HR Emerges on the Deck, Knife Between Its Teeth
I officially become an expat on August 1, just some number of days or weeks away from a year since I found out about getting this job.
HR, incidentally, will be nuking our entire “People” system at 2 PM Houston time on July 31. This is the system that generates paychecks and the like.
I think this change only applies to US employees, but I’m expecting this to be another, ah, let’s just say cluster fudge, in the road to righting my employment terms. I hope they manage to pull me out of the US early, because they’re even asking hourly plan employees to enter their time early.
In other news, our beloved government here capped prices a few weeks ago, took a populist victory lap in the papers, and then proceeded to quietly hike the “special consumption tax” to counteract the price reduction. Meaning, they effectively just yoinked a fairly huge chunk of margin from us and the dealers and put it in their own pockets.
This tax, the ÖTV, is blessed to have a dotted O, as this sound is pretty much the kind of sound you make when you find something growing in your pancake syrup or something. We compete with Great Britain on petrol taxes here.
To keep up the language nerding, özel means both “special” and “private.” I leave as an exercise to the reader to ponder what that shared meaning indicates about the differences in culture.