A Few Good Bad Examples
One of the most inexplicable and frustrating behaviors for me that I experience with many businesses is that they make it so damn difficulty to give them your money when you want to buy something.
CASE 1 - Cabarete Hardware Storel
After having bought a great deal of building materials for Xanadu at this store over several months, I stopped by with Alba, and $30,000 pesos in my pocket to buy a long list of plumbing fittings and wood and metal to build a roof on a new utility building. I spoke with the clerk, and he was entering my order one item at a time into his computer as I checked off each little fitting, etc. Not two minutes in a friend walks in and he completely ignores me and my list and starts chatting about baseball with this guy. I wait for a couple of minutes, he never returns, another clerks asks if I've been helped. I stammered well, ah, I think so... he cuts off my gibbering in Spanish and starts taking my order. I have to ask what's been entered and what hasn't because I don't want duplicates, and as I am trying to get that straightened out now he too stops and joins the baseball conversation. This goes on for 15 minutes through four different clerks who all do the same thing! Even Alba couldn't understand what they were saying or doing. I left the parts on the counter and walked toward the door. Then they notice me! Come back! I said no and waved the stack of money at them and said see this? Old Mr. Ochoa is getting it now and you're not. Must have been a really good baseball game! It just cost you $30,000 pesos! Bye!
CASE 2 - Santiago La Sirena
Alba and I drove to Santiago last week specifically to La Sirena to buy furniture for our house in Santiago. We had previously shopped for what we wanted and now had cash in hand just to pick it up and take it to the house. We waited patiently for 2 hours for the salesman to disassemble a bed because he said he didn't have another and we had to take the floor model. Then someone else said they had another so we waited while he put the first back together and they searched for the carton. When they found the carton it didn't have a code sticker. More searching. All the while they are shutting off the lights and closing the store. After 2-1/2 hours the clerk tells us to come back tomorrow because they can't find now either the tag or the box and the store closed half an hour ago. I had $25,000 pesos of stuff on the counter along with the bed. So after driving all morning with money in my pocket just for the privelege of spending it at La Sirena their salesman just waved it off and told me to do it all over again on Monday. Ha! I left it all and vowed never to go back to that store.
CASE 3 - Santiago Codetel
Long story short, Alba is pregnant. It's hot! We arive at Codetel to correct and pay a $16000 peso bill for Flash installation. We take a number at 8:00am. We're 498! We read. We sit in the car in the AC. We go to Burger King for breakfast, then lunch. We check the meter on the wall every half hour. By 12:30 PM we enter again. Not a seat in the little room so we stand 20 feet back in the main lobby watching the little meter tick closer to our number. Now after 4 hours and 45 minutes it's at 495. I take Alba by the hand and we make our way into the room. The clerk taps the button without calling out any numbers at all even as we are walking toward her ... 496 ... 497 ... 500 ... 501 ... We hand her our ticket and she refuses to service us. Go get another number she says. You should have been here when 498 was up she says and ignores us for Miss 501 who just sat down. Alba almost divorced me on the spot I got so mad when we got back to the car. Take another number? Grrr. That one still frosts me!
CASE 4 - Sosua Liquor Store
After having bought Champagne at this store weekly for months I noticed the supply dwindling to nothing. As I bought the last bottle I asked the owner when they'd be getting another shipment in. He said Never. Why? Because they sold it all. Did they make money on it? Yes! So why not get more and make more money? He looked at me like I was a developmentally disabled child held back several grades in school and said over again, but much more slowly this time, "Because ... we ... sold ... it ... all!"
Now, is it just me? I know when one of my clients comes to me with money in hand to pay me I stop work, clear off my desk, say 'Hi! How are you doing! Come on in!' all with my hand out to take that cash. Never 'Damn, this is my wine break here! Can't you see I'm busy right now. Why don't you come back tomorrow with your payment!?' It's that behavior that makes me shake my head and wonder if there is anything any government could do to make things a lot better ...
Tom (aka XR)