Critters

It's October now and the weather here in Mexicali is getting cooler and more pleasant every day. I can once again enjoy the chance to sit out on my patio with a book and a cup of tea or a glass of wine, depending on what time it is and whether I'm looking forward to the day or recovering from it. The jasmine is blooming now and the air is heavy with its scent early in the morning or as the sun is setting. I have a fountain on a wall of my patio but I have to keep it empty unless I have the time to skim it daily for feathers. Yes, feathers. We have a plague of pigeons in our neighborhood and they never fail to think that the fountain is their personal spa when it's full of water. "Gee," you're thinking, "what's wrong with that? Can't the little birdies have some fun splashing and getting a drink? Aren't they fun to watch?" You might think so at first. And, in fact, it does take a little while to realize just how disgusting pigeons are when you have to live in close proximity to them. I had them nesting on my roof and on a window sill in the front of the house for the first year that I lived here. Finally, I had to get someone from work to come and clear them out and put strips of nails where they land on the house and rolls of chicken wire in the spaces where they were nesting to keep them out. But this was not before they had covered the front yard and the back patio with copious amounts of pigeon poop. We also have a neighbor who gets so frustrated with their constant cooing noises and nesting habits that he often spends his weekends hunting them down and shooting them from the rooftops. It's a little scary and I have found several of them bloody and dying in my yard and patio since he's been focused on reducing the population. I even came across one (evident by the gagging smell) that had crawled behind a cactus and died several days, at least, before I found it. I love animals and I have a special fondness for birds as pets. I've owned several parrots, including my favorite, Bongo, an African gray who is a much loved member of the family. But I confess to considering pigeons as something less than real birds. They are more like flying rodents. Thankfully, they are not nearly as much of a problem now as they once were. I still have to sweep up a couple of piles of feathers every week, but I can live with that.

Pigeons are not the only critters that I've had to deal with for the past couple of years. I spend my weekends in Long Beach, California, when I'm not commuting here to Mexicali for work. My husband and I have a house there on the edge of the city about 4 miles from the ocean. It's in the center of a huge metropolitan area, not far from a confluence of freeways, shopping centers and a big city park. The first critter problem we had was opossums. We had hordes of them over the span of about two years. At one point, we had one give birth to a litter of babies in our garage. I called the city's animal control department, hoping that they would help us to get rid of them. That was when I found out that they are protected animals and you can't do anything about them or to them, and the city won't help you at all. Their answer to the problem was "just leave your garage door open and eventually they will go away when they're ready." In the meantime, which turned out to be weeks, they stole the laundry for their nest, smelled up the gargage forever and made an unholy, nasty mess. So we bought a friendly trap and we proceeded to catch over 25 of them that we took to the park and released. A park ranger saw me once as I let an opossum out of the cage and he told me that it would be better if I didn't let him see me let "that poor little guy loose to get attacked by the mean crows in the park." Honestly, I don't believe even a crow would bother with an animal as unappealing as an opossum. Here is a link to a little video about someone who confused an opposum with a cat, which is hard to believe, but very funny. http://rocksoft.wordpress.com/2009/05/05/thats-not-a-cat-thats-a-possum/

After that, we thought we were finished with critter problems. Guess what? As soon as the opossum population went down, we had a bigger problem. Bigger, as in a bigger animal. Next we had raccoons. Now everyone knows that raccoons are cute little animals who are very smart and so clean that they even wash their their paws after they eat. Right. Their cute alright. But they are as big as a medium sized dog, with huge claws and a menacing attitude that is downright scary when you meet up with one or have one on its hind legs looking at you through your window almost at eye level. And they are so destructive that they almost made me wish to have the opossums back, even though they are stupid and smelly and annoying. At least they don't rip all your plants out by the roots to get at grubs and worms, destroy your garden and tip over all your potted plants on a daily basis. The opossums never got in the garage the day before Halloween and tore the wrappers off all the candy that was stored in a pantry cuboard and threw them and pieces of Baby Ruth and Snickers everywhere. We did notice, though, that the raccoons seemed to particularly enjoy the Snickers bars. . .

This year, the critters won't get any Halloween candy at our house. I hope any of you who read this and are ready to go Trick or Treating watch out for critters and don't feed the pigeons, the opossums or the raccoons.

