Dream Job at a Petting Zoo

Andrea Lange
draws her Solidary Basic Income in the field of Environmental Education and Information.

Many a long-term unemployed person in Germany gets the chills when they hear the word “measure.” Andrea Lange, born in 1972, is no exception, and with good reason. It took employment within the Solidary Basic Income project to put an end to years of back and forth that gave her a lot of experience but no permanent position.

Andrea Lange is a true Berliner. She wears her heart on her sleeve and meets life’s adversities with a healthy dose of gallows humor. If needs be, she can dish out harsh words – but she can give as good as she gets, which has worked in her favor more than once.

Andrea Lange grew up in the idyllic town of Friedenau, where her parents had a garden plot, as did her grandmother and uncle. As a true child of Berlin, she was part of a band of neighborhood kids who roamed the streets, with hardly anybody knowing where they were. “We were always out and about and only came home for lunch – or if we needed Band-Aids.”

When she left school after finishing tenth grade, Andrea Lange faced the facts of life. Lured by a pay of 800 Deutsche Marks during the first year of training, Andrea started an apprenticeship as a specialist for social insurance services; however, she soon realized that this profession was not a good fit for her. “Dressing up every day, having to look smart, that’s just not who I am,” says Andrea Lange, who loves German Schlager music and American hard rock equally. Her stint with the insurance company ended when her probation period was up. Andrea Lange then started a new chapter: with an apprenticeship as a salesperson specializing in food crafts at a family-run butcher’s in Neukölln, whose blood sausage was renowned throughout the neighborhood.

“I really enjoyed working there,” she says. “The master butcher just accepted me the way I was.” With her tomboyish ways, Andrea Lange passed the “noobie tests,” during which she was tasked with hanging up pig’s tails and splitting caraway seeds with a cleaver. She fit in with the team perfectly and learned the business from the ground up. “I did everything, from cutting up the meat to carving and selling it. It could be hard work at times; even though I’m a woman, I had to be able to hang halves of beef weighing fifty kilograms.” She has fond memories of the hearty breakfasts, which included sausage meats, of course. “I’m a Neanderthal to this day: I want meat.”

Half a year after completing her apprenticeship, her boss sold the business; the new owner did not get along with her. She looked for a new job and found one with Butter Lindner, a Berlin delicatessen chain, where she was promoted to deputy manager of the store in Wilmersdorf after two years. “My customers included a lot of actors and gay people, who I really got along with. German actors Horst Buchholz and Ilja Richter shopped at our store; so did singer Angelika Milster. I met some interesting people and became friends with a few of them over the years.” When the chain reduced its team, the last to join were the first to go; after five years, Andrea Lange was suddenly out of work.

From that moment on, she became a walking example of “moronic labor market policies,” as she bluntly puts it. Despite having completed an apprenticeship, despite her years of experience and tremendous willingness to work, she was only ever assigned new application trainings and limited measures – including one-Euro jobs, officially called “labor opportunities with compensation for additional expenses” (“Arbeitsgelegenheiten mit Mehraufwandsentschädigung,” AGH-MAE), a labor market-political instrument that aims to help integrate unemployed persons into the primary labor market. An aberration that never resulted in a permanent position and during which Andrea Lange was at best permitted to add a few Euros to her Hartz IV benefits, paid to long-term unemployed persons.

“You always hope one of these measures will give you the chance to stay somewhere, so you don’t always face this upheaval, this back and forth.

Andrea Lange

Her first job was with an assistance service for blind people and people with Down syndrome. “I really enjoyed dealing with people again, this time with a very different group. I had to get used to the special needs of blind people, but I learned a lot. Unfortunately, it only lasted three years, and then there I was again, and there was the next measure.” For three months, she distributed organic waste bins to households on and around the Kurfürstendamm. A van took the bins to the houses, then Andrea Lange went door to door to make sure every woman and man got one.

This was followed by the next measure: another assistance service, run by the Red Cross this time. Andrea Lange assisted elderly people on errands and at doctor’s appointments. “I met a lot of nice people there and didn’t have to watch what I said.” However, this measure also ended after three years, in accordance with regulations and after the maximum number of extensions had been reached.

Andrea Lange’s next stop was at a daycare center, where she got a one-Euro job working in the kitchen, peeling potatoes and carrots, making blancmange and preparing cocoa for the children in the mornings. “The children seemed to like me, and they soon started to hang out with me,” she tells us. “So they got me out of the kitchen and promoted me to a kind of daycare center helper, where I ultimately accompanied two groups until they left to start school.” As a helper, she assisted the educators on trips, did arts and crafts with the little ones and was there when any of them needed encouragement or comfort.

