... lies probably the worst problem of all: bad citizens.
I became a regular customer of this place some months ago since my mother-in-law asked me once to get her a frozen chicken there. Sometimes there is a bit of a line, she told me, but the price is very low compared to other places.
The first time I tried to shop here I just could not. The line was too long and slow. I was asked again, some time later, and this time I was able to buy the f-ing chicken. it was certainly almost 50% cheaper and all the products (meats, poultry, etc) looked fresh and well handled (hygiene being one of the biggest issues in our country).
However, today, I decided that I had had enough of this place. Their prices had been progressively going up to the point that they sell as expensive as any retailer. This place is a big distributor in town. They provide meat to most butcher shops in town, but they have been unable or unwilling to provide better customer service, especially in light of the current pandemic. They realized that even though they should be selling at lower prices, people end up not caring (result of years of hyper-inflation) and no regulatory entity will do anything to them.
People have to wait in line outside the establishment, under the sun. After we enter the premises, we wait in line to order whatever products we plan to buy (that horizontal line in the picture), and then we have to wait on a third line to pay for the purchase (vertical line on the right).
Efficiency is definitely not in our vocabulary, and god forbid you suggest it can be done better.
It took me two hours to get out of here, and there were only 12 people ahead of me. What happened? Some slow customers who always forget what they want to buy or make absurd changes of mind at the last minute, and more importantly, one cultural curse of ours: los coleaos (people who cut-in line).
There must have been a dozen of those today. Some I have no problem with (a pregnant woman, and elderly and fragile man), but most coleaos are friends or relatives of the people who work there. So, they go "recommended", sponsored, if you will, by someone in yellow and red t-shirt and they get to pay as soon as they get there. People complain, you bet they do, but the owners could not care less and since most people have used that "system" elsewhere (everybody knows a bank teller or some other clerk who gives them the VIP treatment, and it feels so good...).
I was able to capture the very moment this police officer got his VIP treatment. Uniforms are in disrepute around here these days, to put it nicely. However, they are feared too, for obvious reasons. Everyone wants to have a person in uniform who owes them a favor; everyone wants to be in good terms with a "law-enforcer."
Well, they are the most corrupt and most corrupting. They rarely teach by example.
As far as I am concern, I will stop shopping here. I'd rather pay more somewhere else. It's hard to find a place where basic social rules are respected or enforced. A society like ours is corrupted at so many levels. We complain about government-run institutions, but private institutions or businesses are also corrupted and provide little to no options to our fundamental problems.
It has become a vicious cycle that we are not better, more demanding customers and citizens because we do not have better businesses or institutions. I think individuals can start the change, but there must be cooperation. Only an old man who was behind me and myself spoke up when the police officer cut in. The rest of the people either pretended they were not seeing anything or just murmured among them.
This kind of individualism is doing a lot of harm to an already decaying social body.
