“I’m not looking for a job,
but for my humanity”
Because of his errors, he lost everything. Now Giangi wraps packages, and his contract is almost up. But he is not “at the mercy of things.”

In an attempt to hang on tight to his job, it exploded between his hands. Giangi was a merchant banker in the province of Salerno, until he began working in an underhanded way. “I started to make mistakes, the errors multiplied, and I couldn’t get back out again. But I didn’t want to hurt anyone, only be stable in my job.” Then the whole truth came out. “So I was forced to face up to reality. Thank God.” A hard path lay before him, which brought him to northern Italy, to discover what work is.
“Do you know how many times I thought about ending it all? At least that would settle everything. And get my wife out of trouble.” She was his first safety net, because she stayed with him, as did a friend, one among the many whom he had harmed. “The two of them never let me go; they kept me afloat by the hair.” When even his wife’s salary, which they were living on, was cut, they went to live with his mother-in-law, who knew nothing of the situation; Giangi left the house in the morning and came home in the evening, pretending to work. He hung around in malls, waiting for the day to pass. After April 2009, he worked only three months: for a short-term contract in Naples and for a trial period with a telemarketer for $3 an hour. Then one day he went to Milan for a doctor’s appointment.
“Seeing Rosaria, a friend from Salerno whom I hadn’t heard from in years, changed everything.” He told her the whole story, and she wasn’t scandalized. She started to help him, and last September he moved to Milan. “I discovered something beyond what I thought I wanted–I needed to work in order to get back my self-respect, which I had completely lost.” And what is respect? “To know that you are on this earth because Someone put you here.” Even his job search changed. He had always gone about it in an uncertain way, without energy, without intelligence. And the new friends that accompanied him didn’t go easy on him. “You’re in bad shape,” they told him, but without giving an inch–he had to be present 1,000 percent. “I sent out hundreds of resumes, I went everywhere: supermarkets, temp agencies, you name it. And I started to perceive a change–from the awful mess into which I had gotten myself, the possibility to be reborn opened up.” This was because the reality he was living started to respond with concrete signs, as with a person who let him stay at his house and ...a job.
Giangi, a college graduate, now wraps packages in a cooperative. “It’s a great thing. I’m brought forward by what happens, not by thoughts anymore. And I’ve discovered that I wasn’t looking for ‘a job.’ Working is not making do with something to bring home, but discovering my humanity in play every day.” The contract is ending soon, and he’ll see what happens next. “But I don’t feel at all precarious, at the mercy of things. I feel present in reality. That’s because it’s something other than me, it’s for me. Before, I was against myself. All of those errors...But I’m thankful for them, too–they are the greatest testimony that I need something else. I made those mistakes, so I need someone else. I need someone else in order to live.”

A. S.