Petros had been unemployed for three months when he discovered that the biggest problem with unemployment is not that you do not have a job, but that suddenly everyone else knows exactly how to find one for you. He learned this on a Sunday afternoon at his mother’s lunch table, somewhere between a salad nobody was touching and a chicken so overcooked it looked ready to testify in court.
Petros had worked for the same company for seventeen years. He knew his job, had trained younger employees, worked Saturdays, late nights, and two Christmases management had described as “exceptional circumstances.” Then the company merged, restructured, modernised, and within three weeks Petros became unnecessary. The company still existed. His job still existed too, except now two people were doing it for less money.
His mother had decided that a family lunch would do him good. That alone was worrying. Whenever the family believed something “would do him good,” what usually followed involved a large number of opinions and very little actual good.
Uncle Andreas opened the discussion first. He was seventy-two, had been retired for fourteen years, and still talked about the labour market as though he had just come off the factory floor that morning.
“When I was your age,” he said, cutting bread, “if I lost a job, I found another one the next day.”
Petros looked at him. “The last time you looked for work, there were phone booths in the streets.”
Uncle Andreas laughed because he assumed Petros was joking. He was not. “Doesn’t matter. Anyone who really wants to work can find work.”
That was the first law of the table. An unemployed person was not somebody without a job. He was somebody who had not looked properly enough.
His cousin Lena, who worked in marketing and had already used the word “pivot” three times before the starters arrived, had a more modern solution.
“You should do something of your own,” she said. “Why work for other people?”
“Because other people pay salaries.”
“Yes, but think entrepreneurial.”
Petros tried to think entrepreneurial. He failed. What he thought instead was that he had €640 in the bank, rent due in ten days, and a car that had recently developed a different noise every time he turned left.
“What exactly should I start?”
Lena shrugged. “Something. A concept.”
It was comforting to know that his financial salvation was located somewhere between “something” and “a concept.”
His brother’s godfather, Michalis, had another solution.
“If I were you, I’d leave the country.”
“Where?”
“Anywhere. The Netherlands, Denmark, Norway. They pay people there.”
Petros asked whether he knew anyone in any of those places. He did not. Whether he knew how much rent cost. He did not. Whether he had any idea what jobs existed in Petros’s field. Not exactly. Whether he had ever considered leaving himself.
“I can’t now. I’ve got my life here.”
Naturally.
Emigration was an excellent solution, provided somebody else did it.
His mother, who until then had shown heroic restraint, finally joined in.
“I keep telling you, go in person. Don’t just send CVs and use the internet. Walk into an office and say, ‘I want to work.’”
Petros put down his fork. “Mum, you can’t just walk into companies like that anymore.”
“Why not? They have doors.”
It was difficult to argue with logic of that calibre.
His brother Stefanos, who had a job and therefore automatically held a postgraduate degree in unemployment, decided to intervene in a more serious tone.
“Do you think maybe you’re being a bit negative? I’m saying it for your own good. Maybe it comes across in interviews.”
Petros looked at him for a few seconds. He had submitted nineteen applications, attended seven interviews, reached two second rounds, and completed one four-stage process that ended with a message saying they had chosen a candidate who was “a better fit for the company culture.” He had never discovered what that culture was, but he suspected it involved unpaid overtime and smiling while doing it.
“Maybe,” he said.
Aunt Maria, who until then had been concentrating on the chicken, decided the time had come for her major revelation.
“My friend Katerina’s son found a job through LinkedIn.”
Petros waited for the rest.
There was no rest.
“Good for him.”
“You should get LinkedIn.”
“I have LinkedIn.”
Aunt Maria looked disappointed. For a few seconds she had believed she had solved unemployment.
The table continued like this for another twenty minutes. Petros needed to change industry, country, attitude, CV, profile picture, mindset, and possibly zodiac sign. He should learn coding, get into property without owning any property, do “something with AI,” meet more people, stop taking things personally, go out more, spend less, and, according to Uncle Andreas, wake up earlier because “work likes the morning.”
Petros listened and ate.
At some point, he realised nobody had asked him what kind of job he was actually looking for.
Not one person.
Nobody had asked how many applications he had sent, what employers had told him, whether he had enough money for next month, or whether he was sleeping at night. They had gone straight to solutions. Solutions are much more enjoyable than questions because they do not require you to listen to the answer.
By the time dessert arrived, Uncle Andreas had returned to his original point.
“I still say there are jobs out there. You just have to want one.”
Petros wiped his mouth, drank some water, and looked around the table. Six people were staring at him with the expression of people who believed they had just saved his life without leaving their chairs.
“All right,” he said. “Which one of you is hiring?”
For the first time since lunch began, nobody said anything.
Uncle Andreas looked down at his plate. Lena picked up her phone. Michalis suddenly remembered he needed to answer a message. Aunt Maria asked whether anyone wanted more dessert, and his mother stood up to make coffee.
Petros smiled.
He had not found a job.
But he had achieved something that, until that moment, had seemed impossible.
He had solved the family lunch.
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