12/01/2011
In almost any small business transaction— and for the sake of simplicity we can use a restaurant as an example, the expectation that the paying party won’t have the exact amount owed is usually fairly reasonable. That’s not to say it’s unreasonable for a juice vendor to balk at breaking a big bill for a glass of freshly squeezed OJ, but only that any restaurant doing a substantial amount of sales should probably only find themselves short of change under the most extraordinary of circumstances.
Apparently not everyone is of that opinion.
A few weeks ago a friend and I were given a tongue-lashing in Colombia by an Israeli traveler for suggesting that a server who takes more than half an hour to get you change doesn’t deserve a tip. But she wasn’t accusing us of being cheap; she was accusing us of being ignorant—a you’re-not- in-Kansas-anymore-Toto kind of thing. She said something along the lines of: ‘you’re imposing Western standards of service on the developing world.’
Our problem was that the place had all the trappings of an establishment trying to meet those so-called ‘Western’ standards: ambient lighting, an overpriced fusion menu, aesthetically-pleasing if not ergonomic furniture. So forgive us, we said, if the fact they were located in the ‘developing world’ didn’t give them carte blanche to suck when it came to providing the most basic and fundamental of services.
In the end it was simple.
It all boiled down to this Israeli not being bothered by the change game. She’d either played before and had the patience of Job, or hadn’t yet experienced the Coleridgian dilemma of yes—having money money everywhere but not a person who’d accept it.
Agree to disagree, I guess.
I’d refused to play the change game in Colombia, in Peru, in Bolivia; and on occasion I’d actually eat for heavily discounted prices—anything for them to avoid giving me change.
Did I feel like a prick?
Yeah, sometimes. Because in trying to buy something, I was made made to feel like a thief—but sometimes the customer is actually right.
The Argentine version of the change game, at least in my experience, was less ubiquitous. There was change aplenty. They just made up for it in scale. In truth, it was more of a reimbursement game, but that requires some explanation.
Buenos Aires, 2008—it went something like this: our landlord was a neurotic psychiatrist who looked like Billy Crystal after a month long crack binge, and who insisted we turn our living room into a third bedroom he could rent out. That this made absolutely no sense to anyone else, didn’t stop him from coming in unannounced with prospective tenants who always left quickly, embarrassed at having any association with the man I’ll call Fabian.
As you’d imagine, it quickly became intolerable.
We told him to give us the next month’s rent back and we’d leave as soon as possible.
The problem was he couldn’t.
He didn’t have the money. He supposedly owned three apartments and yet didn’t have enough cash in hand to reimburse us one month’s rent.
Our unintentional bluff won us some peace and quiet, but the absurdity of it all stuck with me.
I revisited it again this week after reading about the current cash shortage disrupting the country. As El País reported two days ago, “hordes of angry customers at ATMs, and multiple protests across the country, these are the situations being lived in Argentina these last two weeks because of a cash shortage, especially of 100 Peso bills, some 20 Euros, which have made cashing paychecks difficult and forced a Buenos Aires railway line to allow passengers to travel for free as a result of being unable to give them change.”
I guess it’s kind of ironic in a country notorious for inflation, which the simplest of definitions reveal to be nothing more than the complete opposite—an excess of money. But as it’s been there in the past, everyone’s playing the game—it’s just that few know the rules.
When I wrote a few weeks ago about the IMF coming back to Argentina, my point was that it didn’t take an economist to smell a rat. The doubt was palpable. The National Statistics and Census Institute had been complicit in the government’s cover-up of the true inflation rate. And the truth, which would be unearthed at a snail’s place by an army of IMF experts, wouldn’t be pretty.
Almost a month later, with the presidential election still slowly approaching, the public hasn’t needed to wait for the diagnosis. The proof has been in the pudding.
The opposition has seized the moment; it’s time for a new denomination, they’re arguing. 100 pesos isn’t enough anymore.
As opportunistic as that suggestion might be, it’s hard to contest.
Ignorant or not, I’ve always refused to play the change game because my experience led me to believe the root of the problem was laziness or idle indifference. The last-second resourcefulness that would somehow consistently save the day would also consistently reaffirm that belief. Because if I’d thought someone was seriously losing out, I obviously would’ve played.
Because whatever it's called and wherever it's played, a game is only fun when all the participants know the rules.
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