She Didn’t Deserve To Enjoy It Anyway
My mom is a traveling healthcare worker (not a nurse or a doctor, just to clarify), and we’re from the US. Usually, her contracts last from eight weeks to nine months, and she’s worked all around the States. This results in an ungodly amount of airline miles that she likes to gift me so I can visit her wherever she’s on contract. I get a nice vacation, she gets to see me, I get to see her. Win-win-win.
After I graduated and was living at my mom and her long-term boyfriend’s house in a lockdown-induced depression and existential crisis, my mother scored her first overseas contract on a tropical island for six months, from June to the end of November. I had gotten a s***ty job in my hometown to start saving for whatever my next step was.
Three months in, my mom realized the downside to being on a very small island where international travel to and fro was a pain in the butt: she was lonely. This prompted a very bashful phone call in which she asked me if I wanted to take a break from working and come stay with her for a while. I jumped at the opportunity, and we made arrangements to get my passport renewed and booked a ticket for me to stay with her for the last few months of her contract.
All of this context comes to the main character, another US-based traveler (also not a nurse nor a doctor) who was my mother’s coworker. Let’s call her Mary.
Mary was, to put it bluntly, racist as h***. And she was not enjoying getting paid to work on an island with crystal blue water on white sand beaches. Why? Because she failed to realize that she wouldn’t be treating elite white resort-goers. No. Turns out the people who tend to be treated at the local hospital were the native islanders. Y’know. The people of color. She was also a [global health crisis]-denier and anti-vaxxer. Really just a blast to talk to (sarcasm).
She was so livid about having to go to a grocery shop surrounded by POC. (That’s not what she called them. Here’s a hint: it starts with N and ends with R.) It didn’t matter that she could go to the beach every day after work and was lodged in a multi-million-dollar vacation home on one of the highest points of the island with a gorgeous view. Nah. She was too busy recoiling at the sight of — gasp! — melanin.
She hated being there and wanted nothing more than to leave. She latched onto my mother for company, and my mother reluctantly obliged her for a time due to aforementioned loneliness. The main conflict of this story comes when my mother’s contract began to reach its end while Mary still had a month to go. Mary fought tooth and nail to renegotiate an early end of her contract but was denied. So, what did she do?
She just left — like, packed all her stuff and departed to the US anyway. No biggie, right? She just wouldn’t get her remaining paychecks? Wrong. Here comes the beauty of contracts.
See, the contract Mary had agreed to meant that her lodging would be paid for on the condition that she fulfill her employment duties. Since she very clearly had no intention to, the contract was therefore voided and the compensation for her lodging was promptly retracted. She was now on the hook to pay back this country’s health ministry for the several months of rent they had paid to house her in that gorgeous vacation home with a beautiful view. I’m not sure how much it would have been, but I’m guessing a million at the very least.
Mary was now not only a crap employee in this country but a literal fugitive. But she figured they could only arrest and charge her if she ever stepped foot back on their soil, so she wasn’t concerned. She was mostly right, but that wasn’t the only thing this country’s government could do.
They proceeded to ring up the good old US government, notify them of the charges, and let them take it from there. They couldn’t have Mary extradited, but they could ask the US to flag her passport until she paid them or faced charges, so the US government said, “Sure, buddy, we’ll do it.”
AND THEY DID.
Mary can’t leave the US anymore. She can’t even go to Canada. She tried to join her friends on vacation in Mexico but wasn’t allowed to cross the border. So, if you ever think you screwed up a job really badly, just remember that you at least aren’t an actual international criminal who can no longer leave the country.
I’m not sure why her racist butt even wanted to go to Mexico. I heard there are a lot of Mexican people there.
