1) Many people do not have enough math skills to calculate the total purchase amount without pencil and paper. Most everyone tries to do it mentally because they are busy, but not everyone can pull it off. Usually, the error is not in my favor, but there have been a few exceptions at restaurants in areas that are heavily visited by Mexican tourists, such as Caleta de Campos and the Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary.
2) The sizes of the coins are similar. Sometimes, vendors give me a two-peso coin when they should have given me a five-peso coin. Interestingly enough, again, this mistake never occurs in my favor.
3) When paying with larger bills, such as those worth 200 or 500 pesos, a bill is usually forgotten. For example, if I buy 70 pesos worth of goods with a 200 bill, I am only given 30 pesos in change. Again, this mistake has never occurred in my favor.
The other explanation, which is more prevalent perhaps than I’d like to believe, is an attempt by Mexican vendors to informally and quietly redistribute wealth from its Northern neighbors, who are accustomed to computers counting their change for them instead of utilizing their own mental math faculties.
Sometimes, the “mistakes” are blatantly obvious. A couple of times, waiters have added items to our bill that we never ordered, clearly hoping that we wouldn’t review the bill before paying. While this is not a typical experience, it illustrates the point mentioned above.
My advice to you youngsters out there is to beef up on your mental math skills before you spend you money anywhere. And don’t take wooden nickels from strangers.
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