This post is inspired by this emigrant 2005 stories (in italian) by pubblico di merda.
This short emigrants stories are about having bad working/living experiences in Italy and finally making it out of the country. As previously stated, we are not interested in any "breaking out" myth as a general promoted rule. Everybody wants to break out from any rich or poor country and overall the theme bears no real truth in itself, and it is boring.
But job stories are important. Pubblico di merda is a good teller and we are inspired. We also have our stories in the sack and are eager to share them.

Brief introduction to the "Italian job" nightmare:
The Constitution of the Italian Republic recites at the first article: "The italian Republic is founded on labour."
Yeah, right. Real and canned laughters are heard everywhere since this phrase has been written. The usual joke is: "...foundered on labour".
The sorry situation of jobs in Italy is an endless source for squalid stories. They all are about low wages, too long shifts, no security, plain exploitations at every level. Immigrants and not specialized workers are exploited as slaves (So that you know, more often the term "slave" is meant literally).
The illegal hiring of farm and aedile labourers for very low wages through an agent (called "caporalato", something like "corporaling", because the agent is like a corporal that moves small troops of workers for the mafia) is widespread all along the peninsula, and the results in terms of quality of life for this people, constantly blackmailed and underpaid, are devastating.
For us lucky ones "educated" people, coming from middle-class families and experiencing professional jobs in wealthy cities, the situation is obviously different. But looking closely, it is the same too.
Any young wannabe professional hired in any studio or society in Milan or Rome has to work for ridiculous pay and endless hours, living in a city where house-rents eat off half or more of the salary. No security is given, possibly no real career. Everything is worse for women (even more absurd!)
When any given studio has squeezed the wannabe as a lemon, the dead trainee is dropped for a new enthusiast one.
I am positive that a lot of crucial architecture projects of big firms in Milan are entirely followed by apprentices. Entirely. When lucky, the studio sends at the building sites also experienced architects. But this doesn't means the experienced architects are actually hired by the studio. They are more often demotivated professionals underpaid, employed on a single-project basis and with no social security, that got stuck in the mechanism. Studios of 30+ persons usually host not more than 4-5 individuals actually hired.
On the "human" side, the professionals that remain in the mechanism too long, working ten or more hours a day, having affairs, friends, holidays and dinners always among colleagues, become extraterrestrials unable to deal normally with the world outside.
A lot of smart sensitive people drop out of the professional world exactly for that, and start looking for more simpler, trivial jobs where they don't have to show off enthusiasm for the f---ing profession.
But they end up underpaid and demotivated too.
First story follows. More to come.

F. dropped out of the university many years ago, and worked for seven years as a waitress in a series of café and restaurants in the area of "Navigli" in Milan (where the canals are, and nightlife), moving from one to the other business according to the situation, the sympathy of the bosses and the pay.
She shared apartments with friends in the meantime. She was finally independent.
Early this year she got pregnant. The café where she worked, and where she was well known since she had been working there for different periods in the past years, put her in condition of quitting, since she was getting slower due to the pregnancy.
They could actually do that, because, as it is the general rule in Italy, they had employed her "in black" (meaning that no security or taxes are paid, and no hiring contract is given. No signatures, no blah blah. Just weekly money).
And now, not only they were sending her away, well knowing that nobody would give her a job at that point with the inflated belly and everything, but she had to struggle to get herself a payoff. She had to threaten to call the unions. To call the Financial police. She finally got 700€ as a 16 months payoff (which is ridiculous). Right after that she had to leave the apartment where she lived and get back to her parents' house.
Remarkably, her boss used to define himself a "communist".