Making Payroll and Having The Cars Repaired

I have said it before and I will say it again, "nothing is simple in Honduras." And I mean nothing.

Every other Friday we pay our employees. They have to be paid in cash. From the minute I pay them , I beging thinking how I will have the exact change to pay them the next time. This is no easy task.

When I pay for deliveries here or I am in town at the market or grocery store or wherever, I always try to pay for everything with a 500 lempira bill so that I will get some change. Five hundred lempira is roughly $25.00. The 100 lempira bills are what I never have enough of.

Sometimes, when I try to pay with a 500, the vendor cannot make change and I have to use smaller bills. Knowing I had to make payroll today, and knowing I did not have enough change, yesterday I was trying everything to come up with the change I needed.

Marc stopped to cash a check. I gave him four 500 lempira bills and asked him to get hundreds for me. When he came back, he had ten one hundreds, not twenty. Ten is all the bank had. Then I thought I would pay the phone bill. If I paid the phone bill with a 500, I would get three one hundreds and some other change. I went to one of the banks where I can pay the phone bill and found it was closed until February 16. I can't go into just any bank and ask for change. If I do that, and don't have an account there, they won't give me change. I can't see what difference that makes, when I have 3 or 4 500s in my hand. I wasn't sure what I was going to do then, but I was out of options for yesterday.

All things worked out today. A few employees had worked different hours than they normally do. I only had to pay one with tens and twenties. Of course, I am already thinking how I can get some more hundreds before February 6.

And then there are the car repairs. Driving in this country is hard on all vehichles and they have to be maintained and repaired often. When a car is taken to the shop and it is determined what is wrong with the car, you get to go buy your own parts and take back to the shop. You can well imagine that we don't always find the part we need at the first parts store at which we stop. Sometimes we have to go to as many shops as we need parts and buy one part from each shop. After all the parts are purchased, they are taken back to the mechanic and he does his thing. The mechanics always give us every used and broken part they removed from the car.

As we try to find parts for the cars and hundreds for the employees, we always try to make it an adventure, sometimes a frustrating adventure. But I think of the people who have their only car in the shop and have to ride the bus to town and then to all these different parts shops. I think that would really try my patience.

Aren't you glad, really glad, that when you take your car to the shop, the shop is responsible for finding the parts?

Terri