One of the things that’s most striking to me about the culture here in Cancun is the lack of respect for wisdom and experience. You see this especially in the retail, services and banking sectors here. But it’s present in many forms here.

When you look for a job here you are confronted by Help Wanted Ads asking for light-skinned, tall, skinny people who are under 35 (short, old, heavy, dark people need not apply). It is common for these ads to outline what you should look like. But often these ads make no mention of experience. Knowing what you are doing, being experienced in your field, is often less important than having the look the company wants.

You feel this lack of wisdom and lack of respect for experience when you have a problem with a local business. All too often problems are met with blank stares and statements that your problem can only be solved by a) someone who is not there are present and won’t be back today or by b) sending a request to the main office in Mexico City which will take weeks. I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve found that the person that I have in front of me, the person who is witness to my trouble, is not capable of solving my problem and furthermore doesn’t care!

The result is that we consumers suffer poor and inefficient service. And we find ourselves losing respect for the impotent employees in the businesses that we have problems with.

I imagine that employees of these business must feel powerless. The home office, the boss, doesn’t trust them to solve problems so the employee sees lots of frustrated clients but can’t help them. It can’t be very satisfying to work in an environment like that. And that’s probably why these employees have to not care, because they can’t do anything anyway.

My own experience, as both an employee and as an employer, is that good employees are the ones that jump in to solve problems as soon as they recognize them. As a boss you want to cultivate a culture where your employees feel rewarded for and are expected to solve the client’s problems as quickly and as well as possible. But this concept seems to be foreign here in Cancun. Here in Cancun the customer is almost never right.

In addition to liking the Mexican custom of saying Provecho I also like the common custom of greeting people by kissing them on the cheek.

In Mexico the custom is to greet a person by kissing their right cheek just once. Let me clarify and say that men here don’t kiss each other on the cheek, they usually do a pat on the back kind of hug that is sometimes preceded by a handshake. But men will greet women with a cheek kiss. And women greet both women and men with a cheek kiss.

Not everyone gets a cheek kiss, only certain people in your circle are going to expect one. Neither my husband nor myself greets our housekeeper with a cheek kiss, it just doesn’t feel right. And usually I won’t greet someone I am meeting for the first time with a cheek kiss, but sometimes if they are young, or if we are being introduced by a close friend I will give a kiss to a new acquaintance. And we normally don’t greet neighbors with a cheek kiss because they are too familiar, we see them too often for it to be practical.

But when the person you are greeting is a friend or acquaintance usually a cheek kiss is in order. There are all kinds of cheek kisses and they mean all kinds of things. Some of the more memorable types of cheek kisses are:

~ The “I actually don’t like you but I’m kissing you to be polite” kiss. This one is usually given by and to women. It’s often given as just a “mwah” sound in your right ear, there’s not any touching of cheeks and usually there’s no pretense made to pretend to hug.

~ Then there’s the “I’ve got loads of make-up on (and/or a hat on) so don’t mess me up by touching me” kiss. This one also normally involves just a kiss sound in your ear with no cheek touching. But if there’s an accidental touch, and the person really does like you, they will apologize for the lipstick they just put on your cheek.

~ There’s also the “I don’t want your spouse/partner to realize I like you so I’m going to kiss you just a little wrong and maybe he/she won’t notice” kiss. This kiss is a little too emphatic, sometimes it’s too wet and sometimes it lands too close to the edge of your mouth and doesn’t make it quite onto your cheek proper.

~ But the very best kind of cheek kiss is the “It’s really good to see you” kiss. This is the only kiss that should take place imho. This is the one where you really mean it and they do too and both parties feel totally at ease.

I first learned the “It’s really good to see you” cheek kiss from my husband’s family and Mexican friends back when we were living in the U.S. So by the time I came to Mexico I was used to the cheek kissing custom.

Now, after 8 years of being around lots of cheek kissing Mexicans, I’ve found that greeting people with a cheek kiss is very simply normal. And when I travel back to the U.S. I gleefully inflict cheek kissing on my friends there, whether they are expecting it or not. And if they aren’t quite expecting it I cover my totally intentional cheek kiss by saying “I’m Mexican now, so I can’t help it.” Ha!

I think that the thing I really like about cheek kissing is that it softens the social edge between people, and it does so right at the beginning of the conversation. If you start off with a cheek kiss then you are starting with trust and mutual appreciation.

One of the things that I really like about Mexican culture is the custom of saying provecho to other diners as you leave a restaurant. Provecho means bon appétit or “enjoy your meal”.

Usually as you get up to leave your table you say provecho to the people at the table nearest yours, but sometimes you hear people saying it as they pass more than one table.

When I’m in a restaurant I have a tendency to forget that I’m in a room full of people. My table and my companions and my food become my temporary little world. And I think that many Americans are just like me. There’s a sense in the U.S. that people want to be left alone when they are eating in a restaurant. So the last thing you are going to do when you are dining out there is to talk to the people at the next table.

But in Mexico that spell of isolation is broken. You ARE in a room full of people. And it’s acknowledged in a polite and particularly kind way. I like that.