15. Saturday 10/7/99 it's good to get away from my mañoso bosses  
 
 
My course which I was really enjoying teaching and my students liked doing came to an end on Wednesday. 

(I had found that the company were lying when they said they couldn't possibly pay me more than $5 an hour, in fact they were probably earning more than $20, so I was a little bit pissed off) 

I had sent a fax 3 weeks previously to my boss saying that the students wanted to do another course and I would teach it if I got more money. I had hoped he would be busy organising it , but he never contacted me to negotiate terms. So I thought that when I went to the office on Thursday to pick up my wages he would negotiate with me then. I presumed his technique was to play the strong man and save the negotiation to the last minute to put pressure on me. 

I hate doing business with people you can't trust , it's too stressful. You have to be paranoid and think of every possibility. I was wondering what technique he was going to come up with in order to pay me less. I decided I needed to be very firm ..I would get paid for this project , then I would negotiate. If they didn't want to pay the money I wanted , I wouldn't let them bully me. I would leave and go to Peru , as I had to leave the country and re-enter soon to get a new visa anyway. 

In the end we didn't even negotiate. I had sent him a fax asking when I would get paid and I understood he said on the telephone he would pay me on the day after the end of the project. They kept me waiting 2 hours , then he gave the salary for last month I looked at it and asked him when he would pay me the money for the rest of the project. He went crazy shouting ...I had to trust him , he wasn't a thief , he was a super-Christian etc he was raving for about ten minutes. 

..BTW wasn't Adolf Hitler a Christian too . I seen people all over the world who call themselves Christians because they go to church on Sundays , but six days of the week they don't behave in a very Christian way ! 

(Well if he's a Christian ..let God judge him !) 

I asked him to calm down and said I only wanted to know when I would get paid. 

He eventually came up with this plan ..I would continue working as normal while he negotiated with the students , then if there was no agreement he would pay me. I wasn´t going to let him bully me into working for the same money . I could see his negotiations going on for 1 week, 2 weeks etc . Why hadn't he negotiated already ?  

I thought I could just leave, it was only $35, but then I thought NO I worked for this money I'm not going to let him keep it . I told him no way the project had finished, I wanted to be paid now and I wouldn't work until we negotiated new terms. He said he didn´t have the money. I said "I won't leave this office until you pay me". He disappeared upstairs and a minute later came with the money, and whe was not in a good mood as he escorted me to the door. 

I prefer to do business in a friendly way , then you can get a win: win situation. By forcing me to show I could be tough and Cabron like them .They lost, I lost and the students lost

I could cry , because of the harshness of Chilean business people. But then I could cry , because of the overwhelming kindness of the other people I met in Maria Elena .. really thanks ! 

Well at least you learn from bad experiece ...here what I learnt about Chilean business methods. HERE 
next postcard ..my visit to Peru .. 

Dynamite !
The engineers took me on a tour of the plant . They took me to a place where they were blasting 6000 tonnes of rock. They showed me how to light the fuse ..and said after I had done it I should run. Then they went to the cars and drove away. 

So I lit the fuse and ran...Then the one remaining engineer laughed and said it was a 5 minute fuse. 

my film came out blank so I don{t have any photosv
 


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