I used to work there in my student days. Pay was abysmal, and I learned other things too. For instance: people will literally kill themselves for their illusions. Like this Greek immigrant who had been working the nightshift for twenty years, putting every deutschmark he could into a hotel project in his homeland. His longtime colleagues assured me he was pennypinching himself and his family to death for absolutely nothing - some even claimed they had seen the construction site while on vacation in Greece. A total, incoherent mess, they said, after twenty years of suffering.

I had not learned enough yet.

Twenty years later, some PR outfit subcontracted me for a one off on behalf of these people here. Goals were ill-defined, work was tedious and in the end the PR experts didn’t want to pay what we had agreed on beforehand. I guess I had entertained illusions.