the working world

In general: The want ads advertise jobs for men and jobs for women. Ads specify age ranges and really whatever the employer wants, it's all good. They want young people because they work cheap, put in long hours and don't have any bad habits.

Kinda hesitant to identify who my employer is but suffice it to say the office culture is quite different from in the USA. The first thing that you notice is the near absence of women, workplaces are very male-dominated.

Companies have to pay, by law, between the first and tenth of each month and no later than the tenth. Pay is a combination of cash and "tickets." Tickets can be spent on food at the grocery store (very much like food stamps in the USA welfare system and equally restrictive, which is sort of a pain in the butt since its your money that you earned but that's how it is) or on restaurant food or on bus fares. They are not interchangeable, you have to specify how you want your tickets allocated between the three types.

Companies don't really have benefits like in the USA. What's available is dictated by law... they have to pay a social security tax that pays for your membership in a private hospital (think HMO - sort of) and that covers some little pittance for your retirement. If you make more than X number of pesos you get signed up for something called an AFAP and that pays you another pittance at retirement age. I'm not sure how all thats going to work because supposedly Uruguay and the USA have a "totalization treaty" regarding social security (I think thats what its called) so I'm not sure if I will collect anything from BPS (UY social security) or if it will somehow count as USA social security "credits."

But whatever, Bush is going to piss all the money away in stuff that makes his friends rich, like Iraq, so may as well live in the now... and before all you republicans get all indignant, I agree with you on a lot of fiscal issues if y'all weren't so goddamned obsessed with whether and where I go to church or what happens in my bedroom. Less government my ASS.

I digress... ;)
In my office, there's no obnoxious collection for coffee like in the USA - it's available if you want it. So's fresh fruit and bottled water. So I spend a bit less on breakfast.

You're also free to risk death boiling water for mate' - this isn't a nanny state full of trial lawyers after all - they have several little heating coils available that can be submersed in a thermos or mug of water to boil it. The things are available for about a dollar apiece in any store and basically its a little exposed heating coil with a short cord with a plug for the 220volt wall outlet. If you plug them in when they aren't submersed, they pretty much just explode instantly - suffice it to say they don't have any safety certifications from UL or CE or anything like that. And if you touch the thermos while the thing is inside, you might get a big shock. But that's how people boil water.

What's mate'? A type of green tea. Everyone in Uruguay drinks mate'. Topic for a whole other post.

Punctuality for meetings and such is definitely not quite the same as in the USA. Five or ten minutes late is the norm.

And your co-workers will say things to you that are perfectly normal in their culture but when you're listening to them and not thinking in that language (i.e. translating) you sometimes say, HUH? A co-worker closed a phone call with me and he said "un abrazo." Or, translated, "hug." Or if they're translating themselves and ask things in English... a female co-worker asked me, "Will you come to my box after lunch?" (Cubicle in Spanish is caja, which literally translates as box.) It took me a few minutes to compose myself and agree.

I could make a zillion other observations but I don't really want to join the ranks of the guy who worked a bit at Google or the pot-smoking ex-Mormon girl (both got fired as a direct result of their blogs), especially since the odds of getting another job are a little bit like the odds of getting directly hit by lightning. ;)