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In the finishing straight

The finish line referred to in the title refers to the site that should have been launched many months ago and which I started working on in March last year: Spirali Edizioni (www.spirali.it), an online sales site for the publishing house’s books and magazines, a new version of the site www.spirali.com (written in PHP 3 in 2001, and essentially unchanged since then).
Yes, I work for Spirali.
To some people, this name will not mean anything; to others, I recommend a trip to the Repubblica.it archive by searching for Armando Verdiglioneor a stroll on Youtube where there is a film of Ezio Greggio making fun of Dr Vermilione, the psychoanalyst guru (also known as Lacan’s great son).
In straightforward terms, I work for a convicted felon.

So far, nothing so abnormal: it is not that difficult.
The problem is not that; the problem is that he was convicted in the first and second instances (I am not making anything up, of course) of circumvention of an incapable*. He is also not a mythical figure who stays away from the publishing house but deals directly with all matters concerning us, from holidays and leave, working hours, etc., which I have already discussed.

To give an even more concrete example, before Christmas, he came to the editorial office twice daily, asking everyone, “But what do you do?” and talking about an unspecified contract change. On the morning of the 24th, at 8.45 a.m., he left a message on the guest register (the big book in which we keep track of attendance, of course, I’m not going to tell you how out of order this register is, because otherwise, we’ll never hear the end of it) saying that we were all late, that the work we were doing was terrible, and so on.

In the meantime, it has been almost a month since we have had welcome guests, who answer to the name of financiers.

In all of this, that site you see is the one I managed to wrest from a delusional database and from people who not only know nothing about the web but also claim to control every last comma of what they publish (obviously failing to do so but only succeeding in delaying and worsening the work), and having as their manager what they call a cypher** and which is unsuitable for the job he has been assigned, if not, almost always, harmful and inappropriate.

For me, it amounts to an achievement. It is also the result of the fact that I made a sort of coup de grâce, denouncing the severe problems of the old site and pointing out that I knew nothing about a phantom contract with a bank to do online trading directly to the president of the publishing house (his wife), who fortunately accepted the appeal last Monday.

And I went further: I also wrote her an e-mail pointing out the monthly thirty-day payment we all suffer and the problems it causes us. I spoke in the plural because I am a social animal.

That was yesterday.
This morning she showed up with an envelope: it was my salary, in cash.
I had never seen a 500-euro note earned me before.

I don’t think I have ever felt such discouragement in my life.
I was told clearly that setting a fixed payment date for everyone, as I asked, is not possible because we are paid in instalments.
I was told to say if and when I needed a fixed date to pay my salary.

I will not do it. Because it would mean taking my salary away from someone who may need it more than me, and I cannot know who.

I take some consolation from the fact that this is probably an attestation of esteem for her.
But even now, as I write this, I still get the blues.

I am the only one who received the December salary among those who work with me.
And I cannot do anything for them.

I look at the site again, think about the work we have all done and tell myself that it is not so bad after all.

*He used to take money from mentally ill people.

**These are the so-called cyphers (yes, it’s all true):

How did you work at ‘Spirals’? “I obviously worked for free, but I was gratified. Other people worked with me who, after going through moments of severe depression, of atony, were able to return to work, they felt the pleasure of working, even 16 hours a day. What binds us is not so much the person of Verdiglione as the structure of his organisation’. But she left. “My masochistic period was over, the fact that he always managed to disconcert me; I considered myself top of the class, I was flattered that I was entrusted with important translations, and he always managed to despise my work. I left ‘Spirali’ and went straight to Paris to study: he phoned me many times to blackmail me, but I resisted’.

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