Gizza job

Everybody moans and groans about their job at some point don't they? it's human nature. Unless you're say, the Pope or Cristiano Ronaldo, both of whom only have to step outside their respective front doors to get mobbed by thousands, job satisfaction appears to be pretty hard to come by. Obviously, there's already a Holy Father and Real Madrid don't need any more diving cheats, so where does that leave the rest of us? Well, judging by some of the employment opportunities in Spain, on that one I'd have to say better off than most, truth be told.

Destination United Kingdom

Spain doesn't have as generous a welfare system as the United Kingdom so for this reason it isn't as popular with Somali's and sundry other bogus asylum claimants, the majority of whom know Article 8 of the Human Rights Act off pat before they even clamber down from the back of the trailer at Dover. Unemployment benefit does exist in Spain but to claim it you have to have paid into the system for at least a year beforehand. If you can't provide payslips, (nominas), to substantiate the claim and prove exactly what contributions have been made then you're going to be out of luck. With a safety net with that many holes in, it's hardly surprising therefore an underclass of citizen exists in Spanish towns and cities who scratch a meagre living any way they can. So tomorrow, when you head back to the office, shop or wherever else it is you do your complaining, spare a thought for a few of these poor buggers, or better still, a few of the even poorer buggers, (me for example), that same underclass of citizen regularly aggravates.

Except if they work near Elche hospital

I shouldn't really denigrate the efforts of others to earn a few quid for themselves, but to be perfectly honest, some people don't do much if anything to garner sympathy for their cause. Take for example, and I so wish somebody in authority would, the car parking "helpers" This group are invariably found close to large public and busy buildings or anywhere guaranteed a half decent crowd. Elche hospital is one such example where parking the car is notoriously difficult. Their modus operandi for want of a better phrase is to stand in the road and helpfully point out a parking space you've already seen and were going to use anyway. If it's quite a small gap, by means of dramatic hand signals, they'll enthusiastically assist as you back in inch by inch. Proud of yourself for getting it in there pretty straight, you emerge from your immaculately parked car to be met by an outstretched palm expecting at least a euro to be placed there. That filthy palm belongs to the hobo you almost ran over. I once had a massive row with one of these itinerants outside the Rico Perez football stadium in Alicante, refused to hand over anything and then proceeded not to enjoy Hercules versus Tenerife because I was shit scared the mush outside had damaged my car.

Splash and dash at the lights

Quite a few large Spanish towns have major thoroughfares, these are frequently two lane jobbies, with traffic lights to disrupt the flow of vehicles. The problem is when the smooth progress of motorists has been interrupted by, say, a red light which really can't be ignored, from nowhere comes a horde of bucket and sponge wielding carwashers. Whether you want them to or not, they then proceed to remove all the dead flies and crap of your windscreen, again in exchange for a handful of small coins or a couple of euros. In the approximately thirty seconds it takes for the lights to change, these extremely well practised folk can knock off four or five shampoos and sets, and, given the time available to them, they do a really good job. So too though can my windscreen wipers and washer bottle and these two are nowhere near as aggressive as the South Americans outside. Over time and because I know many of the likely ambush spots, some of which you just can't avoid, I've become pretty adept at second guessing the old red, amber and green. This invariably entails either absolutely blatting it past, a split second after the Spanish Highway Code demands I stop or hanging back in second gear two hundred metres from the junction before picking up the revs and cruising past with a cheery wave of my middle finger.

Slightly whiffy in the summer

Perhaps the most unfortunate of all the people who have fallen between the pretty wide cracks of the Spanish system are the late night bin scavengers, the hours are shitty, and, judging by the clothes they wear the work isn't that well paid either. Unike the United Kingdom, where household refuse is collected every three weeks if the weather isn't too bad, Spain has a daily trash collection, (usually in the early hours of the morning), with a weekly run for things like paper and glass. At this point it's worth mentioning, just for clarity, that our towns and cities have huge neighbourhood bins every couple or three blocks for the entire local community to make use of. This then represents a heaven sent opportunity for the less fussy to go rummaging through before the arrival of the nightly truck, (in the heat of summer the scent is sometimes altogether different and fucking horrible)!! The occasionally pungent aroma doesn't deter the intrepid scroungers though, who can often be seen, late into the evening, wielding long sticks, supermarket trolleys for their plunder and all manner of metal objects liberated from the piles of debris left at the side of colour coded skip thingy's. I've even seen tiny kids emerging empty handed from the receptacles after unsuccessful sortie's

Why not let Judy decide?

I'll finish up with a true story, or at least I think it is, about a couple who appeared on the Spanish equivalent of Judge Judy. The television show is called De Buena Ley, (A good law), and airs on Telecinco, the national channel five. A couple of weeks back it featured a bloke suing his wife because he objected to her job. Which was, wait for it, a sex line operator! So there you go, some people aren't simply content with bitching about their own work - this ungrateful sod saw fit to moan about his old lady's efforts for the family budget too.