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I’ve become
the family
Uber

I’ve become
the family
Uber

You can hear his breathing from far away, he gasps, as if he had constant apnoea.

Before having a promising career in retail, before becoming a man who analyses the world through numbers, Rui Paupério was a roller hockey player.
He keeps his medals from that time, from a time when he was young, in a black plastic bag, shut away in a drawer, like someone who is stifling a hidden passion.
Too dizzying to be let out into the open, too overwhelming to be remembered.

He is 60 and has been unemployed for a year. He used to live a frenetic life, but has now grown accustomed to a life without stress. He only gets annoyed when they make him drive them around more than agreed.

The first few months of unemployment were difficult. I felt like an intruder: they had one routine and I had another.
It wasn’t easy for me, or for Cristina, or for my daughter Beatriz. I was used to not having anyone on my back from Monday to Friday - I’d work, I’d go where I wanted, I’d go to bed when I wanted.
And it was the same for them.

Slowly, things had to change, I started to help with things that I never had before.

Slowly, things had to change, I started to help with things that I never had before.

Earning money isn’t enough, you also need to try to keep on top of the house. Cristina goes to work, gets home and then still has to cook dinner, while I have nothing to do all day? But it wasn’t easy, I had that old maxim: “I can do anything, just not the housework. I’m not a housekeeper.” But I quickly got stuck in and I don’t have any problem with it now.
I don’t mind.

It’s the mother-in-law, it’s my daughters, it’s my wife, it’s the dog, it’s the house... In the morning I take Cristina to work and drop Beatriz at school.
I’ve become the family Uber: whenever they need, they call me and I go back and forth.

I have breakfast at Aramis, always the same thing: toast made with pão saloio (traditional Portuguese bread) and latte or coffee with milk. I can’t have an extravagant breakfast. Later, I go for a walk in the Parque do Covelo and I watch the news.
On Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, Beatriz comes home for lunch, on Mondays Cristina is off and I’m busy all day, we go here, there and everywhere.

I’m also the one who takes the dog for a walk. I never liked animals, never, never, never, never... Well, now she’s one of my companions. They all love Becky, but I’m the one who takes her out when it’s raining.

I’m not a man who likes to stay still, I got back in touch with some friends and, on Thursdays we go to have lunch in Livração, Marco de Canaveses, or Castro Sampaio… I also never miss an FC Porto match. I have a season ticket: when they play at home, I go to the stadium; if they are playing away, I watch it on Sport TV.

When my in-laws need it, I also give them a hand. This afternoon, I’m taking them to a hospital appointment. That’s why we bought this house, to be closer to them. I never used to do anything around the house, now I do practically everything. In my parents’ house, my late mother used to bring me my breakfast in bed every day.
The maid dealt with the clothes.

We are seven in total six brothers and one sister, all one year apart. We used to play football, 3 a-side, and my sister would be the ref.

Luckily, in inverted commas, my mother went through the menopause at 33 or 34. If not, I don’t know where it would’ve ended.

We are seven in total six brothers and one sister, all one year apart.
We used to play football, 3 a-side, and my sister would be the ref.

Luckily, in inverted commas, my mother went through the menopause at 33 or 34. If not, I don’t know where it would’ve ended.

I’m from Valongo - just to give you an idea, it’s ten minutes down the motorway from Porto. My family was very well-known. My great-great grandfather started up the Paupério chocolate and biscuits factory, you see them all over.

My grandfather was a councillor, there’s a road named after him, Rua Sousa Paupério. On my mum’s side, was the Santos Castro family - my grandfather fled to Brazil to seek his fortune and was never heard from again. We all still get on well. On the Paupério side, we hold a family event every September, always on a Sunday, we’ve had seven of them now.

At 18, Rui needed money because he wanted to get his licence. A desire that led him to have a life he had never dreamed of, but that today makes him proud.

I was always really into sport. I played roller hockey and, when I was younger, I wanted to be a PE teacher. But, along the way, everything changed. When I was 18, I started to work at Barbot paints to get money for my driving licence.

I used to go to work in trainers, unshaven, as I liked. The 25 April revolution had not long gone - if even troops could go around with a beard, why couldn’t I? The way the company director found to make me dress properly was to take me to a meeting at BCI (Trade and Investment Bank). I wanted the ground to swallow me up: a marble space, everyone in ties and suits and there was me in my trainers.

