[游记]下海,马赛之行(1987夏)

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Chapter Two Odd jobs

Liang chen

良晨

Part One

Manna from heaven and travel to Marseilles

In France doing a temporary job, in particular during the summer holiday, is a common practice for French students. Temporary job offers can be found in local popular newspapers, in some students’ organisation such as CROUS, in the Paris Youth Centre or simply on various publicity panels in university restaurants, in some shops. The offers include all kinds of small jobs: babysitting, cleaning, selling, gardening, distributing tracts, waiting in restaurants, accompanying disabled people, etc.

It didn’t take me a long time to spot an interesting job offer: “good remuneration in a good working environment”. “Wonderful, today is definitely my lucky day!” I congratulated myself and straightaway phoned the company. I was immediately asked to meet the commercial director at its headquarters in the suburbs of Paris. I harried to the railway station, jumped into a train, rushed out of it forty minutes later. With heart thumping, I dashed into the company’s office. The reception room was a big hall, where hundreds of students flocked together. With faces wreathed in smiles and eyes shining with hope, all of us were eagerly waiting the employer.

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our company. We are a manufacturer of sunburn cream. Our products with a good brand are already distributed everywhere in the market. As the school summer holiday is coming, we would like to provide you, dear students, with a unique opportunity to allow you to spend your holiday at the beautiful seaside and at the same time to earn a lot of money” The speaker, obviously good at persuading and selling, was beginning to excite the audience. “Enjoying the seaside and earning 10 000 FF at least a month, a real good summer job!” murmured my neighbours. As soon as the speaker finished his speech, the students asked plenty of questions, and with plenty of enthusiasm.

In fact he was talking about distributing the company’s sunburn cream at the seaside, based on its new distribution method: direct distribution to consumers on the beach by students. The volunteers were required to borrow a big sprayer from the company and buy a bottle of sunburn scream (15 kg) on credit. Their mission was to sell the sunburn cream, using the sprayer. The cost for each spray was 5 FF, but student was allowed to sell it at 10FF. Therefore if he could sell 100 sprays a day, he could earn 500 FF per day and as much as 15,000 FF per month! Such a sum was so attractive for hard up students that all of them were interested, including myself. Everybody in the hall fought to sign up.

I signed up for the coast at Marseilles, the second largest city in France, the home of the “Marseillaise”, the French national anthem, also the home of the great Dumas’s famous novel “Le Conte de Mont Christo”. I had dreamt of visiting this city for a long time.

海外暑假打工记 (1987年夏天)

下海, 马赛之行

—- 暑假打工记之一

良晨

法国高校按文理科的不同, 暑假的长短也略有不同. 文科院校六月中旬放假,一直放到十月中旬, 暑假长达四个月之久. 理科院校六月中下旬放假, 一般放到九月中旬, 暑假也长达二个多月. 如此长的夏假自然就成了法国大学生勤工俭学的黄金时刻. 在法国,大学并不是高不可攀、神秘莫测的藏龙卧虎之地,笼统地讲,大学就是大家都能去上的大人学校,也可以说是免费生产大学生的工厂.高中生一毕业,均能理所当然地去大学注册念书,所以大学生泛滥成灾,大学生身份也就成了穷人的代名词.大学食堂有两类人可以进去用餐,一类是在校大学生,另一类就是依靠社会救济为生的穷困潦倒者.不过法国大学生人穷志不穷,他们决不轻易向父母伸手,甚至富人家的孩子也是如此.所以假期里勤工俭学蔚然成风.

假期里大量的“年轻穷人”涌入劳务市场, 为雇主们提供了取之不尽、用之不竭的廉价劳动力.有供必有求.假期临近时,“事求人”的广告铺天盖地.学生们可以通过各种各样的方式找到打工机会, 比如说看地方报, 去大学食堂或商店里的广告栏寻找, 去学生机构或者去艾菲尔铁塔下的青年中心查询. 临工种类包罗万象: 看孩子, 照顾老人, 打扫卫生, 散发广告, 做家教,组织儿童夏令营, 当服务员、销售员等等.