One thing I really liked about the TV show “Downton Abbey” was the upstairs/downstairs aspect of it. It was a period show that, for once, didn’t only focus on the trials and tribulations of one rich family. It was just as much about the lives of the vast staff that ran the household — the workers whose long hours allowed the rich family to live the way they did with all their strict social expectations and habits.
Just think of the simple habit of changing for dinner, for example: first of all, you need someone to make your clothes. Someone also has to wash your clothes and ensure they’re both dry and pressed when you want to wear them. Someone has to ensure that your clothes are put up in a place you or your personal servant can find them. And for much of the fashion of the era, you need someone to help dress you.
As a U.S. citizen in Mexico, I am plainly part of the “upstairs” crowd. I don’t help people park their cars, and I don’t drive anyone in a taxi or shuttle. I don’t clean up after the partygoers have gone home, and I don’t hand people’s freshly washed and folded clothes back to them. I don’t ask people what I can get them from behind a stand at the market, and I don’t make sure there’s toilet paper in the café bathroom.
In short, I am always served, never the server.
My partner, however, is not. He grew up like many from smaller towns and cities here do: with a mother raising three kids on her own and a dad sending money home from grueling work in the United States. By Mexican standards, they lived well enough. By U.S. standards, it was basically poverty.
He did not go to restaurants, save on very special occasions. He didn’t even see a movie in a theater until he was nearly done with elementary school. Air conditioning was practically unheard of, even in his hot tropical town. He and his siblings took charge of keeping the house clean and the clothes washed.
And while all of them went on to college and secured stable, middle-class jobs, the luxuries afforded them have only meant very occasional “upstairs-living” experiences.
Mexico may have a reputation for a more relaxed way of life, but Mexicans work more than those of any other OECD nation. While there’s been talk of shortening the work week, which currently runs from Monday to Saturday for most, the realities of the low pay and increasingly higher costs of this economy render most proposals irrelevant.
If you work in the vast informal sector, for example, those labor rules are not enforceable anyway. The formal sector, in the meantime, knows what’s up: if workers don’t want to abide by its punishing schedules, there’s a long line of other workers waiting for a job. If you need to feed and house your family, then you do what you have to do.
Mexico makes plain what many of us north of the border are unwilling to admit: hard work is tied only in the loosest of manners to material gain — with about a million caveats.
Being with my partner has allowed me to see the “downstairs” of the Mexican experience. While tourists might have a nice meal and then wander back to their hotel rooms, the workers who serve them often stay until 3 a.m. before heading back to their meager living quarters, which are often kilometers away.
The reason I’ve seen this so up-close lately is because of my partner’s current job managing a restaurant. Because the positions are so hard to fill, he frequently does the job of two to three people at once, operating the place he’s supposed to be supervising. He averages about 80 hours of work a week, often foregoing sleep and food. If things don’t improve soon, he’ll look for something else, but as people often say around here: es lo que hay. (It’s what’s available.)
I’m not writing this to make anyone feel bad for enjoying themselves in Mexico. A job is a job, and we’re all doing what we can to help and also try to relax once in a while. One of the things I recognize and feel proud of about my own culture, actually, is that most people are pretty fair-minded.
But having a front-row seat to these jobs has given me a different perspective. Most everyone is doing literally everything they can, for not a lot of monetary return. And despite that low return, they’re still mostly friendly and jovial.
My partner and the waiters sing along with the pay-by-the-song performers as they’re working. Whoever’s available to wash the dishes washes the dishes (sometimes that’s me). Even on holidays like Christmas and New Year’s, they’re there, usually for no extra pay (Christmas Day and New Year’s Day are the holidays, not the “Eves” that for those in the restaurant industry are just regular workdays).
Lots of things don’t work, nor are funds available to get them working. This is very hard for Americans, especially, to understand, I think, as we are very used to things working the way they’re supposed to. Here, however, most businesses are operating on the thinnest of margins. That’s what the owners always say, anyway.
When one of the many street hawkers I interact with — who surely keeps similarly punishing hours — hears me say “Gracias,” they respond anyway with “Okay, have a good day!” They make jokes: “These are stolen, but they’re genuine!”
Good humor certainly helps things along, but it’s no replacement for a life that lets you sleep and eat well. I often find myself wondering if workers here and on the other side of the border will ever see their conditions improve.
For now, neither place seems primed for a worker revolution despite the low probabilities of drastically improving one’s financial prospects.
There’s a song by the great Belgian singer Stromé about workers. The main chorus is, roughly — I don’t speak French — “We celebrate for the ones who can’t celebrate.”
So the next time you go out, perhaps you’ll raise a glass to those who are making your time out possible. It might not be the wage raise they need, but knowing they’re appreciated can still go a long way.
Sarah DeVries is a writer and translator based in Xalapa, Veracruz. She can be reached through her website, sarahedevries.substack.com.
