They got me at the grocery store
This morning I had an experience that just capped off a series of events that requires discussion. I went to the town's mega super-market at 8:30 to get some breakfast fixings. I just needed some cheese, ham and potatoes (mmm...delicious) so I was the first person to check out. I wrote before about the lack of change in Argentina but I'm starting to think that it is the businesses' fault - the checkout lady only had a few small pieces of change. My total was 22 pesos and 19 cents. Generally people round away to the nearest 5 centavo, but this lady rounded down the whole 19 cents because she didn't have change. WTF? Why is that so hard to start the day off a drawer full of change?
The next problem was her question "ticket o factura". Ticket is the standard receipt (they abuse the English word ticket to mean receipt in a lot of situations). Factura is a special receipt which requires the customer service desk to get involved. Customer services always takes at least 2 minutes to respond. You only need the factura for certain business reimbursement programs, but when someone does it holds up the whole line for 2 minutes. Everybody stands there and steams. Crazy.
They lied to us at the bus station
Then we went to the bus station to get tickets to Chile. About a month ago we asked if there would be any limitations on the buses around Christmas time because we have friends coming to town on the 25th so we needed a bus on the 25th. A month ago they said the buses always run normal schedules. Today they said "no, of course not, people have to celebrate the holidays!" The nasty look we got for asking for a bus-ride on Christmas eve was as if we had kicked their dog and spat a nasty loogy on their first born baby child.
We went thirsty from the wine shop (again)
And finally, perhaps the most important problem. We went to the famous local wine store. This is the 6th time we've been to it. It has been closed every single time. We went at 6:30 on a Thursday - if you ever need a bottle of wine it's after work on a Thursday. They were closed. Again.
Is it cultural or is this just bad business?
There are times when we just aren't mixing with the culture - we go to dinner at 9:00 and the kitchens usually have to fire up the first grill of the night to serve us. We expect a little inconvenience in exchange for eating so early compared to the locals. We expect that some local laws to help poor people may have unintended consequences that inconvenience us (the factura) and we have no problem with that. And then there are just some "WTF" situations where people lie, or plain make it hard to do business them, and there is no reason for it. In these situations, we thank our lucky stars to live in the land of 24 hour grocery stores.
here i am in the aeropuerto in phoenix, a-waiting for my plane and husband (reid will be on the same flight to Memphis. convenient, eh?), and i thought i would wander over to wanderlusting.
i wonder if the lack of cash-at-hand is a south-of-the-mexican-border problem, or maybe even more particular to economies in trouble? throughout our travels in both guatemala and honduras, we had a really tough time paying for things if we didn't have exact change. they'd look at us like crazy-folk for trying to pay for a $1.50 item with a $5--like, "What! If I were rich enough to go around exchanging $5 bills, do you think I would be running this store?" the problem was even more pronouced in Guatemala about a month before we got there--the government had not produced bills in the longest time, so all the money had fallen apart and no one had bills to exchange.
i don't know what the 'sitch is there and why they can't give change early in the day, but it is a little un-nerving, hu? while it was an annoyance to us that at times limited our abilty to buy food stuffs, the most difficult part was that it pronounced how differently we thought about money and our freedom to spend it. it made us feel really privledged in an uncomfortable way. argentina is not a developing nation like those in Central Am, so i suppose the same feelings would not surface there.
maybe it just comes back to the Argentinian Rule of No Hay (pesos, buses, vinos)?
sorry to hear that things are not perfectly rosey, but glad to hear that you find the humor in them. i'm even more happy to hear that someone is coming to visit! i hope your christmas goes well. reid and i will be sure to have an extra glass of holiday wine for each of you. : )
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