Plastic Bags Ban --

I was pretty stunned when a friend and co-worker in Mexicali emailed me that Mexico City had just enacted a ban on all plastic bags in grocery stores. Honestly, if someone had asked me, I would have probably insisted that Mexico City would be one of the last places on earth where such a law would be considered, much less put into effect. It is the second city in the western hemisphere to ban the bags. San Francisco passed an ordinance in 2007 giving stores 6 months to 1 year to stop using them in the city. I've been to Mexico City, briefly on a two day business trip and several times in the airport on my way to other points of interest. It's a hectic city and when when viewed largely from taxi-cab windows (see the image to the right taken from a cab on my way to the airport) it is difficult to imagine as a place of urban neighborhoods and influential environmental action. http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/08/19/mexico.plastic.bag.ban/index.html

Even though Mexico also has a 1 year grace period before they start to crack down on violators who distribute the bags or don't use a biodegradeable alternative, it is impressive that they have the foresight to move ahead of so many other urban centers. Consider some of the facts about plastic bags: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/09/0902_030902_plasticbags_2.html:

• We use 500 billion - 1 trillion of them every year. Before the economic crisis made these kinds of numbers commonplace, it would have been hard to comprehend such a quantity of trash.
• Estimates vary from months to over 400 years for a plastic bag to degrade. If the latter is true, we may all be buried in them before they go away.
• More than 100,000 marine animals and birds die each year because they think the bags are food. Sea turtles, who think the bags are jellyfish, eat them and then die of starvation.
  
• The bags that end up in landfills actually represent a small percentage of the total number of bags out there. Estimates I found are less than 5%. The truth is that many of the ones that don't end up in the ocean as trash or hanging from trees or blowing around on the freeways to catch on your car's fender are being reused by many of us. And that's not a bad thing. If you haven't yet made the decision to purchase reusable cloth bags, there are other things you can do. Keep a bag of bags in your car to take to the store and reuse. They don't take up much space when you compress them. You could even put some in your purse or your pocket. In that way, you can cut down on the number of new bags that are in circulation. If you do decide to buy your own reusable bags, don't get discouraged at how hard it is to make using them a habit. Remember when you had to learn to always fasten your seat belt after years of never doing it (that is if your old enough to remember that. . .)? Well, like anything new, you just have to practice doing it over and over. You will definitely get to your turn at the grocery counter and have to make a mad dash to your car more than once before you think of them when you first put your foot in the parking lot. But it will happen once you have done it 10 or 12 times. Thinking about the poor turtles like the one in the picture above will make it easier.

Instead of the Dust- the Heat

We are right in the middle of the summer here in Mexicali, and even the crickets hide out during the afternoon when the temperatures reach 115 degrees or more. It is true that you get used to the heat, more or less, but we all try to stay where the air conditioning is blasting whenever we can. We can't run the air conditioning in our manufacturing area for several reasons, and the heat is palpable. Especially when the humidity is between 40-50%. Five minutes on the shop floor and your hair is dripping. Not exactly a pretty sight. The fans are blowing and keeping the air moving a little. In order to minimize the astronomical cost of electricity supplied by the federal government here in Mexico, the employees start to work at 4:00 in the morning and the equipment shuts down just before 2:00 pm. Since that is also just reaching the hottest time of the day, at least some of the workforce gets to go home early.

The heat is as much a part of life in Mexicali as crossing the border into the US. It's hard to say which one is the most difficult to handle but the latter is definitely worse when the weather is hot. If your car's air conditioning is good, the hour and a half wait is aggravating, but if you have to turn it off and open your windows, that wait can be hell. It seems to me that every week, the amount of time taken with each car gets longer, but I'm sure that's a relative judgement. I do remember that several years ago, the crossing hardly ever took more than 20-30 minutes, except at the peak hours in the morning and afternoon. Now I feel lucky if it only takes an hour. One of the most frustrating experiences is when you are almost to the crossing gate and the guards decide to take a break. They put a red cone in front of the next car and walk away, leaving whatever line is queued up waiting until an agent returns to take over. I have seen and heard angry, frustrated people futiley honking their horns and getting out of their cars to rail in useless anger at other drivers. I confess to holding on to my steering wheel and screaming inside my car, hoping no one actually hears me, in order to release my pent up rage for losing so much time waiting and waiting to get to the other side of the international border. Ah well, it's just something you have to deal with. . .
Here's a link to a posting that has some good information and pictures of the border crossing: http://www.ericrench.com/MEXICO/MEXICALI/BORDER/bordercross.htm.

Employees are an Enigma, Part II

I don't think there will be a part III to this line of thinking. I wonder if I was just having a bad day when I wrote about the inability of our employees to be good team players or if I just couldn't admit that it's not really their fault. Anyway, since I posted that some things have changed a little. First, I've decided to change my approach and I think I convinced a couple of other people at work to do the same. You know, they always say you can't change someone else's behavior, you can only change your own. And that's how you make change happen, for better or worse.

