Vela Luka, Croatia
I woke up today knowing that it’d be Adam’s last day at the dive center but had no clue it would also be mine.
The weather was a bit gloomy today. I had to lead dives in the morning with a team of 8 divers. We went to Blue Hole and then Vranine; two of my top favourite sites. However, Vranine was soooo cold today that all the divers pretty much wanted surface after only 35 minutes of diving. I think it was due to the fact that during our surface interval time between the dives, there wasn’t any sun at all; it was even drizzling. We couldn’t warm up. Good thing the group of divers I had were awesome and were all in high spirit. Everybody’s joking around and there was also on-boat entertainment such as somersaulting into water by one of our divers and snack sharing.
The afternoon was uneventful. I was scanning student record files most of the time.
After the workday ended, I hung around the center to use the internet. I took notice of Storm and Bobby having a lengthy discussion. I suppose all of us Divemaster interns had been having issues with different things in regards of the internship. After they were done, Bobby came to me to pull me aside. What happened next was a mess. It started off with Bobby pulling out his book and quoting me the price that I had to pay to cut short my internship as I had requested. However, the numbers didn’t add up. What he basically charged me guest price for the courses and dives I did and told me was that I had to pay 950 euros to get any of my certifications. This was on top of the 600 euros I had already paid for the internship and two months worth of work (12 hours a day, 6 days a week). For 1600 euros, I could have just paid for the courses and had them taught to me properly and not spent two months of my time working my arse off.
I called Bobby out on a bunch of bullshit we had to deal with as “interns” here. I told him that prior to my coming here, I was told I didn’t need any work visa because I would be a student and tourist visa suffice and that my tourist registration paper would be taken care of. The truth was, I never did get my paper until a few weeks into my time here, rendering me illegal alien prior to that. And same thing was happening to Storm.
Also, I told him that learning on our down time wasn’t encouraged here. We were pretty much working and micromanaged every single second. I always felt the need to pick up the mop and sweep the floor even for the fifth time in the day to avoid being scrutinized of not working. Bobby got so upset with the word “down time” I almost suspected that he’s allergic to it. He told me he didn’t “pay” for me to have down time that I was here to work. My argument back to him was that I was a training staff member that it’s not fair that my instructor told me to do my course (watching the course DVD and doing the course exam) after work on my own time. I called him out on the fact that it’s ridiculous that he had us interns go to his house to babysit his daughter and to paint his daughter’s room because he was unwilling to hire proper babysitter and painters. The way I saw it, any sort of random work at the dive center was fair game (like painting the boat Hercules, cleaning the gutter) but definitely not when it came down to his own personal life. With the mention of his daughter’s name, Bobby blew up. Geez, I was not even bringing up his daughter to point out anything about her as a person, but rather the fact that I had to babysit her as part of my Divemaster internship program. What a joke.
In the end, it was near impossible to continue the discussion with him. I was upset, he was enraged. He told me to decide by tomorrow if I wanted to continue working or paid him the 950 euros for my any of my certificates (Advanced Open Water, EFR, Rescue, and referral for the Divemaster).
I simply walked out on him knowing what my decision would be. I wasn’t going to pay him shit, that’s for sure.
I didn’t take any photo today, but here’s a picture of a Korcula cat I took a while back. His expression pretty sums up how I felt.
Croatian phrase of the day:
Koliko će te dugo ostati? = How long are you staying?
One Comment
wow