Review: Ole Thorstensen «Just a job»

Non-fiction

Publisher:

pelicans forlag

Release year:

2022

«Politically hot topic.»

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It was a strange, almost ingenious book that it was difficult to imagine being able to get a sequel. But here it is, and it goes in the same key as the previous one, but is even more politically relevant.

Thorstensen decided at one point to turn things upside down: He was going to travel to Poland and find a job as a guest worker. This way he could understand more of the state of the construction sector’s labor market, find out what kind of building practice the Polish colleagues in Norwegian buildings have in their background, and not least experience working professionally when you do not know the language. He wanted to reflect the experience the speechless actors have at work in Norway, and thus be better equipped in their work in Norway.

It is not easy for him to get a job, and the book follows several attempts. Eventually he is hired for a construction project in Kraków. The descriptions from here are interesting and enlightening, and it is precisely the proximity to the actual experiences that gives the text strength. Why do they not use scaffolding when walking at height?

Yes we can

In the same way as in the previous book, the text revolves around professionalism and quality in the construction industry. He constantly wonders how modern working life, with hired contractors, staffing agencies and many languageless, unskilled construction workers, threatens Norwegian building practices, knowledge transfer and customers’ legitimate demands for qualified assistance.

For those of us who have practical experience from the industry, it is uplifting to read such good reflections on what is going on, where we come from, what interests drive development, the many paradoxes around the use of knowledge, tools and experience, and it would the belief that whoever says “Yes we can”, in fact can do what you have asked.

Because it is actually largely about language. What does it mean when Norwegian customers and artisan colleagues have to communicate in a foreign language – English – which is also a foreign language of the person they want to speak to? Not just because there are so many words that do not fit into our limited vocabulary, but because what we are trying to say refers to things that have no equivalent in the other.

When our statement relates to a whole universe of traditions, of views on life and specific regulations that are a little – or very – different where the other comes from, how is it understood? The other, the worker, who just wants to please the customer, may be talking too much to you. “Yes we can”.

Without fixed fax machines

The book’s clear literary qualities in particular are surprising, both on the linguistic and the structural level, ie both the materials and the floor plans, to use terminology from the construction industry. Thorstensen has a warm, modest and wondering tone, he writes simply and smoothly, without prestigious fix faxes. This is not strict non-fiction, but neither is poetry or pretentious essay writing. When he presents essential factual information, he puts a footnote to research reports and studies at the bottom of the page, but it is the anecdotes that carry the story. And for some anecdotes!

Where he squats on a dark night and stares up at the sky-high cultural palace in Warsaw while the diarrhea flows out into the bushes and not just the pants, we are completely with him. Or when he walks around a graveyard and wonders about the building customs and the possibilities for complaints about pompous grave monuments MAYBE made in low-cost countries.

On the whole, it is the author’s continuous presence and in many ways modest experiences that make the book unique. Without bulging literary pretensions, it provides really good reading.

What’s going on in the building?

Yes, Thorstensen makes his experiences and reflections an exciting page turner. The reader is immediately caught up in the question of how this is going to go. Not because life is at stake, but because you wonder what he will get out of these experiences in the form of realizations that extend beyond the book pages and into our broader understanding of the course of the world.

It is a book for everyone. Not only for those who are appointed to think something about economics, politics, education, language, construction and migration, but everyone who at one or more times in life experiences being a customer of craft services, and that is most of us. Here you get to raise your horizons, but you also get a number of good practical tips to understand why it is so difficult to understand what is going on in your building. What do they do, those who actually do the job?

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