You can tell a bit about a person’s situation by some of the words that they use. When I first moved to Germany my German language abilities were not that good but I did learn the word for cockroach and tax lawyer and no they were not even used in the same context.
One of the words that has recently ended up in my vocabulary is “Scheinselbständigkeit” which essentially translates to “fictitious self-employment”. The idea is that in Germany the government doesn’t want people to say that they are self-employed but yet they are really tied to their client in a way that is really just a form of disguised employment.
The company form that was described in my last story was designed to root out these types of people so they cannot sue for employment. Well, it was mid-year and the actual task that I was working on was not quite completed so more time was needed. Coincidentally, the client who must have been having some space problems, asked if we could work remotely (yes!) Well, understandably my client didn’t want to pay an all inclusive rate for someone who wouldn’t be traveling. So the discussion came down to please provide an offer for a rate that would not include this expense, they would pay it each trip should travel be necessary.
The funny thing is that if you look closely at this construct, my client was creating a situation where the external resource that they used was looking slightly less “free resource” and more of a “pseudo employee”. I guess the right hand (Legal and HR) doesn’t quite know what the left hand (Purchasing) is up to.