Hi all,
Today I want to tell you about an experience that I had long buried in the subconscious because of how excessively traumatic it was.
When I was just getting out of university at the end of 2009, a friend told me that there was a position as an administrative assistant in an office of the Spanish Embassy in Caracas, exactly in the Counseling of Employment and Social Security. It was a category that had nothing to do with what I had studied and below the category that I deserved according to my studies, but the salary was good.
At that time there were 14 payments of a little more than 1000USD. Think that, at the parallel exchange rate (the exchange we had in Venezuela), that salary was almost more than what a general manager would make in Venezuela. In addition, there was the supposed “status” that gave you to work in a place like that.
This friend was Spanish and worked at the Spanish Consulate and offered to help me study for the exam. Yes, you had to take a long and complicated exam on Spanish laws and even learn to calculate pensions. That was Chinese to me. I spent a few months studying that bunch of laws.
I knew this friend from a French course attended by other Spaniards who also worked at the Spanish Consulate and in a meeting with classmates, I had also met the person who would be my boss if I was selected for the position.
On the day of the exam, we were 8 people. I was the only one who correctly solved the pension calculation exercise, and I had a total score of around 9 out of 10. There was another girl who had passed with 5 out of 10 and according to what my friend told me, the girl was the daughter of a guy who played Golf with one of the heads of the office.
Then we did an interview, and I was offered the job.
I started working in January 2010 super excited believing that I was going to work in a normal place with normal people.
When I arrived, the people were mildly cordial. Since the one who was to be my boss was on vacation, I spent a month doing absolutely nothing. There were two women in their fifties, a Venezuelan without a Spanish passport who was trying to imitate the Spanish accent and another Venezuelan as well, but of Spanish parents
These two women were in charge of “training” me for the job I had to do, which they did badly with the idea that I would do all wrong and screwed up.
I learned that each department was like a mafia, and everyone was at war with everyone. That you had to join a side to be protected or they would stab you from all sides
At the beginning, since I was “very nice” and laughed a lot, those who had to train me began to say that I laugh at the elderly and with this “story” they went to poison the counselor.
The counselor was the top boss there and he was one level above my direct boss. This man, as he was a real moron, immediately went to tell my boss that I would not pass the three-month trial and that they would fire me. The one who was my boss investigated the situation with all the staff and at that moment one of the two women who had spoken ill of me was the only one who continued with her story forward and logically they renewed my contract since it was their word against mine. Also, the rest of the people had said that they had no problem with me.
To clarify, my idea was to stay for two years and ask for an indefinite leave; this was a legal figure according to which I could always ask for that position if one day I wanted to return. Then I found out that one year was enough to qualify for that leave. Obviously, I didn’t want to be an administrative assistant all my life and even less in that disgusting place.
In addition, I will tell you a little about how this type of office belonging to consulates or embassies of Spain works.
For senior positions, they send people from Spain, that is, born in Spain. These are the “friends” of the politicians on duty, and they are removed or assigned every time the Government changes. My direct boss earned 18,000 euros a month and the counselor, more than 22,000.
If you are not shocked yet, the Ambassador earned more than 30,000 euros a month and had no expenses. Accommodation, meals, driver, everything was covered by the Spanish State.
Then there were the people born in Venezuela who were like the filler staff. These people earned like me and those who had enough time or had been hired with some other agreement (or were friends of someone important), could earn between 3,000 and 6,000 euros per month.
The most absurd thing is that I never saw people so absolutely miserable. They did all kinds of scams and tricks to get money and spend the least.
Imagine that they took the medicines from the office so that they would not buy them with their money and that they drank the coffee from the office wildly because it was free.
Don’t miss out, the people earning 5 figures were even worse. The counselor, for example, was merely an adornment character, all he did was sign things and read the newspaper. Ah! And smoke. Although it was prohibited and there were signs everywhere, the people who worked there, smoked quietly wherever they wanted; the first was the counselor setting the example when it came to stupidity.
But that is not all. Most of the staff who went to Caracas to work loved to hire prostitutes. It didn’t matter that they were married. Those who left their families in Spain lived there as single people. Those who had families in Caracas, took advantage of the “work trips” to hire prostitutes. In fact, when I was working there, there were many stories of men being blackmailed or having weird situations that came to light.
I could not believe that the Spaniards with their taxes were paying the salary to such a scum.
In addition, let me tell you that with the little work that had to be done, that office could function perfectly with less than half the employees that they had.
The office where I worked managed social benefits, pensions, study aid, aid to Spanish centers, etc. You cannot imagine the corruption that existed in the distribution of that money.
In theory, assigning the pensions was fair because the request was sent to Spain, and they approved it if the years of contribution were met. But the rest was a party.
