Last Saturday, I had the most bizarre and, after the book presentation in Vienna, the most fantastic book reading ever.
I have been invited to read from “From Barrie to Vibrator” on the book fair in Wiener Neustadt, a small city 40km south of Vienna.
Two surprises were waiting for me there: first, Wiener Neustadt is an surprisingly pretty old city. Second, I was supposed to read after Annemarie Moser, a lady who is from Wr. Neustadt and still lives there. So basically, the audience was her audience. And here audience is from Wr.Neustadt and is between 75-85 years old. From Barbie to WHAT???
She read her stories for 45 minutes. Her stories are about elderly or sick people. Beautiful, but heavy and depressing. I was panicking. I changed the stories I was going to read for three times. I thought nothing can save this hopeless situation. I even considered disappearing. And to make things worse, there was a break between our readings. So I expected the audience to become either incurably depressed or to leave during the break.
They didn’t. Neither. Nor.
I started reading, scared like shit. And the faces of those grey-haired people immediately started lighting up. After one minute they were glowing like a bunch of little suns. After two minutes they were cracking of laughter. And they couldn’t stop laughing. I have never had such attentive, good-humored audience. They kept on laughing, listening carefully and applauding for 45 minutes. And then they asked for more! So I read one more story.
The first gentleman came to have his book signed as I was still sitting on the stage. And a whole bunch of people was already waiting at the books table for me to sign. They all wanted to meet me and talk to me. I haven’t felt so welcome and so admired since the book presentation in June.
It was just amazing how a situation can turn 180 degrees within one single minute. You can never, ever know how it might end.
Or was it all Frau Moser? I already considered asking her if we could always read together. So she can depress the people and then they can’t help but adore me for lifting them up….
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009
Florida, last Friday. A guy walks in into the company he has been fired from, starts shooting around, kills one and shoots six. He was unemployed and had $90,000 debt.
Info in Telegraph
Paris, last month. Yet another France Telecom employee killed himself. He jumped off a bridge and left a note complaining about the bad atmosphere at work after he has been transferred to Customer Services department. This makes 29 suicides among France Telecom employees in past year and half. Not to forget is a bunch of attempted suicides which were prevented on time.
France Telecom decided to employ 200 psychiatrists and invest €1 billion in preventing Burnout. Can it happen that this will make the people feel sicker than they are? And result in everybody thinking they have a personal problem – while the money keeps pouring from one pocket (FT) to the other (some private firm who employed the psychiatrists). Instead of securing jobs, cutting stress (how about starting with working hours?) and starting to treat employees like human beings?
Info in Financial Times
We have never been this well off – and this desperate. Why?
Tags: Burnout, Commentary, System
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