When we hired this new group of 'managers' we said we were going to let them do the job we hired them to do and spend our time coaching them and helping them to be successful. Don't think we planned to do this for purely altruistic reasons, but our plan wasn't fiendish either. It was pretty normal and reasonable, considering that we have been working at making our company grow successfully for over five years. We need to have a team ready to take over when we are just too old and feeble to go on or maybe just when we want to take a couple of weeks off and go to Acapulco. At first, we were spending most of our time with the new group training them on the basics of the company and the organization. How the processes work, who the other employees are and what are their jobs, the different policies and procedures and the general conditions and daily routines. After several months, we began to expect that they would automatically start to take over and act like us (probably not a good thing anyway). Sometimes when they made a mistake, we spent more time telling them what they did wrong than showing them how to do it right. Other times we held them by the hand and walked them through different scenarios so they could make a more informed decision in the future. In other words, we were inconsistent and we didn't have a standard so that we could hold them accountable. They responded by becoming less and less willing or able to make the decisions we were demanding and everyone was frustrated. They also never wanted to be the "bad guy." It's so much nicer when everyone likes you and wants to be your friend or when you can be someone's hero (without trying to figure out who the victim is). We call that tendency the "Chanito Syndrome" and it's a common problem everywhere. A couple of people quit, for undisclosed reasons, and that made it even harder to get things done. Not just because there were fewer people to take up the slack, but because the roles kept changing.

I think the most important thing we have done to change in the past few weeks is to leave the new managers alone. Not alone in the sense that we have abandoned them, but freer to make decisions that will allow them to succeed or even to fail. If they succeed, we will reinforce them and if they fail we will be there to pick them up, dust them off and help them learn from whatever went wrong. I think it's already starting to work, but I could be dreaming. . .

I also found a cool website that has some really useful information, like a very succinct employee handbook. You can enjoy it here http://punkrockhr.com/punk-rock-employee-handbook/

"Employees are an Enigma" or "The Great Cultural Divide," Part I

When we first started working in Mexico, we had a group of people with us who had lived and worked in the US for a number of years. As they drifted off to other places and we had to hire new people, we chose to access the local universities to provide us with educated and talented employees. At least that was our plan. Prior to graduation in Mexico, students are required to spend some time in either a public or private organization to complete their 'practicas profesionales.' We hired young engineers who spent time with us as students, as well as those who had just graduated. We believed that we could train them to be a strong, committed management team with a special understanding of the processes and capabilities of our new company.


What we didn't fully appreciate, was the difficulty of transferring our 'gingo' cultural ideas of leadership and teamwork to a group of Mexican workers. After more than five years, we have to concede that a degree from a university doesn't guarantee an understanding of the meaning of responsibility, discipline, communication, authority, commitment or any other word that conjures the basic elements of work. Our expectations were based on our cultural paradigms and experiences gained from working in companies in the United States. Our new reality in Mexico is about as similar as walking on the moon. I don't really believe that the differences in expectations and outcomes are deliberate or intentional. People accept a job and get up every morning to come to work because they want to do a good job and get paid for it, no matter where they are in the world. At least that is true at first. Later, after personalities and conflicts come into play, there are probably more reasons to show up every day, or not, but getting paid is still number one. But once they get to work, how do they make themselves productive and valuable? When we interview and hire prospective candidates, we tell them that we are looking for people who will help us to build our new company. We explain that it is an opportunity to be creative and innovative. We discuss the challenge of starting from scratch to develop new processes and build new teams. We get excited about the prospects and show them our passionate belief in what we are doing. And in doing so, I think we probably scare the hell out of them. Their eyes start to glaze over and they begin to nod their heads in agreeement to anything. "Yes, yes," they say, as they accept our offer to build a dream. But when they arrive at work, they put their heads down and wait for someone to tell them what to do. So we explain to them and train them in the processes and procedures that already exist, fully expecting them to get as excited as we are and to take up the gauntlet of continuous improvement and world class ideas. We wait for them to charge ahead and make a glorious new contribution. And we wait. And then we wait some more. And when we ask them why they haven't done what we asked, why they haven't implemented the disciplines we laid out for them, why they haven't communicated the policies and procedures to all the people, where is their initiative, we just get that same glazed look we got when they told us they wanted the job.

It is disappointing. It is frustrating. It can sometimes be endearing. Sometimes it makes you want to cry. Sometimes it makes you laugh. But is it always part of the complex and diverse culture that is Mexico.

Can You See Jesus?