The social benefits also had to go by certain requirements, but I realized that the thing depended on whether the person asking for it brought gifts or not, on whether this person was nice or not, or whether they had “friends” inside or not. The elderly who for some reason were disliked by the employees, were not going to get an euro out of there, no matter how many times they complaint.
As for aid for Spanish centers, things also worked by status and contacts. The personnel in charge of allocating this money would walk through these centers to eat and drink for free (as if they needed it) and to receive gifts. In the end, who was better connected and gave the best gifts, was the one who received the most money from the Spanish Government.
In other words, these fabulous personnel, in addition to earning a fortune, ate for free in Spanish centers and received favors and gifts from all establishments interested in receiving grants from the Spanish Government.
That’s not all. You cannot imagine how badly these Spaniards spoke of Venezuelans and other nationalities in general. For them, the Venezuelans were still aborigines with a loincloth, and they were always going to be the conquerors. Venezuelans and Latin Americans in general were people of a “lower level”.
The funniest thing is that these people were in those positions neither because of their careers, nor because of their masters, nor because of their trajectory and much less because of their languages, since they did not even speak English. Those people were there because they had a “friend” or a contact.
Then it was time to do what they would call “Fé de Vida”. Every year the staff traveled throughout the country to renew social benefits for the elderly (and to make sure that they were still alive). Here they paid those who traveled the hotel and meals, in addition to a bonus for being out, in USD.
So far, everything normal, they covered the expenses that any company would cover. What was not normal is that people did not eat all day to save and thus later they received all the money from the travels practically net.
From the first trip I did more renovations than the rest of the people who had worked there for years. Nobody congratulated me, but on the contrary, I was a threat.
From the beginning they expected me to be a fiasco, to look bad. However, I learned alone, I worked better than the rest and, therefore, I made them look bad. Also, to top it all, I didn’t have a Spanish passport, which was audacious on my part.
At this point, if I was nice, it was wrong, if I worked as I should it was also wrong. I tried to play silly, and it was bad too. There came a time when I exploded and began to respond to each one as they deserved, it was also wrong.
Nice, hard-working, silly, slow, fast, submissive, dominant. It always ended up bad for me. It didn’t matter what I did.
Let me explain something else, there was no way to grow or climb steps since high positions were political positions for the people who were sent from Spain. So, people would retire with the same position they had when they began even if they had been working there for 50 years. So those wars between each other did not make any sense. The competition didn’t make any sense. Even if people did nothing, it was almost impossible for them to be fired.
For those who wanted to be there all their lives relaxed, doing the minimum and without the need for professional growth, this was the perfect job. Wasn’t it better to work like normal people and stop wasting energy fucking each other’s mental health? Because apart from making life impossible for me, they also made it hell between themselves.
They even told me that once, one of the managers, in a fit of anger, had grabbed a typewriter and threw it against a window. So, the Spanish State had to pay for a window and thank goodness that the typewriter did not fall on anyone’s head, because from that height, it would have been a tragedy.
If that man could do that, imagine the danger he posed to the people around him. That guy was a potential criminal.
The one who was my direct boss at the beginning was fair, but after traveling a few times with him, justice ran out. We took some group trips with these people I knew, and he pretended that we all had to do whatever he wanted. Besides, he was always playing silly not to pay his share in many things. So, on the last trip I got upset and went my way.
There things got worse because I lost that “protection” that the fact that my boss was fair gave me.
You can’t imagine what a nightmare that was. Get to work and have one yell at you, other throw the door at you, another tells you to do whatever they want, have another insult you. Eight hours a day of psychological torture. When someone needed me to do something, then momentarily they treated me well and gave me protection in “their clan”.
Since I was the only skinny one there, they started to say that I was anorexic. In addition, at that time I also had to secure all my social networks because of course, who knows if they spied on me and took something else to harass me.
The truth is that from this horrible experience I could write a book, more than a post. It was more than two years that I endured there; I don’t even know how. I had moments when I would get home to cry every day. I didn’t tell my mom so as not to worry her and I didn’t tell my dad because since his mind was poisoned by his partner, I couldn’t tell him anything either.
In September 2012 I left, and I didn’t even say goodbye to anyone. They all gasped because they had nowhere better to go. I did.
For me, getting out of there was a psychological liberation. I left with a supposedly safe job if I needed to go back, but with the certainty that I’d rather be dead than go back to that hell. I call it hell because words are not enough for me to describe the scum that worked there, because I have no words that can convey the corruption, vice, toxicity and the putrid nature of that work environment. They almost drove me crazy; I didn’t end up with a psychological problem by miracle.
Neither the money I earned nor the supposed security of always being able to return there compensate me for the mistreatment, workplace harassment and psychological torture that I suffered. At that time, I was silly, and I endured, today I would not stand for 2 minutes in that place.