First-world/third-world rant.
With apologies to Guster for its length.
We have, as y'all know, two houses in Granada, Nicaragua. We never get to visit these houses just to relax. There are always things to do or get done. This weekend was our first visit in 18+ months where I felt like we could just do nothing.
We arrived to find that, among other things, at one of the houses we had no cable or internet, the main bathroom toilet wouldn't flush, half the plants were dead...and so on. We haven't been to the other house yet.
We already knew we wanted to fire our property manager, but this sent us into the "must do now" realm. So again our "relaxing" vacation became a hassle of awful personnel stuff.
Then, we came to find out:
The manager (we'll call her "Jessica"), who is an American, without our knowledge told the cleaning lady and the pool guy at some point that she could not pay them every week. She pays them every 15 days, because "it's too much trouble to go to the bank every week". Now, she goes to the bank at least once a week and often twice a week for withdrawals to pay herself and for any bills or repairs we need. Then, as it turns out, she had not paid these people for over two weeks right now.
Carmen is our cleaning lady. She cleans one house 3 times per week and the other 3 times per week. She spends 4-5 hours at the house each day. For her 30ish hours per week of cleaning, she is paid the equivalent of ~$30 per week, which is considered a very good job and an above-average wage here. She's probably 35 but looks 70, and has four kids and fewer teeth than kids.
Carmen, shaking and nervous, approached us today because she has not been paid for so long and has an account at the
pulperia that they will close off if she can't pay them. This literally means she will not eat. When she asked our manager to get paid and explained her credit issue, she was told she might get paid on Monday and that this is not their problem.
Pancho is the pool guy. He is known as the best pool guy in Granada and definitely is. He is paid about $20 per week to clean both pools 3x per week. He also does odd jobs--for instance, today he fixed a leaking toilet that had been flooding all over, and spent two hours on the job, for which he asked for about $8.50, including parts. He also has not been paid.
Both Carmen and Pancho were so nervous about taking money from us that they literally shook. Actually, literally, shaking. Both of them were worried that when Jessica found out she would be angry and fire them. I had to explain that they worked for us, not Jessica, and that we were happy with them.
HOW THE MOTHER#### DOES SOMEONE TAKE ADVANTAGE OF PEOPLE LIKE THIS? It's so distressing to see "gringos" constantly treat people the way they do. And frankly, richer Nicaraguans will do the same thing. The ugliness here is just incredible. Seems the Americans (sub Canadians or whatever for same effect) are here to prey on people, for the most part. Makes me ####### sick.
Anyway, Jessica is being fired tomorrow. Good ####### riddance,
perra puta.