”We would like to apologise for any inconvenience but due to staff holidays Sweden will be closed until winter.” I had to walk home from work today. I had chosen to run there while it was cool and therefore didn’t have my bike to get home as usual. I didn’t think it would be a problem though as the bus service runs every 20 minutes. That is it does while the winter timetable is in operation. As from this week we have the joys of the summer timetable, reducing the busses to every hour. Of course I finish work just after a bus has left.

Its not just the busses that disappear. The local cinema has closed for 2 weeks. Isn’t the school holidays a peek period for going to the movies? Its like a restaurant putting a sign up saying ”Be back later – closed for lunch”. Luckily it hasn’t gone that far here but you sometimes wonder if it will. Swedes seem to get 5 weeks holiday entitlement each year. 5 weeks to spread across the working year. Expect they don’t, its seems to be traditional to take your 5 weeks in a block in the middle of summer, at the same time as everyone else. I guess in some ways it makes sense for all the business’s to have a low period at the same time, but generally to me its seems a bizarre way to run a business.

The book factory where I work is running as normal during the summer period despite the regular staff taking holidays. This is being covered by temporary staff coming in to cover. We have had a new trainee working with us week. I started off being amused by his apparent lack of common sense. For example, the paper we print on comes in rolls. Imagine a metre high toilet roll and you get the idea. Obviously these weigh slightly more than your average toilet roll so we have trolleys to move them around the factory floor. Forementioned fool spent quite a while trying to pick one of these rolls up but kept on trying to pick up from the long side instead of the end. This ramming caused the paper to roll across to the other end of the factory before being followed by incompetent idiot who then proceed to repeat the process in the opposite direction. I tried point out the error of his ways but this only seemed to have a time limited effect.

Today amusement had changed into growing annoyance. If I were training for a new job I don’t think I would be sitting around reading and wandering off from time to time. Wouldn’t mater so much if what he actually did a good job but we have had several cases of the paper snapping and causing the presses to crash. Its idiots like these that make it harder for the rest of us immigrants. A bad attitude against foreigners is easier to create than shake off. Hopefully he wont last long, or maybe just maybe he will improve, but I expect they will take him on anyway. As long as he is on someone else’s shift.