u/No-Strawberry7

How do you guys feel about this?

Clearly, the goal is to attract more foreign tourists, and we all know that tourism brings money into Poland and benefits the wider economy.

But given how much we’ve heard in recent years about places like Zakopane and Kraków becoming increasingly popular with Arab tourists, do you think Poles will actually become more accepting of foreign tourists in general?

There have already been complaints about Zakopane having large numbers of Arab tourists, Arabic-language billboards, and more halal food options. I remember eating at a steakhouse there that was completely halal.

It’s interesting because Poland seems to want to attract more tourists while there is still some local frustration about the tourists who are already coming. As a foreigner, I’d be interested to hear your perspective on this.

I’m the OP behind these posts:

https://www.reddit.com/r/poland/s/Wx%7C08Fzfr6

https://www.reddit.com/r/poland/s/w7yU9AH2CV

Thank you to everyone who commented, gave advice, helped me out, and, yes, made fun of me when I deserved it.

Today I finally got paid.

So, I ended up not going to PIP. Before doing that, I followed the advice of one of the Redditors here and sent the company a przedsądowe wezwanie do zapłaty (pre-court demand for payment).

After receiving it, the owner of the company contacted me and we arranged to meet at the office. We ended up signing the necessary PIT-11 documents and, finally, a contract.

The funny part? I signed a contract almost a month after I had already left the job. Even funnier, the contract we signed was for August, despite the work in question being performed in July.

Maybe they wanted to avoid the whole PIP/legal headache. Maybe there was another reason. That’s just my speculation. Either way, I wasn’t interested in fighting a war over it — I just wanted to get paid for the work I had already done.

And thankfully, I did.

A special thank you to the kind Redditor who helped me put together the wezwanie do zapłaty. I won’t mention their username without their permission, but their advice was genuinely useful.

I also think part of the reason this worked out in my favour may be that this is an established company with a public presence, including LinkedIn, and that a PIP inspection could potentially have caused them more trouble than simply paying what I was owed. Again, that’s only my speculation.

I know plenty of people here, especially workers in construction and other industries, end up in situations where employers delay contracts, don’t pay properly, or take advantage of people who don’t know their rights.

So if there’s one thing I’d take away from this:
Always get your contract sorted before you start working. Don’t rely on “we’ll sign it later.”

And don’t be afraid to use the protections available to you. I ultimately didn’t have to involve PIP, but knowing that I could take the matter to PIP gave me some leverage, and in the end I received the money I had rightfully earned.

Lesson learned.

And to everyone who told me I was being an idiot for agreeing to the situation in the first place — fair enough. I learned my lesson.

(formatted with Apple Rewrite).

Hello everyone,

I’m the OP from the previous post that i made

https://www.reddit.com/r/poland/s/Wxl08Fzfr6

I ended up working for the company for around two weeks without ever receiving an employment contract. I repeatedly asked HR about it and was told it would be signed later, but it never happened.

I eventually resigned, partly because the contract kept being delayed. By then, I had worked for roughly 2.5k PLN

I requested payment for the hours I worked, but today the employer told me that because I left without notice, I am not eligible for payment.

I pointed out that I was never given a contract or written contractual terms despite repeatedly asking for them. The employer still maintains that I am not entitled to payment.

I have evidence of the work I performed, including working-hour records, company communications, schedules, and other documentation.

I’m now preparing a complaint to PIP (Państwowa Inspekcja Pracy).

For anyone familiar with Polish labour law:

Can an employer simply refuse to pay for hours actually worked because someone left without notice?

Does the fact that I was never given a contract or written employment terms change the situation?

What should I do after submitting the PIP
complaint?

Would recovering the unpaid wages require going to a labour court as well?

Thanks and Yes, I know i am a fucking idiot to agreeing with this.

Hi everyone! I'm obsessed with the Iraqi-Saudi singer Majid Al Mohandis. Most of the time I don't even understand the lyrics, but his voice, the melodies, and the overall music are absolutely beautiful.

From what I can tell, he doesn't have any upcoming concerts announced yet, but I'm hoping that changes soon. I'd love to attend one in the future.

