Product Inspection

Here's a funny Buenos Aires phenomenon. It seems to be policy in one store nearby, and I've heard that it happens elsewhere here, though I'm not sure how often.

I bought some cheap computer speakers today at a stationary/office/electronics store, something like Staples back home, though quite a bit more downscale. These cost 40 bucks. Last year I bought some cheaper speakers from the same store, that cost ten bucks. Both times I had to go through the "product inspection". The cashier tells you to go over to the security desk. The security person stamps your receipt, and tells someone to tell someone to get someone else from the right department to come inspect your product. This final someone opens and inspects your product package, makes sure it has all the parts it's supposed to have.

I guess this is to prevent people from saying "hey, I bought these speakers but they didn't have the power adaptor in the box." Anyway, today it took a good five or six or eight minutes before the person from the computer accessory dept. came over for the inspection. And I was sitting there kind of steaming, not so much because of the wait but because I felt the whole thing was a display of a lack of trust. Like the store was saying 'we expect you to scam us, so we're going to nip it in the bud.' And this is a relatively upscale place by buenos aires standards, a place with some moderately expensive stuff.

But when the computer accessories department guy showed up, my testiness melted right away, and I was reminded of the nice aspects of this town that go along with the infuriating ones. He was a young guy, and very nice. He stepped through the whole inspection, showing me the different parts, which plug goes in where, etc. And then he had a terrible time re-assembling the speakers into their styrofoam and squeezing it all in the box. It just wouldn't all go in there. We weren't speaking much, he could tell my spanish sucked, but we had some very nice non-verbal communication, peppered with a bit of spanish. I helped him, we tried this and that, and we laughed a fair amount and the futility and triviality of the task at hand. I think he really appreciated that I didn't get impatient on him. So a little testiness on my part (which really is pretty rare -- lord knows I have patience) turned into a lovely little interaction.