She never knew whether the measure would be extended or not; before each new nail biter, the children prepared farewell gifts. After three years at the daycare center, Andrea Lange came within a fraction of an inch of a permanent position, but her hopes were crushed by the most brutal stroke of fate: Once a month, Andrea Lange treated herself to a night out at a bar. On one of those nights out, she was attacked by a dog, which bit into her calf in a bloodthirsty frenzy, injuring her severely. Andrea Lange was in the hospital for three weeks, and it took a whopping two years for the open wound on her leg to heal. After that, the employment contract with the daycare center was moot.

The attack had irreversible consequences for her health: Her leg is disfigured; since the accident, Andrea Lange needs shoes in two different sizes and has to sit down at regular intervals. “I’m not a wimp, and I can grit my teeth and get on with things, but a job in sales means you’re going to be on your feet for eight hours, and I just can’t do that anymore,” she says. “I can only take positions that allow me to do things sitting down for five or ten minutes every now and then.” Her placement officer at the job center, which pays benefits to and finds jobs for long-term unemployed persons, didn’t want to accept that, and cut her Hartz IV benefits. “It was harassment, pure and simple,” she says disappointedly in summary.

Nonetheless, she was offered the next measure, another job at a daycare center. But Andrea Lange did not feel at home with the strict, educational concept, and when she was asked to wear long trousers to cover her scarred leg in the middle of summer because it was “not nice to look at” and supposedly scared the children, she felt a line had been crossed. She left the daycare center and faced – what else – another measure. In light of her odyssey, Andrea Lange’s unbroken optimism is remarkable.

The Solidary Basic Income (“Solidarisches Grundeinkommen”, SGE) program finally saved her from the constant back and forth. The Tempelhof-Schöneberg District Office gave Andrea Lange a job in a large school garden in the Südkreuz district, where she took great joy in her work, planting vegetable patches and teaching the children that “greens don’t grow in stores.” But because the district office does not employ anybody on a regular basis to fill this position, she had to leave the job after two and a half years as well.

By this time, it was 2020. The coronavirus pandemic was sweeping across the country, when Andrea Lange received a surprising – and promising – offer: a five-year contract including guaranteed further employment with a fixed wage. The position was part of the SGE program; the animal enclosure at Victoria Park in Kreuzberg was looking for a horticulture assistant. At the job interview, Andrea Lange and the boss hit it off immediately, and she started work in April 2020. “Gradually, I got to know my colleagues, and I got on with every single one of them. I felt at home from the first second on.”

“I get such good money that I don’t have to deal with the unemployment agency anymore.”

Andrea Lange

For the first time in over two decades, Andrea Lange now has a long-term perspective and a living wage. “I get about €1,500 cash in hand. It’s such good money that I finally don’t have to deal with the job center anymore,” she says. Little by little, she can also start to pay back the debts that she has piled up with friends and relatives.

Andrea Lange draws her Solidary Basic Income in the field of Environmental Education and Information: Families and groups of children from schools and daycare centers use the petting zoo at Victoria park for object lessons on nature. Steeped in tradition, the zoo is home to several goats, rabbits, chickens, guinea pigs and geese, all of which need feeding; the zoo even grows some of the food itself. “I usually get here around half past seven in the morning, and I start work at eight,” she says. “First I feed the rabbits, give them fresh water and hay, then I go to the goats, and then the chickens.” Once the animals have all been fed, a group of children is often already in line to stroke the rabbits, for example. Then it’s off to work on the zoo’s own cultivation areas. Every day, Andrea Lange also has to take a handcart to two nearby Rewe supermarkets to collect food donations. “Everything here is managed and financed by donations,” she says. “The entry is free of charge and sometimes, when the weather’s bad, barely any money comes in.”

When the cash register is empty, the animal enclosure’s employees have been known to pay out of their own pocket to ensure the animals’ basic needs are met. Andrea Lange is happy to contribute and doesn’t see it as a reason to leave. “This is a great place to work, it’s cozier than many a living room. Animals, nature, and friendly colleagues – I really can’t imagine a better place.”

The body responsible for the zoo is charitable organization Atina. Without exception, the handful of keepers, and Andrea Lange’s colleagues, are in publicly funded employment. “It’d be great if the district would contribute to the zoo’s financing; after all, it does make the area more appealing and draws visitors to this part of town.”

The animals wouldn’t be the only ones to benefit from a lower staff turnover and increased appreciation of the zoo. If the petting zoo’s value were to be increased in this manner, the interrelationship with and contact to the neighborhood could be intensified – that much, says Andrea Lange, is clear. Forward as always, she already has her eye set on this goal and is willing to defend her new position: “I’m staying here, and that’s the end of it. I don’t want to leave!”

Copy: Katrin Rohnstock / Rohnstock Biografien