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Fourteen months in a year
The pay structure on page three is not a quirk of this company. Italian salaries are normally expressed as an annual gross divided into thirteen or fourteen mensilità, with the thirteenth paid in December — originally a Christmas bonus, made contractual in the 1930s and extended across sectors after the war — and a fourteenth, where the agreement provides one, in June. The practical effect is that monthly take-home pay is lower than an outsider would calculate, and that two months of the year contain a visible jump. Italian retail is built around those two dates. The other thing worth absorbing is what a tempo indeterminato means socially. It is the contract that ends the provisional phase of adult life: banks will consider a mortgage, landlords stop asking for a guarantor, and the question when does your contract end stops being asked. Alex has been on fixed terms since arriving, and the anxiety that drove lesson 62 is resolved on this page rather than in the interview. Note that the patto di prova still applies — three months during which either side may withdraw without notice — so the security is real but not immediate, which is exactly what fermo restando is there to say.