Pega
Work, the job — what Spain calls curro, Argentina laburo and Colombia camello.
Related lesson: Chilean Spanish: A Survival Guide.
Hear it in context
Mañana tengo que ir a la pega temprano.
Tomorrow I have to go to work early.
Se quedó sin pega en marzo.
He lost his job in March.
Es una pega bacán, pero mal pagada.
It's a great job, but badly paid.
What It Actually Means
La pega is the job, the workplace, or work in general. Ir a la pega is to go to work, buscar pega is to job-hunt, and quedarse sin pega is to be laid off. Its cousin el pituto — a contact who gets you in — is the other half of Chilean working life.
Where It Comes From
From pegar, to stick: the work you are stuck to. The same instinct produced Colombia’s camello (a job as a beast of burden) and Argentina’s laburo (from Italian lavoro).
How Natives Use It
Everywhere except formal writing — Chileans of every class say la pega where a CV would say el trabajo or el empleo. It travels with a small vocabulary of its own: el pituto (the contact who got you the interview), la jornada (the shift) and el finiquito (the settlement you sign on the way out).
Common Pitfall
Regional to Chile (with some reach into Peru and Bolivia). Elsewhere, use curro in Spain, laburo in Argentina, chamba in Mexico. And note the difference from pituto: the pega is the job, the pituto is how some people got it.