In my last post I ended with “we’re off to DHL”. If you’ve read some of my older posts you already know that I’m not a big fan of DHL Uruguay. But I’ll come back to this in a minute. In addition to sending the FBI report to Los Angeles we had the goal to pay my British Hospital monthly quota.

This post continues a theme that Brazzie wrote about on UruguayDreaming.com.

Here’s how we spent the last two hours . . .

1) Bill Pay Place in Punta Carretas Shopping — “Do you sell international certified checks?” “No”

2) Banco de la Republica in Punta Carretas Shopping — Pick a number. They’re serving number 52 and we picked number 78. I’m a pretty patient guy for a New Yorker but I didn’t want to sit around and watch the two tellers help 25 people and in the end tell us “No”. So we left.

3) Banco Comercial in Punta Carretas Shopping — “Do you sell international certified checks?” “No”

4) Next stop Bill Pay Place on 21 de Setiembre — “Do you sell international certified checks?” “Si”. “Great, we’d like a check for US$42.” “Sure, no problem that will be US$50 please. Let’s see your identification. What is your occupation? What’s your address and phone number?” I gave them my Washington State driver license. “No. We need a cedula or passport.” JP is anal about paperwork (he’s Uruguayan) so he had a photo copy of my passport on him. “Okay, thanks, that’ll do.” I gave them US$50 and they gave us a check made out to the Consulate of Uruguay. Not one bit of the personal information they asked me for was printed on the check… nada. The date, “Consulate of Uruguay”, the amount, two rubber stamps and two signatures. Also, it’s a check drawn on the “Banco de la Nacion Argentina, Park Avenue, New York.” The following words are on the check all in English: “Date, Pay to the Order Of, Dollars, Security Features Included, Details on back, original Document, Endorse Here, etc., etc.” It’s a US dollar check drawn on a New York City bank. But they printed the date “22 de Junio de 2007″ and the amount “cuarenta y dos con 00/100″. I have no idea if they’ll have any problem depositing this in Los Angeles. I’d imagine that it’s pretty common to see checks written in Spanish but I just don’t know.

“Oh, by the way, can we pay our British Hospital bill here?” “No!”

5) Bill Pay Place across the street from Punta Carretas Shopping—”Can we pay our British Hospital bill here?” “Si!”

6) DHL Office in Punta Carretas Shopping — “Hi, we’d like to send an envelope to Los Angeles and we’d like to prepay the return shipping back to Montevideo.” A blank look from the clerk. We explained it a couple of more times. He said “Oh, okay.” He got out a DHL envelope, put our paperwork in it and was about to seal it. “No, don’t seal it!” I said. “Why?” “We want to include a prepaid airway bill for the return shipping” I said. “No, you can’t do that.”

7) Post Office in Punta Carretas Shopping — “Hi, we’d like to send an envelope to Los Angeles and we’d like to prepay the return shipping back to Montevideo.” “Sure, no problem.” Then we explained it again to make sure she understood. “Oh, no, you can’t do that!”

Home — I logged onto FedEx.com, printed an airway bill from Los Angeles to my address in Miami and charged it to my credit card. JP called FedEx and scheduled a pickup. They should be here within two hours. FedEx rules.

Before you get the wrong idea, I really do love Uruguay. It’s peaceful, the people are nice and helpful, and the weather’s not bad but what is it with “the process” to do ANYTHING in this country? Absolutely nothing is as simple as you’d expect and everything involves paper, rubber stamps, and cash. I wanted to pay for the FedEx from here to Los Angeles with credit card — “No. Cash only please.”

Now, I’m not saying that everyplace should be like North America or Western Europe but efficiency and simplification of daily life are worthwhile goals no matter where in the world you call home. Efficiency is a dirty word in Uruguay. The rule of the land is make everything as complicated as possible so that we can create as many busy-jobs as possible. At the bill-pay place where we paid US$8 for a certified check there were 12 employees that I could count. One security guard, a manager-looking dude at a desk, six people attending the three customers that were there, then four cashiers. The attending clerks take the money (in cash, of course) from the customer, turn around and put it in a queue for the cashiers. Then when the cashier does his thing the clerk comes back with the receipt and change.

The other day I went to buy vitamin C. I started at the supermarket. “No. Only in pharmacies.” Okay, I went to the pharmacy. You walk into the place and there’s a counter with two clerks and two computers. “Hi, I’d like to buy vitamin C.” Sure, let me show you what we have. We walk over the the other end of the store where the vitamins are. I pick two bottles off the shelf. He takes them from me and walks back to his computer. He types some stuff in the machine then hands me a ticket. I then go back to the other end of the pharmacy to pay the ticket. While I’m paying he’s walking back with my vitamin C bottles and hands them to somebody else who puts them in a bag. The cashier gives me my credit card receipt and hands another slip to the bag person who then hands me the bag!

This isn’t unusual. I’ve only seen one or two small mom-and-pop pharmacies where the person who helps you will take your money and give you the products. 99% of the time there are at least three people (four at the British Hospital’s pharmacy) involved in any simple purchase at a pharmacy.

Besides the fact that all of these processes add complexity to everyday life it is, in my opinion, an incredible waste of human talent. When I run for president of Uruguay my platform will be free trade (as much as possible), generate technology jobs to compete in the world, and strive for efficiency.

The FedEx guy just left. He was very nice and helpful. He filled in the airway bill for us and left us with a bunch of envelopes and blank airway bills. He said it’ll be on a flight out of Montevideo tonight. Two thumbs up for FedEx.
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JP wanted me to add a couple of things. 1) A clarification: it’s the process that’s inefficient, not the people. Most of the people we’ve encountered are very polite and do their jobs well. 2) The FedEx guy didn’t have change so paying in cash cost us an extra US$3.