You know you’ve got problems when the vespe (wasps) are working harder than you are. Mimi, one of my two cats, sits with her head poking through the iron railing in the window as if she were in some sort of luxury jail cell overseeing their labors. Up and down, up and down they fly to the neighbor’s rain gutter. She turns to look at me. I bathe in the scorn of her disapproving glare. “What?” I say. “I’m working.” I’m just not getting paid for it. She jumps down and walks away, defiantly flicking the tip of her tail. Hrumph. I continue writing. Tap. Tap. Tap. It can’t be too difficult to write a blog three times a week, I think. It’s still work, right? Maybe I should go down the street and get a gelato. My hand is starting to cramp.

I do have work to do. Promise. I’m not just lying about playing games. To paraphrase Jason Bateman in Juno, “[Stefania] doesn’t like it when I sit around watching movies and don’t contribute.” (His character works at home as a jingle writer.) Sometimes I think she has secretly employed the cats to take notes on my doings and report back to her. Maybe I’m just getting paranoid. I haven’t lived with anyone for a long time, but you never know. Italy is a conspiratorial country.

Unfortunately, the job market doesn’t look any better on this side of the pond than at home. Il costo del lavoro (cost of labor) in Italy is very high. Labor laws are also very strict. Can you say no turnover? That combined with the economic crisis does not bode well for my career prospects. Nevertheless, I went to the CGIL (one of the main workers’ unions) office yesterday in Bologna. I have to renew my permesso di soggiorno (permanent residency) and the CGIL have an office to help stranieri (foreigners) with their paperwork. Long story short, we filled out the papers and just need to file them. Cross your fingers or it’s a long swim home.

An interesting side note: what happened to The Rocky probably couldn’t have occurred here in Italy—at least not in the same abrupt manner. Because of those aforementioned labor laws, a corporation cannot close a division just because it starts to lose money unless the whole company declares bankruptcy or very complicated negotiations ensue; if the company wants to close down a non-profitable section, it still must provide for the workers for a determined length of time.

For example, an acquaintance of mine worked for Ducati motorcycles. Management wanted to close his line. However, they couldn’t just lay him off outright. Therefore, the company had to put him into what is called Cassa Integrazione Guadagni Straordinaria (CGIS). That’s quite a mouthful. But simply put, it means they must pay him 80% of his previous salary for up to two years or until they either rehire him or he finds employment elsewhere. The company is allowed to save on the overhead costs of running that section of the plant but still must take care of the employees on the company’s payroll without kicking them to the curb on the government’s dime.

Customs or the joys of the state employee

The stereotype of Italians being less-than-enthusiastic workers is most definitely exaggerated—at least in the private sector. The days of the CIGL and CISL labor unions shutting down the entire peninsula with strikes is less likely. The last bastion of heavy-handed bureaucracy still remains the statali or public employees. Case in point: the dogane (customs).

Stefania and I have to go to the airport cargo area to pick up a couple of extra bags I had shipped over. The stale odor of cigarettes permeates the air as we enter building number 10 of the customs service. Key the Soviet-era music. Smoking indoors is illegal in Italy but people still sneak cigarettes in the stairwells. Our objective is the third floor. Of course the elevator is out of service. The sound of workers stamping piles of forms ricochets off the walls from above. Poking our heads into a random office we are greeted by a young woman in her twenties. The office is a hive of activity. Or at least there seems to be one bee working hard while five other drones observe and offer suggestions. Insert your own joke here: How many statali does it take to fill out a form?

The young woman eventually finds the manifest for my shipment. We then must follow her down the stairs, through the parking lot and around the back to a big warehouse. Another 20 minutes of my life has vanished. A floor worker takes the manifest, gets in his forklift and drives 15 feet to where my bags are resting on a pallet. He picks them up with the machine, takes a drag on his smoke, then brings them back to us. He sets down the load and we begin to open the bags so the customs official can inspect them. Once she is satisfied, the worker picks up the pallet and puts it back.

We retrace our steps all the way back to the musty third floor where our intrepid official begins filling out forms—by hand—and running back and forth between two other offices to get the them stamped. Finally, she finishes and hands us the documents. I’m sure her day is done. Mine is not.

Stefania and I then have return to the warehouse with our car. I stand around with the other truck drivers while Stefania goes into the office and pays 10 euros to get another stamp and win the release of my bags. While she does this I enjoy watching an agent open boxes of designer handbags to inspect. A bemused forklift driver, having observed my feat of Olympic customs endurance, retorts ironically, “Ce l’abbiamo fatta…..con calma.” Kind of the Italian version of, "We got ‘er done……with calm and ease." Sure, thanks for coming in. FedEx they’re not.

Stefania, conversely, works at least 12 hours a day in the private sector. I, in my own private sector, try to keep the cats from ratting me out. To that end, gelato works wonderfully. Cats are so predictable. Just goes to show you that anyone can be bought.

To keep up appearances, I begin “work” Tuesday at eight a.m. sharp with a ladder, a rag and the disinfectant spray. I wipe down the tops of all the cabinets and shelves. Then Franco, Stefania’s father, comes over and we go to pick up a new chair for the living room. Afterwards, we drill holes in the wall to hang some artwork then cut a dozen plastic strips of molding that we glue to the baseboards. That’s a full day’s work, right? Hmm. Maybe I should go to that bakery down the street and get some freshly baked bread.

At any rate, I’m trying to tread and travel light. I feel like an itinerant guest after all—bags still half-unpacked. Always sit with your back to the wall, I say. Comedian Chris Rock reinforces my point in his latest act: Still amazed at the good fortune of owning a beautiful New Jersey mansion, he says, “I keep two suitcases by the front door…just in case the white people that really own the place come back and kick me out.”

But don’t worry about me. I’ll be just fine as long as those two cats keep their mouths shut. Shhhhh.