Ch. 2

Table Of Contents - My Novella

Zurich

Elodie was getting the hang of this life of fake routine. Her alarm rang at 7.30. Every day, she went through her ten to fifteen websites, forums and social media pages and hoped to strike gold. Just as old gold rush-era towns slowly became ghost towns, what she considered gold nowadays was finding a specific grain of sand in the desert. Still sand though. Hergold rush-era – not that anybody got rich – was living through the end of the boom of the tertiary sector.
As the pandemic forced businesses to keep their employees at home, Elodie enjoyed the brief honeymoon phase of being able to do her repetitive work on the same level as before – just in bright, fluffy socks and a sweater with cat ears. Her honeymoon ended just as abruptly as her friend’s, Roxanne, and because of a lurking third party that overstepped some major boundaries, too: Instead of making her job easier by letting through only phone calls for things that can’t be solved with one click or one form, AI just took over her whole job. She was one of 45 people fired in 2021 at her firm alone. Just a statistic, like the ones announced every evening.

Shit, maybe this was too dark.

Look…(he checked her files), Elodie, I’m really sorry for what happened to you. And I see how busy you’ve kept yourself, looking for jobs and doing all kinds of things… your résumé speaks volumes and shows how professional you are… Unfortunately, you just don’t have the kind of experience we need. I don’t say this lightly.

How am I supposed to get experience if nobody will give me a chance? All I need is one chance.

I don’t know what to tell you…

Then tell me you’ll give me a chance.

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