The Turku Gulag
“You can create your career in a good company”…Is the motto of the leading cleaning company that services the conveyor belt of ferries that criss-cross the Baltic sea.
If by career you mean a life in servitude, where you are expected to have little or no social life, where the managers treat you like cattle at a farmers market and where you are barked at like a unwanted dog from a Christmas present who long ago lost their appeal, then maybe the tagline of the company works.
A more accurate tagline would be: “You can create low self esteem in a Finnish sweatshop.”
A disgruntled ex-employee I may be, but the salience of my arguments will hopefully ring true.
There is a captive market of mainly foreign students in need of money, that management take advantage of this is transparent for all to see. The implicit implication is that these workers, unlike Finns do not need to have a social life, there is an implicit advantage being taken of a workforce with little knowledge of Finnish language or Finnish workplace regulations. This premise I find to be inherently racist.
Employees appear to develop a certain selective amnesia outside of work, refusing to acknowledge one another. To me this is an alien situation, if you work with someone, whether you know them well or not, a quick “hi” or nod of the head when out and about shows a small degree of camaraderie and level of respect.
Whichever job you encounter, however unsavoury it may be, if the workforce is in good spirits and can get along with a joke and a laugh then the output will almost certainly increase. Moulding workers into robots who do not acknowledge each other does not nurture a productive atmosphere, but one of resentment. This is fostered in part by the condescending attitude shown by the management and scant respect given to workers.
The method with which employees are herded onto and off the ship in single file, chastised as if prisoners of war by a surly camp guard if one steps out of formation exacerbates the feeling of being another unappreciated number in the company, easily dispensable and replaceable.
The time given to each staff member to complete their task of cleaning leads to minimal and superficial cleaning being done with the pressure of unworkable quotas.
If you are ever travelling the Baltic sea I recommend you give the bathroom a good clean before entering!