Aira Mendrez – Administrative Assistant

As I recall my childhood memories, there is nothing more exciting than seeing myself belong to a beautiful family, but that was just an imagination of what I knew would never have happened. In reality I came from a broken family. My father became disabled and then 18 years later eventually died, my mother sacrificed her 20 years of working abroad just to provide food for us and support us to finish our studies. I am the eldest of their 3 children. Being the eldest brings a lot of responsibility. I’ve tried College, but after a few months I needed to stop because of financial problems.

Having this feeling of longing to have and be a part of a complete family, I fell in love and gave birth to a baby boy when I was 16. That was when I realised that love was not just a fairy tale that ended with happiness. I started to work with my husband in different factories here, while my mother-in-law was taking care of my son. It was long years of a miserable life, where we earned money sparingly – sometimes just enough to buy food. There was a time when my son wanted to join the Overnight Camp in School. We didn’t have money to buy him a tent… and I think that was the turning point of my life…

I suddenly realised and decided a lot of things. I will never let things happened the same way again, I need to be productive, I need to excel, I need to HAVE MORE and be MORE.

I worked as part of the Office staff in Shimadzu Manufacturing Philippines Inc. It was a Japanese-owned company. My daily tasks were to input data for output reports and modify the book of materials using Oracle System. After that, I worked in another company as a Purchasing Assistant/Warehouse Clerk and a processor of documents. My daily task is to receive and request materials needed by the whole company. During delivery days, I was assigned to process legal documents needed to bring our finished goods outside of the Zone, and at every end of the month, I do an inventory of all materials.

A big blessing came our way when my husband got his job abroad. It was a blessing indeed, but at the same time, a piece in our life as a family was missing. There are important occasions that he’s not here with us. It’s a part of the process I know, and I trust God.

After that, I started to work in a new Korean company as one of the Office Staff. A few months later I was promoted as an Assistant Supervisor. It was a very busy job as Korean’s concept in work was multitasking. I managed every new line/model to help establish good Quality. I have 70 members behind me, I do Daily Reports, monitoring, and I was assigned to have constant communication with the customers usually when there is customer claim, and when they have a request of some changes or revision in our product. I also do a monthly evaluation of employees, computation of their Special Allowances every two weeks. While doing my main role of monitoring and making a decision when it comes to Quality, I also make standard criteria of appearance or any revision of Standard Procedure if needed.

It has been two years since I worked in a very busy workplace, and I was very exhausted with my daily routine. Working for about 12 to 14 hours every day, 7 days a week takes away my freedom to go out with my family and friends. I missed every milestone, and my son is now a teenager. I just woke up realising that all these things were not enough. This is not what I wanted and this is not what I dreamed of. I decided to leave my good work position and start all over again. This is not an end but just the beginning of a wonderful life and future ahead.

My friend introduced to me the world of freelancing. I wished I knew about it earlier. I believe and I’m proud of myself, there is nothing impossible if you pushed yourself without limits. I was not a degree holder nor an honor student, but I can do everything that I wanted. I got my skills all by myself, and I have a passion for continuous learning. The good thing is I have all the resources I need, and I thank god for it. Being a breadwinner in the family brings out the best version of myself. It’s never too late to start today and catch your biggest dream tomorrow.

I’m looking forward to being one of your Virtual Assistants that would bring pride to the company with excellent feedback from the client by giving them satisfaction from my hard work.

Thanks for reading my story.

For a copy of Aira’s resume please click here.