That was the moment of change. This was a Thursday and my mum had to look through my father’s suits and ties so I could go to work on Monday. I was promoted to the main administrator position and earned 40 contos (€199.52). They gave me a company car, with the petrol paid, but the salary never went up.

Then I wanted to get married, I needed more money, and I moved to Portugel as an administrator. They were the main competitors to Olá (Wall’s ice cream as it’s known in Portugal), they revolutionised impulse ice cream, those ice creams you eat at the beach...
It was there that I learned how to work with Lotus 1-2-3, what is now Excel. The best of it is that, afterwards, you just had to set up the program, and the calculations came out done.

I learned a lot during that time. They paid the sales staff well, but what they paid the administrators, like me, wasn’t enough. That was why I left, in 1990.
I wanted to earn more.

When he joined Makro, where he won various awards as head of the administration department, Rui had to work a long way from home. No fixed hours, from morning to night. “Managing the family got harder, did it?”
He avoids the question and keeps talking about his professional achievements; he avoids talking about the six years he was separated from his wife, Cristina.

It was at this time, when I was 31, that I stopped playing hockey. Until then, I trained practically every day, I played at weekends...

I started at Makro on 1 August 1990, to open the shop in Matosinhos on 22 August. I’ll never forget it - during the opening I was dressed in a nice maroon suit, a white shirt, a tie... all fancy. From six in the morning to ten at night, there was a busy queue of people eager to enter the shop.

When the shop opened, I didn’t even have a computer, I did the sales records manually. When they got me Lotus 1-2-3, I got everything up to date in a week, with the formulae in the right places. I was idolised, they were all “thank you, thank you, thank you.” I did the records, received bounced cheques from the shop floor and sent them to the lawyer, called clients to demand payments, I did the accounting work for the shop.

Later, I was invited to be head of the administration department of Makro Coimbra. That made me really proud, gave me growth prospects. I made the decision without talking to Cristina, it was a great opportunity.

With her working in Guimarães, me in Coimbra, we often only saw each other on Sundays, because I had things to do on Saturdays as well.
We came to the conclusion that it was better to separate. I only saw Claudia, my eldest daughter, on weekends.

With her working in Guimarães, me in Coimbra, we often only saw each other on Sundays, because I had things to do on Saturdays as well. We came to the conclusion that it was better to separate. I only saw Claudia, my eldest daughter, on weekends.

I earned money, I earned a lot of money. Financially it was worth it, but it ate into my time for day-to-day life. I was there for six years, until the Office Center, now Staples, opened. I moved there in 1996.
There were bills to be paid, that’s how it was.

I was separated from Cristina for six years. When we got back together, Beatriz was born. In 2009, when I thought I would finally come home, that I would come back to Porto, they sent me to a sales team in the Azambuja shop. I was supposed to be there for two months; I was there for ten years. Ten years of making Lisbon-Porto trips four times a month.
It was tiring.

Before the recession (2009-2014), the multinationals awarded people who worked, people who made an effort. Today it’s different. Young workers only care about their rights, they don’t have a concept of their responsibilities.

Before the recession (2009-2014), the multinationals awarded people who worked, people who made an effort. Today it’s different. Young workers only care about their rights, they don’t have a concept of their responsibilities.

I have seen eight-year-old kids calling 112 to make complaints about their parents. I told my daughters, if you do this, I’ll grab you and throw you out the window. That would be domestic violence, then they can make a complaint.

In Portugal, the 2008 global crisis affected the middle classes, who earned 1000, 1500, 2000 euros, much more than those earning the minimum wage. People on the minimum wage have their outgoings structured to reflect that, but for someone who was earning €2,500 in the public sector and suffered the cuts... But let’s not get into politics here, because nowadays I don’t have faith in any politician, my time with politics is over... I went to vote, I always vote. I always voted for the same party, and I’ll do that until I die. What they did in these last four years, anyone would do! The difficult period was between 2011 and 2015. Only that no one managed to tell the Portuguese, in fact, all the work that was actually done. If it hadn’t been, Portugal wouldn’t have any money for anything.

In unemployment, Rui was forced to slow down. He said that he was tired, he needed to stop.
It wasn’t a sudden change, the last year he was at the company he’d spent on cruise control.

My internal rebellion against the attitudes and orders from above started to get the better of me... it was terrible. I started to get demotivated, my boss called me to one side: “What’s going on? You’re not the same anymore?” I felt like dead weight in the company. My work was done, the machine was set up in such a way that it didn’t need a great deal of intervention.

