Anthoula, the university cleaner Varoufakis sees as a shining example

By Lina Giannarou

The students have been ribbing her all the time lately: ?Anthoula, your name will open all kinds of doors!? ?Who?d?ve thought it?? she laughed. ?I?m a celebrity. At my age!?

Anthoula has become something of a celebrity after she was mentioned twice as an example by Greece?s new Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, most recently in an interview with Germany?s Die Zeit Online on Wednesday.

?When I was still working at the University of Athens, there was a cleaning lady there named Anthoula,? Varoufakis said. ?We often had to work until midnight. Although her workday had ended much earlier, Anthoula cleaned up after us and unlocked the rooms for us the next morning. Guess who was let go first as part of the austerity program: Anthoula.?

Kathimerini tracked down Anthoula Tsouvela later that same day, working at the university, even though she has been in a labor pool on reduced pay since October 2013.

?I can?t just let the building go,? the 51-year-old civil servant said. ?If I?m just going to be sitting around, I might as well help. There are no other cleaners on the afternoon shift. It also helps to pass the time and I can fool myself into thinking that nothing has changed.?

At the back of her mind she hopes that one day she will be hired back to work properly. For the time being she?s receiving two-thirds of her salary, which had already undergone a significant reduction as part of public sector payroll cuts.

Tsouvela began working at the University of Athens in 1999 on a project-based contract. She met Varoufakis in 2000 when he returned to Greece from the United States to take up a new job at the institution, where he had created a new doctoral program in the Economics Department, and was teaching,...