Lost in Translation

Working in Mexico has been a challenge, mostly because I disagree with their discriminatory laws, 18-25 is the hiring bracket, they only want "solteros".  I was appalled when I was told by my Mexican friend that you have to put a picture, your marital status and your age on your resume, she said she only looks at the picture, if they are not attractive, the resume goes into the garbage right away!  I was 30 when I started to look for work in Mexico, so I had definitely missed the career train.  I even told one interviewer that I was getting married so that they would know I was stable and going to stay in Mexico, well his eyebrows went up and he said, "Oh no, we don't hire any married people here".  The thing is, most Mexican women stop working after they get married, very few will keep their jobs because their primary duty is to stay home and take care of the man.  

At another interview, the guy said to me, "I am going to be frank with you, because I want a really stable department and I don't want to go through hirings over and over, how long do you expect to stay with us?"  I told him that I was planning to get married, so I would be staying long term.  Then he asked me if I got married, would I stop working right away, I told him no, that it's not my culture to do that.  Then he asked me when I was planning to have kids.  I was really annoyed at these questions.  From that point on, I decided I was going to lie at every job interview and say I lived with my parents and that they are retired here and that I don't have a boyfriend!  I decided I would not get married until I had a job here, it's a real liability for anyone in a job search, if you're not 20-25, single and good-looking, forget it!  Even one newspaper ad for a waitress read: "Must be good-looking - Gordas (fat women) need not apply", and ads for live-in maids read: "una salida cada 15 dias" which means they would be allowed to leave the house every 15 days. 

I was afraid to even say my age because they would think, "She's 30 and too old, she probably will have kids soon".  In Mexico you get nowhere by being honest.  What ever happened to people being selected for their intelligence and ability to do the job and not focusing on their marital status?   I thought, If they don't give me the job, I am going to send him an email and give him a little shit, so I prepared an email about how married people have goals and dreams too and that we are intelligent people who work to be fulfilled and to challenge ourselves and that not all married women want to stay home and to think of that next time when considering hiring someone!  Of course as soon as I went to the office to type it out, sure enough there was an email from the HR manager offering me the job!  I couldn't believe it - I was in shock!  They offered me 10,000 pesos a month, medical and even vacation pay, which was a really good offer for a foreigner!  It was really so exciting that finally I was getting what I had hoped for - a full-time job in an international textile company!

In short, I hated it, I didn't like the operation of things - we were always short on the shirt orders or we sent the wrong shirts and I had to deal with angry customers from the USA.  The language barrier was tough, I didn't know how to talk about buttons, zippers, collars and different types of thread finishings in Spanish, and I would have to go to the production area and relay information from them back to the customer and sometimes I didn't understand and then I would ask over and over and finally pretend I understood the procedure as I didn't want them to think I was a total idiot.  I was worried I would relay the wrong info, misunderstand or something bad would happen.  I would promise the customers their order and then the production line would fail me, people were always quitting without notice and they had some serious communication problems with the production line.  

I also hated that in my contract my office hours were from 7:36 am to 5:36 pm but the production hours of the company were until 6:30pm so if you left before 6:30 pm you had to have a permission slip signed from your boss and they looked down on you if you left at your normal time.  But as a Canadian, I always showed up on time, was productive in my hours, and wanted to leave at 5:30!  The people I worked beside rarely left at 5:30, they would arrive at 8 or 8:30 am, putter around all day and stay until 6:30 or later.  I know some people might say I'm spoiled and what's one extra hour? But when you've already been there for 10 long hours, another hour seems like an eternity.  My friend told me, "Here in Mexico, if you leave on your time, people will think, 'oh that lazy girl, she won't move up in the company'".  I explained to her that in my corporate jobs in Canada, pencils were down and computers were off at 5pm sharp, no one stayed late.  She said no one will ever leave on time, they would rather doodle around at work and stay later than just be productive.  

I felt like I was in a prison - there was no escaping, security wouldn't let me out without a slip, and a lot of times my boss wasn't there to sign the slip, he was always in meetings.  If he was there and I asked him to sign, he would say to me, "You're leaving already, so early??!"  My second week there I was asked to sign a three month contract, I didn't go back!