Episode 3: The Foreign Workplace

Episode 3: The Foreign Workplace.

Many of you reading this will have in at least some way experienced the workplace in your country of origin. Personally I worked for about a year in the London office of the company I am working for out in Argentina - and its not quite what I'm used to:

-Contract says: Arrive at 9.00. Reality - everybody arrives at 9.30 or later. In london, it's almost the opposite with half the office arriving early!

-Contract says: 4500 ARG pesos per month. Reality - pay raise to 5500 pesos before i'd even started due to 25% inflation. Score?

-Contract says: Joe. (official) Reality - Jose. Or John. Or Jerry. Pronounced Shon, or Sherry, obviously.

In seriousness, though, it's actually a great place to work. Yes, you get paid between a third and a quarter of what you do in London, but the atmosphere is friendly and relaxed. All the staff are sat close together and the office chat is punctuated with funky ringtones that would be viewed as awkward elsewhere - but out here silent mode isn't really common practice. In fact, sometimes there are so many tunes I feel the office floor is about to burst into Glee mode, but nevermind. The best bit, naturally, is the free cinema-style fizzy drinks dispenser.

As for the working language, I can't say that after almost a month here it's especially easy. I've found listening to podcasts (mainly reverting to my economist roots) helps the most as you can rewind once and again until you understand whats being said. Its mostly a case of training the ears to recognise what the words you know sound like when said at double speed (and with half the letters missing. Think a Liverpudlian on Pro Plus and you'll get the idea...)

Finally, and unfortunately, the university system here works differently. What I mean by this is that if you want to be a lawyer, you study law at uni and that's it (no law school, GDL etc). In London, then, if you want to be an accountant it doesnt matter what you studied because you're sent to college anyway. Therefore, everyone in the office is completely qualified - and I am not. So not only am I learning the language (seems like 5 years of 2/3 hours of lessons a week maybe isn't intense enough) but technically am vastly underqualified.

Alas, all is not so bad - off for what must be my 18th cup of diet coke (although if you look closely, you can see them dispense water into it aswell. Scumbags.)

In other news, the Zoo here is rubbish. And the gates are so bad that half the animals (including the racoons) just walk around with the visitors.

Next up - Episode 4: One Month In.

¡Chau!