Waiting in lines

Waiting in lines is something that shocked me when I first arrived in Chile, something I rarely noticed in Ecuador, and something that reminded me of my Chilean experience when I was recently back there. Still, things are pretty different here and while I might be used to it, it's still an interesting difference.

First of all, there is no such thing as waiting in lines in Chile. It's an aggressive shoving game, and the concept of lines arbitrarily forming in a crowded space where you might not normally have to wait doesn't exist. Sure, people wait in lines in supermarkets, banks, and popular dance clubs where lines are established and expected, but if your neighborhood pharmacy happens to be busy, people just kind of push their way up to the counter and force themselves in front of the pharmacists to be attended to. Some pharmacies have installed number dispensers, and attend via number to deal with this issue. These number dispensers are actually pretty common, not just in government agencies, but even in small stores like queserías where they sell cheese. Now that I think about it, it's probably just because of the lack of a line culture that you see the number dispensers in many more places than you would in the US.

Supermarkets are another story. Lines are mostly orderly, but the weird/different thing is that you can't take your cart all the way through- kind of like Costco, except that most people just pick up a bunch of bags at the end rather than have their cart replaced with another cart. In both Chile and Ecuador you just kind of turn your cart around and a (likely underpaid) supermarket assistant (almost exclusively teenage boys) will eventually round up all of the homeless carts in the lines to keep things from getting too crazy. Also, unrelated to lines but related to supermarkets- the same teenage boys that clean up the carts also bag your groceries, and you're expected to tip them. In Chile, they actually have to pay the supermarket for the right to work there- I don't know if that's true here, but the tip is pretty important- depending on the amount of bags I have, I usually tip between 25 cents and a dollar.

Something that has become super obvious and still strikes me as weird here in Ecuador is the line protocol in banks. My rent paying routine involves going to my bank and taking out the sum of my rent (plus a little extra to pay my electricity, telephone, and internet bills while I'm at my bank and for some cash in general, since the only place where I don't use cash is in the supermarket where I use my debit/ATM card), and then walking about a block down to deposit the rent in another bank where my landlord has an account. Banks get pretty busy here, especially at the beginning of the month when I'm paying my rent, so I try to go in the morning. My bank opens at 8:30, and his bank opens at 9am, so I'm usually waiting in a line outside of his bank for a few minutes before it opens- his is the biggest bank in the Pichincha province, and there's usually a long line any time of the day/month.

Here's the weird part- it's totally not uncommon for people to come and stand behind you for a minuscule amount of time- say, 20 seconds- and then ask you to save their spot for them while they run a few errands. I've had this happen while waiting inside the bank in the regular line while the other bank patron waits in another bank line for another issue, and I've had it happen while waiting outside the bank for it to open while they just flat out leave the bank to do other things! And this is totally acceptable! I don't really care because it doesn't affect my position in line, but it's no fun when someone appears out of no where in front of you and thanks the person that you thought you were waiting behind, making the whole wait one person longer.

Still, this bizarre line culture benefits me occasionally. If I'm waiting behind a lady with a blue shirt while waiting for the bank to open, when the bank opens I'm allowed to go to a separate section, fill out my deposit slip, and then essentially "cut" in line to reclaim my spot in the line behind the lady in the blue shirt instead of dejectedly having to take the final position in the line behind everyone else who went to form the line for deposits immediately without filling out their deposit slip (they probably already had it filled out).

Just three days left until my "last day of classes" and fifteen days left until I officially finish everything and come home to the US!!