I found a fascinating article the other day that I want to share with you. It was about another miracle that should raise your spirits and confirm your faith in something else. I'm not here to tell you what 'something else' is, but it's out there somewhere with a design we may never fathom.

There is a restaurant in Calexico, California, just across the border from Mexicali, called Las Palmas, where one of the employees discovered a likeness to the Virgin of Guadalupe on the griddle. They have put the griddle in a separate room so that patrons can go in and look at it or pray to it or leave an offering for it. I suppose they had to buy a new griddle for cooking, but I'm sure it has increased their business tenfold. Not only did they get an article published in the LA Times about the phenomenon, but it's been mentioned on many other internet news sites. I'm tempted to go there myself. The Griddle Room is open Wednesday through Sunday for viewing, along with the restaurant, in case you need some faith and sustenance.

It's not the first time people have seen religious personnages or articles in or on weird stuff. I found a Fox News video that mentions Jesus in a pancake, in a dirty sink, on toast, in the clouds, you name it. You can see it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvjGIkl2yDY. We are so easy. . .

And not to be outdone, I have my own relic. Here is a picture of my own Jesus rock in my garden. I have carried this rock around the world with me since I found it on a beach in Saudi Arabia almost 30 years ago. Should I put it up for auction on Ebay? Can you see Jesus in it?

A friend once told me that when you do business in Mexico, one of the most important things you can do is to put up a picture of the Virgin of Guadalupe in a public place. It was one of the first items to go in the cafeteria so the employees would feel comfortable eating there. And there it remains until this day, along with a candle and some flowers.

Not long after we moved into our building, we did something else that might seem unusual to most 'gringos.' We invited all the families of the people who were working for us to come to the company one Saturday morning and we had a ceremony to bless the building. We have a Deacon in the Catholic church who came to Mexcali to work with us. He got some holy water and put his purple and white robes on for the occasion. We all followed him throughout the building while he sprinkled the holy water on the walls and in the corners and prayed for our safety and success. I'm still looking for the proof that it worked, but since we can still go to work every day along with our 30+ employees, I have to think that it didn't hurt.

H1N1, Swine, Mexican, North American Flu

Last week would have seemed normal in Mexicali, except the weather was unusual and the news of a potential global pandemic tinged everything with a sense of danger. It was strangely overcast in the mornings, with a sense of heaviness that you could almost touch and a slightly ochre cast to one's view from windows and cars. Often, even in winter, the sun lends such a harsh, bright reality to everything here, that every leaf, a garden stone or a window ledge has the power to fracture your view of the world. The muted tones of the past few days dreamily softened even the stark reality of the news from Mexico City, where streets were empty, restaurants closed and the citizens were staying in their homes to minimize the risk of infection. In Mexicali, where a few cases of the flu were identified, the response was much less obvious, though an undercurrent of tension was noticeable in casual conversations and fewer cars on the streets. Notice was given at the end of the week, on a major holiday in Mexico, that all 'non-essential' businesses should close the following week. Since almost everything was already closed on Friday and many establishments would also be taking a holiday on Monday, it was difficult to know how to contact employees over a long weekend to tell them not to return. It turned out to be unnecessary when the ban was lifted in the city by the next day and now even businesses in Mexico City will reopen by Wednesday. Do you think things will really be the same there? Or will it be weeks or months before the crowds and traffic resume their congested sameness.

Across the border in Calexico, however, everything was business-as-usual on Friday. The traffic was heavy at the border because of the holiday and it took more than one hour to make the crossing. The guards at the border didn't mention the flu and their was nothing different at the gas station. I had to go to the Bank of America, which I swear must be the busiest branch that exists in the whole United States. No one there was wearing a mask or keeping an unusual distance. Even though the flu was identified in Imperial county, the response was not the same as it was just across the street in another country. Though the news in the States was broadcasting flu updates every half hour on radio and TV, the public reaction was far from intense just minutes from the border. I'm sure there is nothing geographical in the spread of a virus, but there definitely is something different about how different cultures respond to similar threats.

It must have something to do with the level of tolerance people in the States have to the constant media pounding of one dire problem after another. Numbness begins to set in and the "ho hum" factor takes over. In Mexico, though the Internet has become a way of life and TV and radio news shows are running just as constantly, they are still not as predominant in everyone's daily life. Sometimes I ask people who work in the company for news of what is going on in the news, and for the most part, they can hardly give you a run down of local, state or national news. Newspapers are still sold on every major street corner in the mornings, along with Chiclets and the ubiquitous request for handouts. It's not that life is simpler here, but it definitely is different in many subtle and indefinable ways.

