Before moving to Cyprus, I lived in Vienna for many years, and nothing highlights the difference between the two more than Christmas: festive markets popping up everywhere, temperatures dropping below zero and the famous Viennese wind determined to freeze off your nose, hands and toes.

I was studying my communication science undergrad at the university and would do whatever job came my way: waitressing and cooking at a catering company, doing security at events – all an experience, but not one of them allowed for a stable monthly income as it was only on call. So when a friend told me about a relaxed sales job at his office – flexible working hours but more or less fixed monthly income – it sounded like a good deal.

Once there, I realised that “sales” was meant quite literally. I would sit with five other people and call companies listed in a system, trying to get them to buy coupons for their employees – a very common gift in Austria and Germany, particularly at Christmas, as they can be bought tax free by the companies and used in supermarkets and restaurants by the employees.

“Good morning, Johanna from X speaking, am I speaking to Mrs. X? Have you already planned Christmas gifts for your employees?” was my standard opening gambit.

I cannot recall how many times I repeated it per day. It still haunts me in my dreams almost eight years later.

To little surprise, the company’s answer was often no, and people were actually willing to buy the coupons. I will avoid mentioning brand names here – but the company and its competitor had very much established themselves at the time.

So there we were, five students sitting in the attic of a building as sad as a Viennese winter – though at least not as cold – with our little printed lists noting down how many calls we made per day and how many coupon deals we sealed, or rather, how many we could forward to the actual sales team which would take up once our work was done.

A still life from my times at Café Kafka

My colleagues included a Bosnian girl in her late twenties studying business, a guy in his early twenties involved in a Trotskyist group – and very notably so – an early thirties guy who was technically studying but spent most of his time in the office and hated women’s football, an Austrian girl from a village who was barely in the office and later dedicated her life to saving cats from Bosnia, and me, a German in her early twenties spending most of her time in Vienna’s most rundown Kaffeehauser – Vienna’s traditional coffee houses, or rather, cultural institutions where one could, drink house wine for €2.50 (back in 2017) and sit for hours starring at the smoking-yellow walls of Café Kafka.

Our little mini call centre was a wild mix. During Christmas time, they would call us and the other employees in on the weekend to – manually – seal thousands of envelopes for our customers, I cannot even recall what they contained. But we certainly went on far too many smoke breaks during these days.

The company later secured a huge deal with the Austrian government, which was handing out their vouchers of up to €50 to almost one million Viennese households to boost gastronomy following the Covid crisis in 2020. The deal amounted to around €34 million, while there were investigations to see if the advertisement for vouchers, with estimated costs of €2.4 million were legal.

After eight months at the office, the first time I got a voucher from the company was years later, through said government initiative following the pandemic.

My best friend and I spent it on dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant, and my Pho soup felt like a late, unexpected bonus for surviving the madness back in the company’s office.