Viva Tijuana

Sounds depressing that they never leave their work place and see new things, enjoy the world... a word pops up in my mind... slavery.

You know, the more I think about this, the more it would appear that this initiative is the hypothetical “mixed bag”, south of the boarder style, so to speak. I wouldn’t use the term of slavery, but manipulation and slight intimidation may come into play. I saw a show on PBS a while back on Henry Ford, who was an innovator when it came to this sort of thing. Aside from being a true piece of work, he also had to be one of the ugliest human beings ever to walk the face of the earth. He was the last major automaker to give into the UAW, and had a band of thugs that used to enforce strict physical discipline on the assembly line in his plants. He was always on Edsel’s case, hard. Edsel was a brilliant engineer, and almost singlehandedly designed the Model A and Henry took all the credit for it, what a SOB! Dad made his life a living hell, and he had to have over half of his stomach removed because of all of Henry’s harassment, and then to top it all of that, the car that was named after him was the biggest marketing flop prior to new Coke. Henry lived to the ripe old age of 85, and in his later years was completely wacked out that the Jews were out to get him. Ford was a genius, and that enabled FOMOCO to offer the best wage on his production lines in the industry at the time, so kind of a double edged sword like this manufacturer’s incentive in TJ is. That being said, IMHO I think the term “slavery” is a little harsh here. I remember when I heard this story on NPR, they also said that they employ a third party company to stand in line for workers to pay their electric bills, too. I’ve been staying at AI’s for almost 15 years, and with those employees, I can tell you is that virtually all the workers DO NOT trust anyone or anything in management at the resort. The bartender’s pool their tips together and split them at the end of their shift. This is all done as far away from anyone in management for good reason. Another good thing to remember is that when you stay at an AI, is to directly hand your daily tip to the maid, every day, discreetly when no one is around and tell her in Spanish to keep it all herself, usually $5USD a day, helps with the extra Dos XX cans in the minibar! If you leave the tip on the pillow, and the supervisor sees it, they will want their “rake” (current market value extortion is %50, and they gladly take USD here, no questions asked! At the very least maybe, resort management should offer to stand in line for hours on end and cash in all of those USD tips at banks or cambio’s.