Job Discussion Forums

[maruss]

I met someone who had an even worse experience with this crap outfit! He arrived there expecting to work in Samara, which is the place they advertised the job for, only to be told that that it was the same!!Try telling that to any local and they will think your are drunk-or worse.....After similar unpleasant experiences with the director to those described above, they began harassing him psychologically to such an extent that he finally gave them one months notice, which they accepted after saying they were planning to fire him anyway! Surprise, surprise they only gave him two weeks wages on the final day, alleging they were deducting the rest for 'damages and other expenses' he had supposedly caused them, but which they refused to define.......to cap it all, he found all his stuff outside in the corridor when he went back to his apartment and that the locks had been changed since he went to work earlier that day, despite making it clear that he was leaving on a flight two days later and was forced to pay for two nights in a crummy hotel. He also warned me that Togliatti is a dump and has major crime and drug problems, as well as many unfriendly locals although he said that Samara looked better from what he saw during a couple of brief visits there, and which was also where he had applied to work in the first place......

[acer994]

From what you have said, it sounds like I got out at the right time. Your friend was treated like shit. Probably would have done the same to me if I had stayed.

Togliatti is a very unfriendly place, especially to Americans. The British American Language Center is just a money-making racket. They do not need English, nor do they need English teachers. They claim they do but it is just a facade. The town is racist beyond belief. If you speak English, you become a target, like I did when I went to that striptease joint (best thing about the whole experience, despite being ripped off).

I also saw some rough-looking dudes in leather jackets (mafia types) hanging around my neighbourhood (in the apartment block next door in fact). The place was menacing and fucking nasty all-round. Tell your mates to stay away.

[acer994]

The Monday after a thug threatened to kill me, M___, the director came round and asked me why I hadn't gone to Ozon (the factory in Zhguliovsk). I said I was in shock and didn't feel like it. I had also turned my mobile off (in the contract) because I was p*** off. She used this (turning my mobile off) as an excuse NOT to pay me.

I got the impression that the company will use any excuse not to pay me. It was my first time at this nightclub but she said 'don't go there' in her broken English. Whatever! Not only is it dangerous in Togliatti, the company will find any excuse NOT to pay you. Good riddance to very bad rubbish!

[acer994]

By the way, if anybody reading this thinks it is BS, just go there and find out. The average Russian lives on $500 or less a month and Russians are generally envious of the 'rich' West, especially the US.

I went to the local tavern a number of times. I asked for a bottle of Heineken to 'take out'. The Russian skinhead who gave it to me (it was 100Roubles) slammed it on the table. They do not like foreigners. There was one Russian in the tavern who was friendly (an unemployed truck driver) but the rest were hostile. The atmosphere was pretty hostile. When I say 'menacing', I mean what I say. The apartment block was like a stalag (prison camp). Your apartment has a metal outer door (one snap-in double-lock and another sliding lock) and an inner door. Yes, I was f*** there. Go and find out.

[RoscoeTX]

Sounds rather brutal Acer and sorry to hear you had such an awful time and were deviously mislead! But thanks for sharing your story, hopefully it helps to steer others from making the same mistake.

[acer994]

I have tried to present things as objectively as possible.

Perhaps the situation is different in Samara, Moscow, St Petersburg etc. Perhaps this is a small hick town that doesn't take kindly to strangers.

Either way, I do not think I will be going back, not in my lifetime.

Like I said, you are welcome to find out.

Should've gone to Moscow instead. Or maybe not. Perhaps I might find horror stories on Dave's about Moscow

[maruss]

As I have posted many times on the site under various threads, Moscow is not typical of the rest of Russia in so many ways and you really need to go outside it to understand why?
As you did point out, you met one friendly guy who was a truck driver etc. and this sort of situation can and often does occur there when you find the most unlikely people are friendly and ready to talk etc. while the ones you expected would be are not!!I have many times tried to analyse why there is this feeling of hostility, or at best indifference towards strangers in many parts of Russia, especially compared to a small country like Cyprus where I live and people are usually much more open? Maybe its inherited from the Soviet past when everyone had to keep their true feelings and ideas for only their closest and most trusted people, while treating everyone else with suspicion...and also because life there for the vast majority today is still difficult and often stressful-basic commodities are very expensive compared to what most people earn and the quality of life in general, the environment, public services etc. are often very poor, corruption and crime are rampant.....hardly encourages people to be friendly and helpful!

[acer994]

I have worked in other parts of Eastern Europe. I didn't come across this kind of hostility when I worked in Poland. I worked in Gdansk and Bydgoszcz. There was poverty there too, but nobody openly threatened to kill me.

The only place which comes close is Zilina, in Slovakia. It was a grim place. I was teaching at a private school. The locals were hostile to foreigners there too. I have also worked in the Czech Republic. Prague is an easy-going, cosmopolitan city. There was crime, obviously; there is crime everywhere but it did not feel 'menacing'. You had to be careful in the clubs at night (in Prague) but you didn't stick out like a sore thumb when you opened your mouth, in Togliatti you do and you quickly become a target.

I think Togliatti goes on my list of 'no go' places, along with Zilina

[acer994]

Don't get me wrong. People get knived, shot, killed and generally beaten up in and around nightclubs in England all the time. So why should Togliatti be any different? Well, it isn't.

OK, I was a foreigner in Togliatti. Foreigners get targeted in England too.

I do not expect to become public enemy number one the first time I enter a nightclub.

What I am saying is: if you are the only foreigner in a place that is non too friendly to English speakers, it is very difficult to stay under the radar (or off it). You cannot blend in. You become a bigger target.

Many Poles live in England. Perhaps they were targets in the past. Perhaps some of them are still targets for small groups of mindless British yobs.

I left because I did not want to become a statistic in a city full of groups of mindless Russian yobs.

[maruss]

Remember most East European countries had a democratic government as well as culture and traditions before WW2 and after 1989 when the Soviet domination of them ended they seemed to have reverted to their roots again fairly quickly, but Russia never really had a democratic system or civil society, except for a brief period after perestroika when Yeltsin first came to power.........and the chaos that ensued made few Russians look back with regret for the end of those days, unfortunately. Maybe it's because we tend to think that Russia will be something like other E. European countries but of course it is not and this is what is hard for us to appreciate? If anything, apart from St Petes and Karelia which suggest Scandinavia, the rest of the country is more Asian in atmosphere than anything, even a cosmopolitan metropolis like Moscow has this aura, despite its tendencies to try to copy western trends and fashions among the elite.