el crispito

We have made the acquaintance of a taxi driver (in Spanish, taxista or chofer) who was born in Baltimore, despite the fact that he's lived in Mexico for many years. This is handy for Shawn because he speaks English. Shawn has mastered a surprising amount since coming to Guadalajara, especially if it concerns something with which he is familiar, but when something novel and complex comes up, it's nice to be able to fall back on English.

In addition to being linguistically handy, our taxi driver is very friendly, a fun guy, and perhaps most importantly, doesn't rip us off with what Shawn calls "the gringo tax." For those of you who may not be familiar with this all-to-popular scheme on the part of taxi drivers from around the world, I will briefly explain it.

All taxis should have meters (in Mexico, medidor, but in other countries contador). However, sometimes they are missing, or legitimately broken. Yet many times you get in a cab and the meter is not on. In this case, you'll get to your destination and your taxi driver will tell you that you owe him a certain amount of money. In many cases, it's too much (even up to twice as much as it should be, in our experience). There are some honest cab drivers out there with broken meters that will charge you a fair price. However, many just don't turn their meters on unless you insist on it, and even then some will just not turn them on, telling you, "No funciona." In this case, you ask how much they will charge you to take you to your desired destination, and you decide if you are willing to pay it. If not, you refuse and find another cab. There are places where you have to worry about whether a taxi driver is licensed or if his photo on his permit matches his face, but Guadalajara is not one of those places. This overcharging thing is about all you really have to worry about here, and if you're right off the plane from someplace like the United States, even if they overcharge you, you still won't believe how cheap it is.

Shawn gets really upset by this practice, and I don't blame him. It's not ethical to exploit people for their national origin, their race or their ignorance. We know all too well about this scam, and dealing with it is uncomfortable because asking a taxi driver to turn on the meter shows that you know that they are not being ethical. It seems Mexicans do not really deal with confrontation or conflict very well, and furthermore, we're guests here. It's not polite to call your host a lying, cheating bastard.

Still, it's a rip-off, and if there is one thing Shawn hates, it's to have someone get by with thinking he's a fool. If we take a cab, he now always asks first thing if the meter works, but for the reasons I've explained, this does make for an awkward situation. With our regular cab driver, we never ever have to go through this. He either uses the meter, or if he forgets to start it, he tends to undercharge us, if anything. Most cab drivers will run the meter while they're waiting, but ours tends to turn it off. If we're going in somewhere to do business and he can help by translating, he comes along and serves as interpreter at no extra cost. This in particular is a ridiculously good deal.

When we went to buy our couch, I was prepared to handle the entire transaction. I did not anticipate it to be difficult. How hard could it be? "I want to buy one of your couches, this model, this fabric. Here is my address for delivery, and here is your cash." However, our cab driver came into the store with us, and allowed us to do the preliminary introductions and the telling of the model we wanted. The woman quoted a price which was a little lower than we had been quoted upon seeing the couch at the furniture expo, but we did not have a problem with that. While we looked through the book of fabrics to be sure that we had seen all the options, our cab driver chatted with the woman assisting us.

I don't know if other people do this, but when I'm in a situation where my native language is not spoken, even if I know the language well enough to follow along, I just tune out any conversation that is not directed toward me. Therefore, I was not paying attention to what was being said, but I did notice that there was a lot of giggling and smiling going on. When we stopped to tell the woman our desired fabric, our cab driver told us that we were going to get a very special price, the price given to distributors. This was over $300 USD less than the original price.

Furthermore, the woman, who certainly was friendly to begin with, became even more friendly with us, to the point that we got into a discussion about tamales. We were unaware that tamales, which I have always seen eaten "plain" (just out of the husk or the banana leaf on a plate), are placed inside a roll before being eaten in Mexico City. The woman said that her initial reaction had been the same as ours (referring to our look of horror and disgust), but she had tried one once, and it was actually quite good.

As we were riding back to our place with the cab driver, we thanked him for helping us out. Shawn commented that he didn't know what they had been saying, but that he knew enough to realize that the cab driver had been flirting with the representative. The cab driver has a fiancé to whom he is very attached, and she is quite beautiful. He was not trying to set up something on the side, but rather just "facilitating our transaction."

"And why not?" our driver asked. "I probably made her day and got you guys a better price on your couch."

Why not, indeed? Now we just have to wait six weeks while it is built before we have a couch. Yet maybe we could have our cab driver do a follow-up call to check, and maybe we could get it much, much sooner.