«Bhello Mariangela, I’m Sebastiano.Thank you for agreeing to take charge of the processing of the video insights for our project. As I mentioned, you will start tomorrow and I will be present too. Could you pick me up? I have brought your questions to the attention of the director, and I confirm that your equipment will be fine. As regards the salary, however, we will be happy to reimburse you part of the expenses. We also guarantee that this is a job with which you will get great visibility: you will be able to be noticed by potential future customers. Thank you again for offering us your long experience, we are truly grateful to have you on our team. Call me as soon as possible to arrange for tomorrow. Best regards.”
I read Sebastiano’s message quickly, while I struggle up the steps that lead to the house. For some time now my sciatica has been giving me no respite and seems to have gotten worse since the temperatures dropped. I enter the veranda and open the window to find oxygen. I observe the city which, regardless of me, moves at my feet. She is even more beautiful now that she is preparing for the holidays. My neighbors have already installed the lights that will be turned on at the start of the new year. They all say that 2064 will be a good year. For me it certainly will be because finally, at seventy-two years old, I will be able to enjoy my well-deserved retirement.
Pressed by this observation, I ask the digital assistant to check if any communication has been filed in my Public Services Portal. After a short pause, his metallic voice announces the notification of a document from the National Agency for Social Security and Welfare.
“Print it,” I order the assistant, and a sheet of paper immediately lands in my hands. This is exactly the practice I requested: the Consolidated Contribution Projection Report. My eyes move frantically through the dense jungle of bureaucratic terms and figures. A certain anxiety arises in me, because the awareness grows in me that my entire future life is contained precisely in these dignified and obsolete words and in these percentages accompanied by acronyms that sound very little reassuring. At the end of reading, your head starts to spin.
“It’s not possible,” I murmur, holding on to the door frame.
I phone the agency’s switchboard, and after an exhausting wait their digital assistant answers. “You don’t have to call here,” he says sharply. «You must contact the Central Inspectorate for Demographic Balance». “You don’t have to call here,” says the Inspectorate’s virtual assistant harshly. «You must connect to the Deferred Income Assessment Platform». «You must not connect here» says the Platform’s artificial mediator rudely. «You must contact the National Insurance and Welfare Agency».
Time passes quickly like sand in an hourglass. And sometimes we find ourselves taken aback, thinking of too many yeses said. Illustration by Fred Benaglia
“But I already did it!” I scream, and I end the call cursing.
I then return to the starting point, but with more determination. Enough to finally get me a real employee. «I received the Report, but there must be an error» I begin. On the other end of the phone, all is silent. «In practice, thirty years of contributions appear to have been paid, but I have worked for more than forty years!». “Is there anything else?” the official asks, letting me hear his voice for the first time. I can hardly distinguish it from the incorporeal ones that preceded it. «Yes… The estimated monthly amount doesn’t even reach six hundred euros gross» I add, who knows why, with a note more of shame than indignation. «In what year were you born, madam?». «In 1992. I recently turned seventy-two». I hear the man sigh. “Let me check it out,” he says after a while, ordering his assistant to track down all the documents summarizing my entire work history. While I wait, I receive a phone call. Sebastiano’s name appears on the display. I leave it flashing until it stops, and immediately the lack of response is reproached with a message: «Mariangela, I tried to call you but I can’t reach you. As I told you in the previous message, I urgently need you to pick me up tomorrow. Call me back as soon as possible, thanks.” I’m about to type a reply but am interrupted by the bureaucrat’s voice, calling me to attention. «Ma’am, I have read your file. In what year did you start working? Do you remember it?”.
I remember it very well. I had started an internship on my twentieth birthday. “Certain. I started much earlier than thirty years ago: in 2012.” “It doesn’t appear from the forms.” «It is clear that there is a mistake, therefore. An irregularity that I noticed myself, otherwise I wouldn’t have called to ask you…”. “Ma’am,” he interrupts me, “do you have any idea how many phone calls like yours we receive every day?” This simple question, asked with a little exasperation and a little blame, silences me. «The system never makes mistakes. She has only scraped together thirty years of pension contributions because this is what the documents show. I checked everything: here I see internships, internships, coordinated and continuous serial collaborations, uncovered months between one contract and another, below-threshold incomes and contributions paid only for part of the year, especially in youth. I’m sorry to say it, but what I see from the papers is not our mistake, but his terribly discontinuous career.” The room starts spinning around me again. “But I’ve worked a lot in my life,” I say, and my statement sounds like a request for belated absolution. «Ma’am, I’m not saying you didn’t work much. It’s that the system recognized little of his work. I have to leave her now, I have other Millennials on the line. Greetings and best wishes for a happy new year».
The phone call ends, leaving me completely astonished. How could all this happen? Why did I let this happen? More than fifty years have passed since my first occupation, of which twenty seem to have evaporated, as if they had never existed. Yet they weigh on me like a boulder: they seem to have become a terrifying mortgage on my future. My professional value, so highly praised by the countless employers who have followed one another over the course of my career, has been reduced to a tiny number: three figures that would like to eliminate my dignity.
How many handshakes, compliments, smiles, sometimes even some small satisfaction: there seems to be nothing left of all this. Gone are the words of gratitude spoken by colleagues, the warm greetings of the many people I met. In my mind only the many “yes” pronounced, the signatures affixed to countless noose contracts, the work shifts covered during the holidays, the hugs missed by my relatives because ambition overshadowed even the contours of the most cherished affections are piled up in my mind.
The phrase I repeated like a mantra rings in my head at each renewal of collaboration: «This is the last one I sign». I accepted any working condition, any ridiculous salary only because I was convinced that sooner or later something would change. I didn’t understand that youth basked in an unlikely optimism only because they were unaware of their own transience.
It all started with one internship, then another and another. My career continued by providing my services as a videomaker to various realities: journalistic, cultural, institutional. At thirty I could boast a substantial CV, a lot of resourcefulness and enviable diligence. Then the enthusiasm gradually gave way to resignation. Forbearance turned into surrender, and surrender turned into submission without me realizing it. All the passion dissolved as my face bore the signs of aging and my hair grew grey.
My name is Mariangela, I was born in the nineties, and at seventy-two I discovered that much of my dedication and commitment didn’t serve much purpose, other than to accommodate a belated intuition: it was me who accepted that the system recognized little of my work.
While I’m thinking about this the phone rings again, and this time I answer. It’s still Sebastiano, as I imagined. «Mariangela, I’ve been trying to contact you since this morning!» he says, betraying a certain impatience. «You should consider yourself lucky that, despite artificial intelligence, there is still work for those who make do with videos. I’ll be waiting for you at 7 tomorrow morning. I’m a bit far from your house, but as I wrote to you before, part of the expenses will be reimbursed.”
I observe the young passers-by, their carefree walk, and I hope that a future without any precariousness awaits them. «No, I won’t come. Not tomorrow or ever” I reply, taking a breath, and it feels like I’m breathing for the first time in more than forty years. Actually, thirty.