Cork, Ireland - In times of recession Irish imagination is at its best: what a better way to overcome cash shortage than creating one’s own personal idea of a job? During these six years of living in Ireland as a foreigner I’ve been used to people coming to knock at my door during winter to sell woods for the chimney, but nothing like this year… I’ve seen an army of door-knocking people, young or middle aged, offering the most variety of jobs you can ever imagine. Everything started in Christmas time when a teenage colorful trio of girlfriends came to my door offering to sing a Christmas Carol for me. It was so sweet and funny and I was such in my Christmassy mood that I said “why not”. For a fiver I was able to witness the most unusual Christmas carol ever sung, with the three girls laughing their asses off while missing the right note. I was even laughing myself!

From then on, every time I hear a knock knock on my door, I go to open it with somewhat an expectation of the next job offering. I’ve seen men offering carpenter work, or solar panels installation because “I’m doing it for your neighbor, I thought you might be interested”.  I even got a persona invitation to a beauty salon, I guess the door to door strategy it’s a popular way to find new clients here.

Now that summer is approaching, within a week I got two offers of lawn cutting… guess my lawn looked pretty bad! I have to say that it was growing a bit wild, with weeds all over the places and ugly yellow flowers infesting the beautiful green that I have (and as green as Irish green you can’t get any!). At the second offer I was convinced to accept, at least to save us a three hours job that the man with grassy hands solved in half hour while holding a lit cigarette at the corner of his mouth. He was so great and did such a perfect job, that I was inclined to offer him a tea: over our cuppa, he told me he has a wife, a five year old boy and one on the way, that God sent them even if they didn’t want other kids, “and it’s God’s will, and we’re happy.”  He was so honest and happy inside his eyes. When I asked him if they know if it’s a boy or a girl, he said they don’t want to know, that “it’s God’s will, the important thing is that baba is healthy.” He asked for 20 euro for my front and back yard, but he was so kind to clean up the mess and take away the trash, that I felt compelled to give him 25 euros. Those 5 minutes talking to him made my day: I felt happy and over the clouds for the rest of the day! You should have seen the peace and happiness in those eyes…

Well, I thought, if everybody is inventing a job to be offered door to door in time of recession, what can I do? Maybe some baking, in the Italian way…. Working on it!

Any strange job experience in the other parts of the world?