Where I spend all my time:
1. Hotel Smári - I work six days a week, anywhere from 12 to 16 hours each time. Do not worry, it is not nearly as bad as it sounds. When I start work at 3 or 7 in the evening, I am done all the 'work' well before 11:30, when I can close the reception. That means I can sleep from midnight until 7 in the morning. If I am lucky it is an uninterrupted sleep. I have a toothbrush here now, extra socks, underwear and a coffee cup. I finish and leave work at 7:30 in the morning.
2. Sunnuhlíð - I work at the nursing home 3 - 5 days a week from 8 - 2. I consider this my exercise job, because I do not spend the entire thing sitting down, I need that. This job is the most stressful because I am not allowed to speak English so I feel stupid a lot, but it is getting better. I am glad they have a uniform for me there. I have not been there long, but already I have a few old friends, fabulous little old ladies.
I miss my real home - I miss my pillow! I miss the boys, although I can bring the kids to the hotel when I am going through some kid withdrawal. Kasper loves sleeping over.
The most unfortunate thing is that even working this much, I still only make half of what Davíð did in a month. We have about the same skill and education levels, the only difference is that he was employed in a male dominated industry, and I am employed in 2 female dominated industries.
Canada and Iceland both seem to be behind in the times.
Welcome to Iceland! Sorry, that's pretty cynical. But you are right. The jobs that are dominated by women, i.e. those that feature care, are very poorly paid. And the society is becoming more and more aware of it as well as the discrepancies in wages. I just hope that they will finally do something about it, else they are going to continue to lose more and more workers simply because a family cannot live on such wages, not with 1 job or 2.
ReplyDelete