Why foreigners want to work 12 hours a day in Poland
Poles often do not understand why foreigners who come to their country to work prefer to work 12 hours, and sometimes even 14 or 16 hours. Although I personally believe that working 16 or 14 hours is something that will definitely harm your health in the near future or later, the reasons are different for everyone and quite simple: you need money to feed your family, educate your children, pay off a loan, or even worse, to treat a family member.
Poles judge by themselves and work for 8 hours because they want to relax after work and be with their families. A foreigner’s family is far away and there is no point in spending time in a rented apartment if he or she can earn extra money during this time. A foreigner is granted a visa for a year, so they need to use their time as efficiently as possible to earn as much as possible.
Poles who go to work in England or Germany also work as hard as possible to earn more, but often some of them do not understand foreigners who work so hard in their country, although the logic is quite simple.
Most foreigners work 12-hour days because they came to earn a certain amount of money, save on food and clothing, and save as much money as possible for the duration of their stay in Poland. They did not come to live in Poland, they came to earn money. There are also those who come here to live and work with the possibility of staying forever, but these are mostly young couples and graduate students of Polish universities.
For Poles, it is strange that a foreigner works non-stop for 12 hours or more, because many of them do not know that the prices for housing, clothing, utilities, and fuel in their country are either the same as in Poland or even higher, but the wages are several times lower. Poles also don’t know how expensive it is to buy a house or a car in other countries of migrants’ origin. Many Poles think that a foreigner who earns money in Poland and works overtime will return home to their country of origin as a fabulously rich man. This causes misunderstanding among foreigners, and sometimes a smile. When a foreigner explains to his Polish colleague the realities of life in his country, the Pole actually wonders how foreigners survive in their country.
Another point in today’s article I would like to highlight is that Poles think that foreigners earn the same amount per hour as they do, and when they work overtime they get paid more, although in reality a foreigner works for the same fixed amount per hour and there is no difference whether they overwork or not. If a Pole receives 12 zlotys per hour net plus bonuses and additional charges for overtime, as well as work on Saturdays or weekends, a foreigner always receives 9 zlotys – for 8 hours of work, 12 hours of work, and Saturdays. It is true that foreigners often pay less for housing, but this is accommodation in worker hostels, where conditions often leave much to be desired.
