The feeling to sit on a western chair is exactly the same feeling like to sit on the Central-European one – the feeling just lasts for a little bit longer

 In between of all this time we had our exam period, where three three hours exams during one day was not an exception and as a cherry on the top of the cake I found out that my tuition fees were not paid on time to my university, so I was in a debt, about which I had to do something really soon. Everything was, however, worth it. I passed all of my exams, I found an accommodation in Paris (I am still looking for a ticket to Mars, though) and I also managed to pay the tuition fees to my University.

Today, I am therefore all full of happiness in Paris, where I am working as an intern in an international company called Holcim as a pricing analyst. My job position is to control the prices for different products in the sector of aggregates.

I have already worked for this company over the summer in the Czech Republic as an assistant of the CEO. And thanks to this I have now the perfect opportunity to compare the Czech and French style of work – one company, one internal set of rules but two different cultures which are very different. Here in France you start working more or less at about nine o‘clock. French laws say that one week should be equal to 35 working hours, which sounds really nice, but in fact the reality is totally different. If every single employee was to work for 35 hours a week only, the company would have to either hire more personnel (which was the initial goal of this law) or they would just never finish their work on time. So the reality after stating this fact means, that it is not an exception to go home after eight or nine o’clock in the evening and if you decide to go home a little bit earlier (6pm), people are asking questions about what it is so important that you are “already” going home. That is the reason why I often remember the articles of the Czech yellow journalism, where the paparazzi tell us exactly how much people earn to the last cent and what all sorts of things they can buy for this. They add the fact that people there can afford a vacation abroad about four times a year and they still have money for a new Audi 6. And how is it in reality? Yes, the wages are really higher here – but the prices are higher even more! For a small apartment in Paris, it is not unusual to pay about 25 000 Czech crowns. Other 10 000 CZK are needed for food and the rest 10 000 are used for regular payments like electricity, public transport or water and your mobile phone bill. If you actually have some Euros to spare, you try to save them for your taxi ride during the strike, when there are no busses and you have just no other way of how to go to work.

I don’t want this article to be seen as some kind of way of complaining. The opposite is true – I am a very happy person here and I just wanted to express some kind of a reflection on all of the articles in Czech newspaper. It is a way how to tell, that we are not really that bad-off over there - that we are living almost on the same standards like “the people in the western world”. (And yes, the chair here is really as comfortable as a chair in the Czech Republic and employees really don’t sit here on heated chairs all covered in leather.)