Working to Work

Lisduania Victorero Reinoso

HAVANA TIMES — Having to work to work is no more than one of the obstacles that arise when it comes to doing even the simplest thing here, and of course this is now part of the daily life of every Cuban.

You get up in the morning ready to go to work, and — in the best case — the only problem is that you don’t have many choices for breakfast. You drink a cup of coffee, which isn’t the greatest, and then you head out on a grand odyssey.

The bus stop is full of people willing to mistreat you so they can get to work on time. Here is where you run into a big hassle. You can spend hours watching buses go by full of people, while you’re unable to get on. Meanwhile your anxiety and desperation grow as you worry about getting to your job.

You manage to punch the clock a half an hour after you’re supposed to, so your boss announces that on payday you won’t get the little incentive pay in hard currency because of your failure to get to work on time – making you want to strangle him!

After the displeasure and discomfort comes the “best part.”

If you work in an office, you might not have any paper for printing out your reports because the few sheets they gave you at the beginning of the month have run out. If you’re in a school, you have to come up with your own chalk.

If you’re a worker, you have to “borrow” tools. If you’re a doctor, the gloves, specula and scalpels they give you aren’t enough to treat all of your patients. If you’re the person in charge of cleaning, things are also complicated because you have almost no supplies to do your job.

Even in private businesses there are obstacles. Here too, it’s always difficult to find the essential work materials. Nobody’s exempt.

It’s like this in everything you do, there’s always something lacking when it comes to work. But since many of us are responsible and hardworking, what we end up doing is buying those supplies out of our own pockets or asking for them from a friend who works at a place where they have plenty of work supplies.

Over those eight hours, it isn’t easy to avoid the obstacles. That’s why I say you have to work hard in order to work, not to mention how you feel by the time you get home after a whole day of this.

If you’re a woman, you know that you’ll have to turn into a magician in the kitchen; and if you’re a male, you’ll have to learn to be like Jesus Christ and multiply the money in your wallet so you can feed your family a little better.