The El Alamo Dorms

When we first drove into the empty parking lot of the El Alamo building, all of us knew we had found what we were looking for. We were collectively holding our breath when we walked through the doors, because we didn’t want to break the spell. We had been looking at buildings for quite a while, but this one was immediately special. We saw that the main offices were just being filled by another new tenant, who was moving in that very day, but there was a separate building, adjacent to the cafeteria and across an external walkway from the production area. We could immediately see ourselves there, with an eye on the other offices sometime in the future.

We had all worked together in another company and our conversations there had led us to believe that we could start our own company when our manufacturing jobs went ‘South’ in a very literal sense. That company had decided to move it’s operations to Tijuana and we weren’t interested in moving to that tainted city. We chose Mexicali because it seemed very quiet and non-threatening. The people were friendly and being the capital of Northern Baja California, it had technical schools and universities, hotels, shopping centers and most of the conveniences that we were used to in Southern California.

When we moved in, at the end of the year, we moved in to stay. We made the building our temporary home, until we were settled in Mexicali and had some other options. So we built shower stalls in each of the bathrooms and turned the offices into part time work stations and dorm rooms. I was the only woman so I got my own room, christened the “Barbie Suite” because of the two single pink and purple kids beds that were found just for me.  We lived there for almost a year, like squatters in our own building.  It was quite comfortable, really, except for the lack of hot water in the sinks.  We only plumbed the hot water into the two shower stalls.  It didn’t matter in the summer, when the cold water runs hot, but in the winter months, Mexicali is surprisingly cold and chilling to the bone.  It doesn’t rain much, but when it does the huge oversize drops beat down unmercifully.  The streets without drainage, and sometimes without asphalt, quickly flood and the holes fill with puddles of dark water.  Shallow lakes fill our parking lot and parts of the building with slippery pools.  Weather is one of the most noticeable aspects of life in Mexicali.  The seasons are vague and almost indistinguishable, except for the summer which is a blazing inferno for four to five months of every year.  Temperatures reach more than 120 degrees (F.) and even the spiders keep to their darkened lairs during the daytime.  About the only thing undaunted by the heat are the carnivorous crickets and the accursed pigeons (more about them later. . .) that are both ubiquitous and odious.

In the Beginning. . .

(What you will find here is a fictional account of my experiences in Mexico. I really have been commuting to Mexicali for over five years from my home in Long Beach, CA. I have been working with a small group to build a business there and we have invested all our money as well as our hearts and minds to make it a success. Not just for ourselves, but for our employees who we hope will carry it on when we no longer can and for the community that we have become a part of. Little by little, I will tell the story of how we came to the city, some of the people who helped us and others who did not, as well as the daily joys and frustrations of starting a company there.)
Mexicali is a typical Mexican city in many ways. A mix of small, individual shops and eateries with handpainted signs alongside modern hotels and mega supermarkets. Certain newer areas resemble the ubiquitous Southern California landscape of Walmart and Burger King, Costco and Carl's Jr. The border between Calexico, CA and Mexicali is separated more by the iron fence than the two cultures that seem to be almost indistinguishable on the surface. Aside from the long wait to drive from Mexico into the US. (never the other way), you can hardly tell one city from the other, except that Mexicali is much larger and considerably more appealing.
We drove into town five years ago to start up a new company in Mexicali, and have been there ever since. At first, we visited on weekends and whenever we could get away from our mundane jobs in LA. Finally, we found a building that sold itself to us at first sight and we were hooked. And I say that literally, as the sleazy realtor threw us the bait. He was a Quentin Tarantino character who would have been at home in the "Titty Twister" Bar. One of those guys whose bottom shirt button is either undone or gaping over his loose belly, shirttails partly out, a few unsavory food stains on the expensive but permanently wrinkled fabric. The family let him show the property to would be buyers to find out if there was any real interest. That way, they wouldn't waste their time with some gringos who were just shopping or fantasizing. When they found we were serious about the property, they sent in the older sister. A tall, grim woman with sinister dark eyes and slightly graying hair pulled back in a loose bun. She was dismissive of her younger, bumbling brother. With a laconic wave of her hand and an indulgent smile, it was obvious that his ramblings about the building were less than factual. She was the representative of the family and she was definitely going to make all the decisions. In spite of the obstacles to doing business in Mexico, of which there are many, and probably because she needed to get the property sold, we made a deal with them and the European’s who owned the property.
We moved in with nothing but a dream and our determination to build a world-class company that would immortalize us after we were gone. I know now, that without the strength of that dream, no new company would ever survive. Much of the time, that’s all there is to keep the seams from ripping and all the fairy-dust to blow away.