Rumours started circulating about restructuring and I started to think, it won’t be long before you’re in the firing line, “this will come to an end overnight, I’ll leave and I won’t get anything.” I wanted to leave, but with compensation. I always said, loyalty must be repaid. I started to listen carefully to the decision-makers, wondering “have they seen how much they can save if they put a young person in my place?” In one meeting, at the beginning of 2019, I heard that there would be another 30 million for restructuring and I asked, “Is none of that coming to Portugal? I’m here waiting...” A month later, in March, they told me, “Look, we have the green light, are you up for it?” I responded straight away, “Definitely!”

Rumours started circulating about restructuring and I started to think, it won’t be long before you’re in the firing line, “this will come to an end overnight, I’ll leave and I won’t get anything.” I wanted to leave, but with compensation. I always said, loyalty must be repaid. I started to listen carefully to the decision-makers, wondering “have they seen how much they can save if they put a young person in my place?” In one meeting, at the beginning of 2019, I heard that there would be another 30 million for restructuring and I asked, “Is none of that coming to Portugal? I’m here waiting...” A month later, in March, they told me, “Look, we have the green light, are you up for it?” I responded straight away, “Definitely!”

The older people are, the younger they want to be.
I was never worried that anyone would come and take my place. Anyone who thinks they know everything, stops in time and dies. You fall at the first hurdle…

But I was already fed up. Afterwards guys from abroad started to come over, Dutch guys who would always organise meetings at one in the afternoon. They would eat lunch beforehand, but here in Portugal we couldn’t, still we were made to stay in the meetings.

At the beginning it was difficult, but now I am comfortable... The last year and a half I’d been on cruise control. I’m registered at the Job Centre and I have to send my CV to at least three companies a month. This is called Active Job Seeking. Before there were these stamps, now we have to send our CV, but it can even be via email. You send it, print it and save it. If they give me a job on minimum wage, I won’t take it. I earn more through unemployment benefit. At my age, it would be difficult to get a salary like I’m used to.

As of 1 October 2016, the unemployed are no longer required to sign on every fortnight at employment centres or council offices, which they were obliged to do to prove they were actively looking for work, to guarantee their receipt of unemployment benefit. Source

Anyone who has, involuntarily, ceased to have a paid work contract and is registered at an employment centre can receive the unemployment benefit from Social Security.
It pays 65% of the mean salary received in the year prior to entering unemployment, and can vary from €435.76 to €1089.40, for employees. There are specific rules for self-employed workers, one-man business owners, and directors and managers. Source

I might have contributed five, six, seven, eight thousand euros, the maximum I will earn on unemployment is €1089.
They gave me 38 months. And in two years, at 62, I have the possibility of moving onto the pension as a long-term unemployed, without any penalty. My pension will be an average of the best five years of the last 15.
I used to earn nearly €3700 net in salary, now I get one thousand, but I used to pay the rent on a house in Azambuja, the Lisbon-Porto trips, I used to eat lunch and dinner out... I spent a lot more.
You have to do the maths. Even now, Cristina earns the minimum wage, after taxes she brings home about €500, €600.
My granddaughter is going to be born soon, Claudia will have to pay €500 for a nursery, it makes more sense for my wife to leave her job and look after the granddaughter.

And Cristina’s independence? The importance of her having her own money? “There are no miracles, no miracles... Numbers are numbers,” Rui insists.

In the future, I can’t imagine myself staying still. I have a plan for a restaurant, with ten, 12 tables maximum. To work on orders and only open at night, that’s it. If it only opens for dinner, I can get up in the morning, no rush, and have the whole afternoon to prepare. I don’t want somewhere with a dish of the day, where you work like a mule, then you go to the till and it’s empty. The price per head must be over €25. If not, it’s not worth it.

In the future, I can’t imagine myself staying still.
I have a plan for a restaurant, with ten, 12 tables maximum. To work on orders and only open at night, that’s it. If it only opens for dinner, I can get up in the morning, no rush, and have the whole afternoon to prepare. I don’t want somewhere with a dish of the day, where you work like a mule, then you go to the till and it’s empty. The price per head must be over €25. If not, it’s not worth it.

I’ve always cooked, I like cooking a lot, but my way. Women have to stay out of the kitchen; if not, they start straight away saying, “Don’t put that in, it’s bad for you...” I’m determined to run my own restaurant before I die.
I already have a name and everything, it’s going to be called Assado na Lenha [Roast on the Fire]. I just need to find a location. It’s a plan!

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