May I also ask if it is okay for a non-Arab/non-Saudi person to attend one of his concerts? I'd imagine it wouldn't be an issue, but I was curious about the atmosphere and whether international fans are common.

Does anyone know the best place to check for his concert announcements? Is there a local website or platform I'm not aware of? Also, are any of you fans of his music?

Guys, I’m an Indian guy who has been living in Europe for a very long time, and I genuinely feel like anti-Indian racism and hate are at an all-time high.

Words like “pajeet,” “poopjeet,” and much worse are casually thrown at Indians online. I’ve also personally seen European teenagers make racist comments toward Indians and mock them simply for being Indian. None of that is acceptable, and nobody deserves racial abuse because of their nationality or ethnicity.

But there is another side to this conversation that I think we Indians need to be willing to discuss among ourselves.

From my own experience—not just with strangers, but with relatives, family friends, people I’ve lived around, and people from different generations—I have noticed that some of us genuinely do not pay enough attention to how we smell to other people.

And yes, that includes people I care about. I’m not saying this from some position of superiority.

One major issue is cooking.

Indian food uses incredibly aromatic spices, oils, onions, garlic, masalas, tadkas, etc. That’s one of the reasons our food tastes so good. But those smells also stick to fabrics, hair, jackets, curtains, furniture and basically everything around you.

This becomes especially noticeable when you’re living in Europe. Many apartments here are small. Kitchens can be tiny and poorly ventilated compared with what heavy Indian cooking really requires. If you’re frying onions, garlic and spices with all the windows closed, that smell doesn’t magically disappear when you’ve finished cooking. It gets into your clothes.

Then you put on that jacket and go to university, work, the metro, a restaurant or wherever else, and you might have become completely nose-blind to it. Other people haven’t.

Please ventilate your home properly when cooking. Open the windows. Use the extractor hood if you have one. Close bedroom and wardrobe doors while cooking. Don’t leave jackets and tomorrow’s clothes next to the kitchen. Wash clothes that have absorbed strong cooking smells instead of assuming they’re fine.

And cooking isn’t the only issue.

Shower regularly. Use antiperspirant or deodorant. Wear clean clothes. Change underwear and socks every day. Pay attention to oral hygiene. Wash your hair appropriately. Don’t repeatedly wear a shirt that already smells of sweat. Don’t cover body odor with perfume—clean skin and clean clothes come first.

And if you enjoy fragrance, a decent perfume or eau de toilette can be a nice finishing touch. But perfume is not a substitute for hygiene. Spraying fragrance over sweat or stale clothing can actually make the combination worse.

I remember taking a flight from London to Delhi where the cabin had an extremely strong mixture of body odor, digestive smells and food/spice smells. Obviously, an airplane full of people after long journeys is never going to smell like a perfume shop. But it made me think about how easily we can become accustomed to smells that are very noticeable to someone else.

I’ve also noticed situations in Europe where people visibly react when standing next to an Indian person—moving away, making faces, etc. Sometimes that reaction may simply be racism or prejudice. But sometimes there may genuinely be noticeable body odor or strong cooking smells on someone’s clothes.

The important distinction is that none of this justifies racism.

If one Indian person smells bad, that doesn’t make “Indians are smelly” acceptable. There are more than a billion Indians with completely different lifestyles, climates, diets and hygiene habits. Turning an individual problem into an ethnic characteristic is textbook stereotyping.

At the same time, responding to every discussion about hygiene with “that’s racist” doesn’t help us either.

If you’re living abroad, especially somewhere where you’re regularly in crowded trains, classrooms, offices and small indoor spaces, being conscious of your personal hygiene and the smell of your clothes is basic consideration for the people around you.
And parents need to hear this too. Sometimes younger Indians are afraid to tell their parents or relatives, “Your jacket smells strongly of cooking,” or “You need deodorant,” because it feels disrespectful. But there are respectful ways to have that conversation.

We should be able to acknowledge two things at the same time:

Racism against Indians is disgusting and should be called out.

And we can also encourage better hygiene, ventilation and awareness of cooking odors within our own communities without treating it as an attack on Indian culture.

