The great thing about working in hotels is that they provide food for the workers, and sometimes it's gourmet leftovers from some fancy affair, but in this particular hotel, they had some strange rules…they had someone serve us the daily rice, beans, tortillas and some greasy type of meat, but the salad and dessert bar were open for us to serve ourselves. Once a week we got a special treat like ice cream instead of the normal lime jello or flan. It was kept in a freezer by the salad bar, and as I had seen employees serve themselves before, I opened the door and pulled out the bucket of ice cream. Right away the lady from the kitchen came over and told me that we weren't allowed to serve ourselves, I was very obedient and said "Sorry, I wasn't aware, please serve me." Within 20 min. my boss was apprised of the matter and called me into her office to tell me that my "behaviour in the cafeteria was inappropriate". We were allowed to serve ourselves the salad bar so why not the ice cream? Suddenly I felt like I was in high school again, my coworkers were tattle-telling on me! My coworkers also got shafted for taking a small amount of milk from the fridge for their morning coffee, even one therapist was sick and needed to take a teaspoon of lime with honey for a cough. This was all frowned upon in our boss's eyes. I told my boss, "If you have a problem with my performance, fine, give me a discipline, but if it's over ice cream, come on!!!"
As we were the only rebels that didn't follow the rules, the spa receptionist and I became fast friends, arriving within weeks of each other, both broken hearted and looking for a fresh start at life. We were the only "normal" people working there, who didn't thrive on watching other people make mistakes and reporting them to the boss. After awhile she moved to another department, and we continued to go for lunch together but we were constantly under surveillance, she wasn't allowed to call me at the spa or pass by to get me for lunch, the hotel police had determined that we shouldn't be friends anymore and that we spent too much time together so we had to meet in secret on our lunch hour!
One night it was the end of the night and it had been raining a lot and as our uniforms were white, I changed into my pants before walking back through the mud to the employee check-out. Within minutes security was alerted to this and I got in trouble for not having my uniform on. It seemed like everyone working there was hired as a secret spy to weed out the rebellious workers and keep only the brown-nosers. They tried to make our lives miserable so we would quit, but we wouldn't give them the satisfaction!
And weed out the rebellious workers they did, when low season hit I got laid off just one month after my friend did. It really was a blessing in disguise, because most nights I laid awake wondering why my coworkers hated me so much.
It's not as easy as one may think being a foreigner working in Mexico, the people fear that we will take their jobs away from them. And Mexican companies tend to exploit their workers, which as a Canadian we are just not used to. Even one coworker said to me, "Why are you here, aren't there any jobs for you in Canada?" Which goes back to my first post, Living in Mexico for Dummies - you must be a dummy to want to live here!
