DAVAO CITY, 16 June — Filipinos working abroad as contract workers, known as OFWs, seem to differ much from migrants returning home for vacation (balikbayans).
For Joy Francisco, a cashier in JS Gaisano Mall in Davao, she would rather deal with OFWs than balikbayans.
Contract workers are more polite and patient, she said, and they always crack jokes while waiting for their turn in a queue.
Francisco, a university graduate, had several encounters with balikbayans, notably from the United States and Germany.
“Most of the disciplinary actions given by the management have been caused by those arrogant balikbayans,” she lamented.
Her recent tussle with a female balikbayan from Germany nearly cost her her job, she said. The balikbayan got impatient in the queue and exploded,” Is this the kind of system you have here in this country?”
A teary-eyed Franciso said the customer complained of the manual feeding of receipts that slows down the access to the cash register.
But those who come from Saudi Arabia are kind-hearted, she said.
“They are more conscientious and understanding, maybe because they work like us and never hide it,” she said.
But Francisco’s experience is nothing compared to that of Rebecca Anorte, who is moving to the soon-to-open SM Davao from Manila after a scrap with a Filipino-American customer in Robinson’s.
Her misery began when the Fil-Am shouted, “ This is not the way they do transactions in America.”
“You are in the Philippines, sir,” Anorte recalls having responded.
The incident reached management and fired her.
“I don’t know why they treat fellow Filipinos like that?” she said.
Her savior turned to be an OFW from Dubai. The OFW, who was around, took pity and told her told to apply at SM Davao office in Manila and she did.
An official of the Register of Deeds in San Fernando, La Union said balikbayans are notorious for being kuripot (stingy) among waiters and waitresses, whereas OFWs are galante when it comes to tipping.
According to Sociologist Rina Sebastian of Ateneo De Davao University, OFWs have a trademark of their own.
Sebastian said OFWs acquire their own language, and that makes differerent from Filipinos in the US and the sea-based workers. She also noted that OFWs are extremes. Some of the talk loud and the rest are discreet. “It’s difficult to size up what’s in their minds.”
Sebastian said the experiences of OFWs vary from good to worse, as manifested in the way they behave when they are back in the Philippines.
