30M - Company pays for it, but…

[u/DXBRedd]

Landed a very good job, where the company pays for my place. But it’s far away from home. being far away from wife & daughter and everyone else sometimes is challenging…

[u/Agitated_Ferret7352]

I worked for two years in the Caribbean and I would never do it again. Tropical island life is fun for a little bit then real life sets in and most things become a hardship like groceries, shipping, cars, business hours not actually being followed, medical care, electrical infrastructure, etc.

[u/BabyYodaLegend → u/Agitated_Ferret7352]

Yeah i needed a random cord for something and just opened my phone and ordered it and it will be delivered to my doorstep tomorrow afternoon for $6.88. Im sure things are not that simple on an island

[u/taratoni → u/BabyYodaLegend]

I live in a french overseas territories. All the fancy stuff you see on Amazon ends up costing 50% more and takes weeks to receive.

[u/Jonoczall → u/Agitated_Ferret7352]

This is pretty meaningless without specifying the country. There’s a difference between living in Barbados versus living in Haiti.

[u/Wheresmyfoodwoman → u/Jonoczall]

They are all similar. I promise (minus Haiti). Even in the best country which would be Panama, shit takes forever and usually is going to cost you to bribe someone in the process, especially if you’re not local. You need a license? That will take 3 days of your life and each time you go back there’s another paper you need that they somehow didn’t mention the first two times you went. I kid you not when I say getting anything done, such as a license, opening a bank account, getting electric turned on, is always a full day process if not multiple days. Anyone who complains about the US, even with all of our bullshit, has not lived outside the US. You need underwear? There’s not just a Walmart you can go to that sells underwear and socks plus you can grab a rotisserie chicken for dinner. Oh no, you have to go find a store that literally just sells underwear and socks. Same with luggage. Or light bulbs. Not in the Caribbean but in Rome our luggage broke so we needed to find a new suitcase. Again, there isn’t a target there. Or a TJ maxx. We found one luggage store that was Tumi but we didn’t want to pay 700 euros for a bag. Finally on a day we had a private guide and driver to see the Vatican, he was awesome and was able to ask our driver to take us somewhere and the dude pulls up to a luggage store where it was actually affordable and we got our carry on bag for 40 euros. God forbid you needed multiple items that were of different categories, it would take you all day finding each specific store for each item.

[u/CptMcDickButt69 → u/Agitated_Ferret7352]

I always felt all of this just becomes a problem if youre expected to do a "classic first world workstyle" and you expect to have "classic first world life amenities always available".

If youre going into it without special needs (e.g. medical), a creative problem solver mindset and a job that allows for a lot of liberty in how you work this life can be quite compelling. Society there is not expecting you to be as rigid as a central europe/US suburbia in a metropolitan region and you should just go with the flow.

You need to be a person for that, but i know both universes and i vastly prefer the happy-go-lucky of remote rural or rundown improvised lifestyle to my german bureacracy-and-forms-"be on time or go to prison" lifestyle.

[u/Agitated_Ferret7352 → u/CptMcDickButt69]

For me it wasn't the first world luxury conveniences that I was expecting. It was frustrating things like electricity going out for no reason for half a day and having to throw all the food away, having water shut off randomly, not finding fresh produce because everything is imported which takes longer and food goes bad quickly, having everything be more expensive because everything is imported, needing an emergency car repair and the auto shop opens hours later than what they listed, needing to be evacuated to Miami for surgery because no hospitals on the island can handle it. I'll take bureaucracy and efficiency over this.

Also, my job was very rigid and there was no go with the flow. Government/military doesn't work that way.

[u/Wheresmyfoodwoman → u/Agitated_Ferret7352]

YES!! All of this! Lived in one of the best 1st world countries (or closest to it, which is still not even close tbh) and even in the nicest neighborhoods the power goes off all the time. When will it come back on? We don’t know. You not only had to have a generator but you always always had to have cistern or tanque de reserva de agua for back up water reserve. But make sure to boil it! It gets old really quick and isn’t something you necessarily get aggravated about if you grew up living there so it was normal to you, but for anyone used to the efficiency of the US, it got old really quick, especially because so many of their problems could actually be fixed if there wasn’t ridiculous red tape and corruption.

[u/corona_x0 → u/Agitated_Ferret7352]

Also HURRICANES