He pronounced my name correctly

I have had different kinds of jobs during my work career in the Netherlands.

The lowest in status was cleaner of sex shows and sex cinemas in the Amsterdam Red Light district.
My employer was mean. There was only one vacuum cleaner and I used to walk across the canals dragging my silver-coloured Nilfisk behind me.
Later I was promoted to the next level of bouncer and projectionist in sex cinemas.
These jobs in the sex industry helped to pay for my university study of Politics.

You cannot keep a good man down and I clawed my way up the career ladder to become a part-time porter/concierge in a music school for children.

The teachers at the school were either professional teachers or beginning musicians. They were all very friendly.

The music school was in the same building as the Sweelinck Conservatory (of music), who had a real concierge. Our “offices” were next to each other near the entrance of the building.

We got on well. He had been an active member of the resistance in “the war” and he told me a lot about Amsterdam in that period. He liked to tell me the stories and I liked listening.
He was the first person who told me about the widespread collaboration of the Dutch in the deportation of the Jews.

I used to stand in for him. Then I had more interaction with the often famous musicians who taught at the Sweelinck. 

Some were just as friendly as my music school teachers. Others were not. They were arrogant and condescending to the lesser mortals who worked in the building.

As they were famous, this behavior was considered acceptable.

I have always found it strange how much “famous” people can get away with.

Two girls in my group of friends were communists who worked in the communist bookshop, Pegasus, in the Leidsestraat. 

Of course, they were also feminists. In the summer they dressed airily and wore miniskirts. That was the fashion then.

Harry Mulisch was a famous Dutch writer.

He frequented their bookshop. Sometimes he would ask one of the girls to get a book that was at the very front in the shop window. To get the book the girl had to bend over and he could look up her skirt from behind.

They knew what he was doing but still bent over. It was one of the quirks of a famous writer.

Getting back to my music school. The director was an organist. Nice chap.

There was one problem. He could never pronounce my name correctly. I told him many times how it was pronounced, but he just kept on forgetting it. In his world I was at the bottom of the hierarchy.

The music school was for 100% subsidized by the city of Amsterdam. The civil servant who processed the subsidy was a young lady of my age. She always came for meetings with the director in the morning. As I only started work in the afternoon, I had never met her.

I do remember that the director was very agitated before her visits.

With my studies finished, I left the music school to become a policy adviser for the city council. When I told him where I was going to work, the director looked at me with wide open eyes and an open mouth.
My new employer was the department that subsidized social and cultural activities in Amsterdam, including the music school.

I was the department’s representative in a number of deprived neighbourhoods.  I wrote the overall policy about where the subsidy should go and was supported by colleagues who advised on how much subsidy an individual organization “needed”.
It was not a 9 to 5 job. As I had a lot of interaction with people who lived in these neighbourhoods, I mainly worked afternoons and evenings.

The young lady who processed the subsidy for the music school was a colleague. We got on very well together. 
One day she said that she had an upcoming meeting at the music school and asked if I would like to tag along. See the place again. I thought it was a good idea.
Her meeting was, as usual, in the morning. She had to change it to the afternoon to comply with my agenda, as I was senior to her in the department hierarchy.

The director was waiting for us at the entrance. He greeted me heartily and he pronounced my name correctly.