Meeting Speedy Gonzales

Dona Ilinca
Mar 29, 2015
2 min read

Interacting with Mexican people in their own country is very intriguing and interesting. The locals are in a speed mode all the time-- they try with all their might to finish even just a small job, but somehow… it doesn’t seem to happen. In a nutshell: I find that Mexican society doesn’t seem to be very efficient (especially, when we experience this society through a western cultural lens). Through these 3 examples, you’ll understand why.

Our adventure in Cancun started at the car rental office. After more than 30 minutes of paperwork, we waited another 20 to 30 minutes for the car. There were these 2 guys just running, literally running, to find our car and get it ready. The only strange thing was this: the small parking lot was full of cars ready to go. We never understood what happened and why they were running. Other tourists had the same experience as us...waiting almost one hour to get a car didn’t seem to bother anyone. For the car rental people, this was normal. After living in the US, where your car is ready before saying “Hi” to the person at the counter, this was just… unique. I could say it was worse than our car rental experience in Bucharest, but more details about that story in another post.

Once, in a restaurant in Playa del Carmen, on Calle Avenida 10, the waiters brought our meal on time, but they totally forgot about the wine we meant to have during our meal. And, before you think that we must have forgotten to remind to our waiter/the other waiters that our wine was missing… let me reassure you...we had reminded them at least 5 to 6 times. The funniest part is that they were “running” around the bar and trying to figure out what happened and how they could have missed the wine, but again nothing happened for 45 minutes. I will say, however, that the food was amazingly good. Other than the missing wine, it was perfect… And paying the bill was even worse than waiting for the wine. You can imagine. (…) If you ask yourself: “But, wait, what happened with your wine?”… The wine arrived for desert.

Eating on the beach is normal on the Yucatan beaches, but looking at the waiters running...yet again...literally running...with the plates full of food was a unique experience. We finally understood the expression “Speedy Gonzales”. The only thing missing was his oversized yellow hat. :)