apart from that. At the same time as we lose our colleague, we're gaining two from our southern offices. It's already been pointed out that clearly one northern person is worth 2 from the south. I don't know too much about them although one of them I'm pretty sure that I've met before. We'll see how it pans out, hopefully we'll have as much luck as we had the first time around. We have a person here at present who is on a trial period. Personally, I don't think it's going to work out for them. That's annoying, because I had high hopes when recommending this person for a chance. Without putting too fine a point on it, he's just plain lazy. He seems completely disinterested in both his work and in the company. If it were me (and it has been me in the past) and I were on a trial period, I'd be jumping through hoops to give a good impression. I wouldn't be sloping off the the gym for 2 hours a day and then spending most of the rest of the time sorting through on-line music and videos. I'd be working my ring off. It's already been noted above me so we'll see what the verdict is when the trial period is up. Swedish employers are very forgiving, I have to say. They let things slide which NZ employers wouldn't. If I'd been half as lazy as this guy, I wouldn't have lasted the month. In Sweden, they are very much about giving people a chance and always hoping for the best result. It's an admirable attitude and I probably wouldn't have been employed without that sort of trusting approach. But it's also ripe for abuse and exploitation. I see this a lot in Sweden, Swedes are way too trusting. 99% of the time it's not an issue because it's Swede against Swede, with neither side even thinking about the possibility of abusing good will. However, throw in an immigrant who has been rased in a culture were you take whatever you can grab, and a Swede hasn't got a chance. I think they are slowly wising up to this now as a culture and are starting to become a little more suspicious. That's a shame really, but us immigrants have to take a large amount of the blame. We're not all bad but when things like this go wrong, we're not usually too far away from the source. We contribute a lot to the bettering of Sweden, but we need to be careful not to pollute at the same time.