The Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social, better known by its acronym, IMSS, was born in 1943. In January of that year, the first company subscribed to it and the first IMSS card was issued to a worker. The following April, the bureaucrats working for the IMSS organized into a union, threatened a strike, and made their first set of demands, something that has been happening with the annoying regularity of the bowel movements of someone with amoebic diarrhea (and with the same results).
In 1973, the IMSS changed the rules of the game: instead of 500 weeks of subscription to the IMSS so you could get a pension, it was now deemed one had to work and subscribe for 1295 week. Those of us who had started working before that year could retire after 500 weeks and at age 65, those who started to work after that year, would have to trudge, trouble, and toil for 1295 weeks. Do the math, folks; that's more than 20 years. One week less than that, and you're out of luck!
As a bureaucrat said to me, "The IMSS is not in the business of paying you money, it is in the business of avoiding, whenever possible, paying you money."
Now for my story:
OK, so ignorant of all of that, and even more (as you will see) I set off to try to get my pension, because I had just recently turned 65 and I had been working and paying my IMSS dues (and so had the people who had employed me) since 1967--or so I thought!
It is also strange, although it fits right in with what the cynical IMSS worker told me about the IMSS being in the business of NOT paying your pension, that there is NOTHING published about how one should proceed when claiming a pension. You'd think they would publish a damned little pamphlet or put up a pdf in a website or even send out flyers when a worker, according to their computer systems and records, reached the age of retirement or the amount of weeks necessary for a pension.
Nope! Not a word, not a leaflet, not a flyer to be had anywhere. The so-called Sub-delegation where the 800 number told me I should go to inquire about my pension, has so much empty, unused space and unoccupied buildings that if they rented that space they could easily pay for a million information pamphlets or more. But, of course, that is not the case. If you need information or help, you are out of luck: you are on your own!
Off I went to the Sub-delegation 4, papers in hand, cheerful in spirit, thinking that at last I was going to get this thing done. When I got there, the queue at the information desk was a mile long.
According to a hand-made sign on the wall, you had to state your business and the girl at the information desk would assign you to the proper window and give you a number.
From the look of the amount of people sitting in the rows of chairs and looking very forlorn, getting the number was half the battle; waiting for said number to come up, was the other half.
There was, however, a lady going up and down the queue asking what our business was and flushing out those that should not be there in the first place. When she got to me and asked what sort of information I needed, I said,
"I've come to start the process of claiming my pension."
"Do you have your Request for a Pension form filled out?" she asked.
"Uh, no, I have come to request a pension, so I don't have one, uh...yet, I guess."
She frowned, "But you must get a Request for a Pension form before you come here."
"And, where do I get that?" I asked.
"At the Family Clinic to which you have been assigned"
"And, pray tell," I insisted, "which clinic is that?"
She seemed really annoyed now, "Well, it is the clinic where you have gone for medical treatment or to consult with a doctor, of course!"
I said proudly, "I have never been to an IMSS clinic to consult a doctor or to have any sort of treatment!"
"Well, in that case," she explained, "you have to find out which one it is."
"And, who, in this palace of information and record keeping can tell me that bit of necessary news?" I inquired.
"You must call the IMSS 800 number. They will tell you," she said walking away.
I yelled after her, "But, you have dozens of people here, behind dozens of those little windows, and you have a whole system of queue numbers, and a large screen for information and to call out the next number and you mean to tell me that no one can tell me what my Family Clinic is?"
"No, you must call the 800 number," she said without turning around.
Dejectedly, I left the queue without even having reached the information desk.
Not having a Mexican cell phone or even a phone card to use one of the graffiti covered public phones, I had no choice but to take a taxi back home to call the IMSS 800 number again.
I called and got another cheerful IMSS person on the line. He couldn't tell me what clinic I belonged to but he said they would get back to me as soon as possible. The day was hot so I was taking a shower when the phone rang.
"Yes," he said cheerfully, "I can. Please give me your Social Security number."
Ah! That I had. Among all of the papers I had brought from France, I had what is called "the pink sheet". This is a copy of the form an employer sends to the IMSS when they are subscribing you that service. I read out my number.
"You are assigned to Family Clinic number 2," she said.
"And where is that?"
"It is on Constitution Avenue a the corner of Felix U. Gómez Avenue."
I marveled that some girl in Timbuktu or Shanghai or whatever knew more about where I should be going to find out about my pension than I did, or the IMSS lackey who had first answered my call.
For years I had been passing that IMSS clinic, not knowing that I had been assigned to it (and all of my family as well). The reason I never went there was that the corporations I worked for discouraged it and had us visit private doctors or their own private clinics.
Restored in faith and body ( I had had not only a shower but a couple of beers while taking the phone call and while waiting for the taxi I had ordered by phone), I set off again to start my "Request for a Pension".
Little did I know that it would be, as the song says, "the start of something big".
To continue the saga, read Adventures in Pension Land - Round 2.
Tu vas y arriver ! Courage !!!!
ReplyDeleteBrigitte from Limoges ..