The author is a member of the editor-in-chief of “Zeit-Magazin”.
I’ve read that the British are still struggling to get enough truck drivers excited about themselves. This is probably also due to the fact that the job of being a truck driver in Great Britain is not as desirable as one might imagine as a Briton.
The New York Times had done some research into why the UK transportation crisis was still going on and spoke to truckers in Poland. They say that while the British pay okay, they also take high rents. That’s why you wouldn’t want to work with a special visa in Great Britain. And anyway, you’d rather not be so far away from home. In Germany, people also pay okay.
Many truck drivers have also found a better job in Poland in the meantime. You don’t want to drive around with trucks anymore. I hear that more often now. In Germany, the hospitality industry has problems finding people. Even those had to look for new jobs in the pandemic during the lockdown and now no longer want to go back to the waiters. It seems that Corona has ensured that many people have given up jobs that they no longer felt like doing anyway.
Who would have thought that truck drivers are actually not people who can’t imagine anything else in life than driving big cars. You just do a strenuous, stressful job for little money – and often prefer a different job.
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We learned from trucker films and country songs that “trucks” are actually one with their vehicles, so that you don’t really know where the trucker ends and the truck begins.
Jobs for money
We thought the same about waiters, bartenders and baristas. Apparently these are not people who serve coffee and beers out of deep inner conviction. You did this for money.
The question is whether this problem could now spread, you have to reckon with everything. It cannot be ruled out that this behavior spills over into other professions.
What happens now when newspaper delivery men don’t feel like stuffing newspapers into mailboxes in the morning, when department store employees don’t feel like stacking boxes anymore and parcel delivery men no longer want to deliver parcels for little money?
Recently an actress even complained to me that it was difficult to scrape together all the assistants for the film. In the past, young people would have stood in line to do any mean job in film.
But now it’s all about the money. Where is that supposed to lead? Do people no longer have any ideals? The truckers at home in Poland will see what it means if there is no fuel at the gas station in Great Britain. Where do we get to if everyone only thinks about money under capitalism?
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