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.
Perhaps it’s my age, or how I was raised, but I feel I need to respectfully disagree with your view of hard work not paying off. I will say it’s more difficult today than when I was coming up, and I am aware of the societal differences between the US and Mexico.
My parents married and started an family young, my mom was 16. We were a farm family, and both my parents not only worked the farm, but held full time jobs off the farm as well. We ate so much tuna fish as a child that it took me 20+ years to even want to try it again. There were no luxuries. We ate in a restaurant maybe 2-3 times/year. I was in 7th grade before I first went to a movie theater – and that eas only because a friend’s family brought me along with them. Then in the 80’s when the economy was incredibly hard on many farmers, my parents had to choose between possibly loosing everything, or move off the farm. We ended up keeping the land, which was in the family for 3 generations, and moving to Minneapolis. My parents started over, and worked extremely hard to give us as good a life as they could. Their hard work, they were able to do very well. Well enough to give us vacations, in-ground heated swimming pool, nice vehicles, etc. Yet they insisted that once we (my brother & I) turned 16, we pay rent. They taught us that nothing in this world is free, that because they had money, I had nothing. If I wanted soda, snacks, or anything not on the weekly grocery list, I added the items I wanted to the list and paid her for those things with my own money. A car & insurance, I paid for that too. School clothes, they gave me $300 – anything over that, I bought. I started working in restrestaurants and know all the bs that is associated with the industry, but I climbed from washing dishes, to kitchen manager, head chef, and finally management. Unlike your partner, a college education wasn’t in my future. I was paying my bills since 16 years old. From there I was able to use that hard work and experience to get into the CPG industry. I worked harder than everyone because I wanted more. When my first daughter was born, she was 4+ months premature. Instantly, my wife couldn’t work so it was on me to work hard to support a family with a child who had medical issues and pay what insurance didn’t pay. Although 23 years ago insurance covered much more, the original hospital bill was about $60k under $1M. I made too much to qualify for assistance and the only money we accepted was from a benefit supper our church held for us. My daughter’s 1st Christmas was courtesy of the Salvation Army. Because I had to work and constantly take every promotion and travel extensively in certain roles, after 22 years, it was the cause of our divorce. You cannot be a great husband when you’re never home. But someone had to do it. If I half assed it, we would’ve been broke and poor. That was my option – do enough to get by and live one lifestyle, or sacrifice and work multiple jobs, etc. and have a better life.
Now, holding onto the family farmland ended up being the smartest thing my folks ever did and it provides income for my parents and my sister, my brother – until he passed this past new year’s day – and myself. In the 80’s, they had no idea how much that land would be worth. However, I continue to work in the corporate world and the only reason I have what I have today is from the hard work I had to and continue to do, as well as the hard work and sacrifice my parents put in. And I know several people, generation X kids, who’ve all made a good life out of hard work. My best friend got pregnant in 7th grade. She went to school all year long to catch up to her class. She ended up graduating early and going to college and got earned her degree. All while working full time. She bought her 1st house before she was 20. Hard work was all we knew. None of us was given anything, except the good fortune to be born in the US. My youngest is 17, while he doesn’t pay rent, he pays his own way – spending money, car, insurance, etc.
I have always had much respect for everyone I see working – the janitor, the waiter/waitress, the executive, the guys who delivered my appliances, everyone gets my respect.
I understand your wanting to remind people of the realities in Mexico, as well as the desire to support your partner. However, I am old school and firmly believe that if one has a strong work ethic, is willing to work hard, to not complain about your lot in life but strive to improve it, that it is possible. It’s not easy, it’s not fun, but it is possible. More so in the US, yes, but it is possible. I’ve worked many jobs I didn’t like, but I knew what it meant to have on my resume, or I just needed the money. I was able to build my life without a college degree, only because I out worked all my peers. Although I am slowing down and enjoying life now, I still take calls/meetings on the weekend, after hours, whenever my clients are working – I am working. I closed a major deal with Mr Beast’s chocolate company last November while in Mexico celebrating dia de muertos – not because I wanted to but because that was the timing. Most of my directs won’t take a call after close of business, yet it’s the “new reality” of the young workforce, you can’t terminate them, and they make more than I ever did at that stage of my career. Then they wonder why they can’t affort a house. I still out perform the 20 & 30 somethings, because hard work is part of who I am.
I apologize for my rant. You are one of my favorite (top 5) contributors to MND. However, I felt I needed to say something on behalf of the people, like myself, who are no strangers to working hard and building a better life. 🤙✌️❤️
Thanks for sharing such a detailed story, Norse! I’d say that your instincts about “things being different now” are correct, and also that they’re a major understatement. When people can work full-time jobs and are still living in their cars because they can’t afford rent (a growing phenomenon in the US), then something is definitely broken. The costs of basic needs like food and housing as well as education costs have shot up hundreds of percents compared to average wages, and it’s not because people are suddenly working less or less hard. Throw in the dismantling of worker rights over the past 40 years and the surge of the no-frills, no-benefits, no-responsibility-to-workers gig economy that employers are increasingly implementing, and you’ve got a perfect storm for plenty of hard workers NEVER getting ahead.
This self-centered rant in no way conyradicts the article. What we see in Mexico, Canada and especially the former United States is the failure of capitalism, the destruction of democracy, and the desperate ending of empire.
The reply’s survey of one in no way justifies the abuse of the common man or the forced redistribution of wealth to the few who claim “success”.
Oh yeah, socialism is SO much better. LOL.
If you’re in favor of things like social security, medicare and medicaid, public goods like roads, police forces, firemen, paramedics, etc, then there are plenty of aspects of socialism that you DO indeed like. I’m sad that it seems these days everyone wants a safety net for themselves, but none for others. 🙁
Been up the stairs and been down the stairs. Sometimes I run up the stairs and sometimes I fall down the stairs. Right now I’m between floors on the stairs. Living comfortably but not a lot of extra cash. I’m in a happy place, mostly just watching others run up and down the stairs!
I mean to be fair, there’s a lot less movement between the floors than people think. 😉
👌