Fear and loathing in Lapiz Lopez. No, just loathing.

I hate the store Lapiz Lopez. It's overpriced, poorly run, and under-stocked. As an English teacher, I need to have some office supplies so I occasionally wander into the store and always always always leave annoyed and stressed.

I am not a patient person, but for some reason Chilean bureaucracy rarely gets to me so this has to be bad. Sometimes, I even enjoy taking a ticket at the bank so I can sit and read while I enjoy the air conditioned room. If I had a car, my feelings would be different, but since the metro is expensive I try to take it only twice a day and it's virtually impossible to run more than a handful of errands each day if you have to go to different comunas on top of working, I'm OK with it. I tend to space out what would be a day's worth of errands in the U.S. over the course of a week here. It lets me be a little lazy and not feel guilty about it. Shopping at Lapiz Lopez, however is never a pleasant experience.


I just started the largest private English class I've ever had so I decided I need to be much more organized about archiving lesson plans and keeping track of what we cover each class. Since I live right by a Lapiz Lopez, I stopped in after my first class with these students to get some notebooks, paperclips and some sort of binder to keep all of our handouts. What should have taken all of 5 minutes ended up taking 20 because of 3 people who do their job horribly.

In a nutshell, I walked into the store, picked out what I wanted to buy in 2 minutes, then waited and waited and waited. I'm sure everyone living in Chile has been into one of these store, but for anyone who hasn't, it's a school and office supply store that has little counters setup all over. If you want to buy a pen, you have to ask the person behind the pen counter to show you each one until you find the perfect pen for you. This person then has to write down the price of the pen so you can take the pen and piece of paper with the price so professionally scribbled down and pay for it.

This day I was there, there was a woman having a particularly difficult time deciding on a pen so I was stuck waiting for 2 boxes of paper clips that cost around 75 cents each. I tried to reach over the counter and grab what I needed, but the woman snapped at me. I was in no mood so I went to another person working there (I have NO IDEA what his supposed job there is) and asked him to hand me the paperclips. Then, I took my paperclips, two notebooks and plastic file-thingy to the counter to pay.

I got the "you poor, stupid foreigner" look from the cashier because no one hand-wrote the prices down for me. I told her all the prices, but she said I had to take it to someone else and have them do it (WHY doesn't the cashier have the prices listed at the register??!). I went to a guy doing nothing who said to drop my items off and go wait for them at the counter so I did. Then I watched as he walked around and asked his co-workers how much each item cost and they all sort of guessed as he wrote down the prices. I ran over there and said that the prices were clearly marked on the items but he said he had it covered and to go wait for him.

I was pissed by now and intent on making sure he actually did have it covered so I checked over the official torn off piece of scrap paper and sure enough, he had written the wrong price for my paperclips. The total was about $1 more than it should have been which isn't a huge deal, but I certainly wasn't going to pay for nothing. I told him he wrote the wrong price down and pointed to the shelf where the paperclips were hanging behind the security-tight desk with the price clearly marked yet he STILL wen to ask a co-worker instead of checking the marked price.

Finally, he got the right price and scratched out the incorrect total and I went to the cashier to pay. She about chewed my head off because she thought that I had changed the price to make it cheaper. This really pissed me off because she wouldn't listen to me so I said "Oye, no me hables asi. Anda a hablar con ese hombre si no me crees pero estas loca si crees que voy a pagar más por un error de la tienda" (lHey, don't talk to me like that. Go ask that man if you don't believe me, but you're crazy if you think I'm going to pay for the store's mistake). She did, changed the price and took my money and practically threw the bag and receipt at me and I left the store.

As I walked to my apartment, I was fuming over the experience. I always try to be nice to people in customer service jobs because they're constantly subjected to people's bad sides, but in situations like that I can't help it because costumer service doesn't even exist. Plus, I am so chata (sick of) with what I think are people taking advantage of the fact that I'm foreign. So many times people try to scam me because they think I'm stupid or because they think I don't understand the system. Now, I fight it every time but it makes me wonder how many times I was cheated when I first got here in 2007 and didn't even realize it.

What's more is that of the 3 times I've been to Lapiz Lopez, there's been a mistake with the bill each time and it's taken much longer than it should have. In the U.S., I absolutely love shopping for pens, pencils, folders, and anything associated with organization and now, I would love to get some binders and plastic bins to organize the tons and tons of English books and handouts I have, but the process is so unpleasant and expensive here that I just end up throwing everything on any open counter space I can find in my apartment.

It may just be bad luck, but unless I have an office supplies emergency, I will never set foot in another Lapiz Lopez. Shame on me for going in a third time after 2 already bad experiences, but I won't do it again. At least when I go into the small, privately owned office supplies stores I expect it to take a long time so I'll be more patient. But Lapiz Lopez, you won't get me again.