Being Indian isn’t something anyone should be ashamed of. Our food isn’t something we should be ashamed of either.

But smelling clean when you’re standing next to someone is basic social courtesy, regardless of whether you’re Indian, European, Arab, African or anything else.

So please: shower, use deodorant, wash your clothes, ventilate your kitchen, keep cooking smells away from the clothes you’re going to wear outside, take care of your teeth, and be conscious of whether you’ve become nose-blind to your own environment.

And please don’t wait until somebody makes a racist joke about Indians to start thinking about it.

Also, if you think any of the points I raised are wrong, unfair, exaggerated, or based too much on my own personal experience, please call me out on them. I’m genuinely open to hearing different perspectives and having a proper discussion about this. I don’t expect everyone to agree with me.

I genuinely don’t understand why we need artificial lighting at home at night.

Obviously, lights in public spaces make sense. Street lights, hospitals, airports, public transport, workplaces, emergency services, etc. all need lighting because society doesn’t stop functioning when the sun goes down. People work at night, essential services need to operate, and you obviously need visibility in public spaces.

But at home? Why does everything need to be brightly lit after sunset?

When it gets dark, your body is supposed to recognize that it’s nighttime. Having bright artificial lights everywhere until the moment you go to bed just seems completely backwards for your circadian rhythm.

If you need some visibility, candles or dim mood lighting should be enough for most things you’re doing at home in the evening. Obviously, if you’re cooking, cleaning, working, or doing something that actually requires good visibility, proper lighting makes sense. But just sitting around at home? Why does your living room need to look like it’s daytime when it’s dark outside?

The only real downside I can think of is winter. When the days get really short and it’s dark by 4 or 5 PM, then yeah, realistically you’re going to need some artificial lighting. Even then, you could probably get by with warmer mood lighting, lamps, or candles instead of brightly illuminating the entire house.

But for maybe eight months of the year, when there’s plenty of natural daylight and it doesn’t get dark ridiculously early, I really don’t see the need for it.

Public lighting makes sense. Lighting when you actually need visibility makes sense. But having our homes brightly illuminated every single night just because that’s what everyone does? I don’t get it.

Night is supposed to be dark.

I recently started a new job at a US-based company with an office in Poland. I’ve been working there for about 10–11 days, but I still haven’t signed an employment contract. They told me the contract would be signed after two weeks.

The workplace itself is good, and my coworkers have been great, but my manager is extremely toxic. It’s gotten bad enough that I’m already considering quitting before the contract is signed.

My biggest concern is getting paid for the days I’ve already worked. Since I haven’t signed anything yet, I’m worried that if I quit now, they could simply claim I never worked there and refuse to pay my wages.

Has anyone been in a similar situation in Poland? What are my options? Do I have any legal protection or practical steps I should take before deciding whether to quit?

Any advice would be appreciated.

I think humanity collectively picked the wrong schedule and then convinced ourselves it’s “natural.”

We’re told our circadian rhythm is sacred, but circadian rhythms can shift. Night-shift workers, people living in polar regions, and countless others adapt. It’s not like our sleep schedule is permanently hardwired.

Meanwhile, daytime comes with a long list of downsides:

It’s hotter, meaning you sweat more and burn more energy just existing.

The sun literally damages your skin and increases the risk of skin cancer.

Bright sunlight is uncomfortable enough that we invent sunglasses, sunscreen, hats, umbrellas, and air conditioning just to tolerate it.

Now imagine the alternative.

Most work happens at night when temperatures are lower. Walking, exercising, commuting, and manual labor all become more comfortable. Cities would require less cooling, potentially reducing energy used for air conditioning. You’d sleep through the hottest hours of the day.

Yes, we need some sunlight for things like vitamin D, but that doesn’t require spending your entire active life in the middle of the day. You could simply get a controlled amount of daylight before going to sleep or after waking up.

If humanity had evolved on a planet with less intense sunlight or if civilization had started with a night-first schedule, I think we’d consider daytime activity bizarre.

I know biology currently favors being awake during the day. I’m arguing that, given modern technology like artificial lighting, climate control, and supplements, a mostly nocturnal society could actually be more comfortable than the one we’ve built.