A Scam Artist at a Bathroom in Peru

To understand this story, you need to go back with me to a point in time when we had four little kids. Four little kids on a pastor's salary and we counted every penny. We paid for most things with cash. Rarely credit. While shopping, I kept a running balance in my brain or on a scrap of paper to make sure I could afford what was in my cart. I meticulously examined the receipt to make sure I wasn't overcharged on an item.

I was very careful with money.

One day I was running late. I needed to pick up the older two kids at school and the check-out line was long and my two younger children were past the place of no return. They needed naps or food or both. We had hit the gangrene hour - that ugly, mess-of-a-place where you can no longer beg, bribe or threaten your children into being decent human beings.

Mothers, you know what I'm talking about.

After buckling two whining, fit-throwing toddlers, who I'm positive at that point took after my husband's side of the family, I looked at my receipt and realized the cashier had given me back eleven cents too much. (This was in the day before computerized registers.) Eleven cents.

The conversation in my head began before I could get the keys in the ignition.

You need to go back.

I can't go back. I need to get to school.

It will take less than ten minutes.

I can do it later.

Do it now. Why have it hanging over your head?

It's only eleven cents.

Will you sell your integrity for eleven cents?

Will you sell your integrity for eleven cents?

I got the kids out of their car seats. I went back to the store. The clerk looked at me like I was an alien from another planet as I tried to explain to her that I wasn't complaining because she had charged me too much, I was there because I wanted to give her BACK money. She eventually took the eleven cents, I put the kids back in the car and we drove to the school.

BUT this lesson has stayed with me all my life when I've been tempted to not be 100% honest in all my dealings.

Will you sell your integrity for eleven cents?

You know what I'm talking about. We've all been there. It's not about the eleven cents. It's about this question: Where is the line you are willing to cross? Each of us defines that line. Somewhere.

Fast forward to our trip to Peru.

We are at the outdoor market at Pisac. Stall after stall of merchants selling pottery, blankets, hats, textiles, finger puppets, paintings and pan flutes. Everyone, everywhere, is trying to capture our attention, to get us to purchase their wares.

Before getting back in the van, we stop at a bathroom at the edge of the market. Kevin enters the facility before me. He pays the bathroom attendant a 2 soles coin, 1 for each of us, the normal price. The woman pockets the coin. Unaware that he has done this I call after my husband that I am out of small coins. He yells back that he has paid for both of us.

I explain this to the woman.

She pulls the coin from her pocket. A different coin. A 1 sole coin. (About 40 cents).

My Spanish is not adequate to tell her that I saw her pocket one coin and switch it for another. You could argue that she was just confused, that with all the tourists, she didn't know, but I can tell you from the whole vibe of the experience that I was being scammed.

For one sole.

Her soul for a sole? Seriously? Her integrity for 40 cents? And how many times was this scenario repeated throughout the day? I had no intention of being another easy mark to her scam.

I step closer and prepare for a confrontation.

But then...I back off.

And looking back on that moment I am unsure if I felt compassion or the need to really use the bathroom, but I knew that throughout the centuries women have sold pieces of themselves on street corners and it's not usually about integrity, but about survival for themselves and for their children and who was I to draw black and white lines in the sand and was I really going to be an ugly, rich tourist and have it out for one sole.

My soul for a sole?

"She needs another sole," I say to my husband when he joins us.

He hands her one.

_____________

Thoughts? What would you have done? Was I right? Wrong? Did I just encourage her to lie and steal another day?