The Bank

At about 12:10 pm I entered the Banco Nacional to cash a traveller´s cheque and change some Dollars into Colones. I got in line and there was about six people in front of me and three tellers working, out of seven cajas or teller boxes available.

A young woman had brought a big bag of 4 or 5 stacks of the pretty pink 1000 Colón notes and started a 25 minute transaction that probably strained the entire banking system of the country for a while, at least that´s what it looked like when the teller kept going back and forth to 2 or 3 superiors and she kept making cellular phone calls as he worked on this huge transaction.

A scraggly long-haired gringo in cargo shorts and his companion in a pink halter top and white hot pants were also putting a strain on the banking community with an equally intensive transaction. Their trip ended with a new debit card, a large bag of coins and the teller making 5 trips to all parts of the bank for several signatures, and several photocopies.

Bureaucracy is alive and well in Latin America.

The line had swelled to 19 people and most of us had been there 30 minutes with no movement in the line at all. The whole "Pura Vida" attitude was not holding firm, people were getting impatient. We all had a glimmer of hope when the two people who had held up the line finally left, and a new teller came back from lunch. One of the people stepped forward to a caja and the teller promptly put the "Cerrado Temporada" sign up so he could go to lunch. There was a group groan. We would never get out of here.

Then a guy with a rucksack cut the line and went to the window where the guy had just closed up, and he started helping him! Finally, an older bald gentleman with a yellow shirt, cell phone and a self-important look started making a fuss. First he started talking to the rest of us in the line about how this was so unfair and that this was probably the teller´s friend, then he finally walked up to the tellers window and told him that this was "Chorizo",(I guess it means more than spicy sausage), and it was not justo(fair) that he let this guy cut the line when there was so many people waiting. The teller said something that sounded like "if you don´t like it you can go to the back of the line. I´m entitled to take my lunch after I help this guy!"

Finally, the security guard came up and talked to the guy in the yellow shirt. He explained that the guy with the rucksack was an employee of the bank who was delivering papers to the bank, and that he was not cutting the line." It didn´t matter to the yellow shirt. He had now been embarassed because he lost his cool. The guard actually had to break out the, "Sea tranquilo."(Calm down! be cool!) on the guy.

While I hated to see him lose his cool, it was kind of funny to see that Pura Vida is not magic, people here lose their cool too. Everyone has limits to their patience.

Juanito

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