Stupid, Smelly, Smoking Spaniards

Note: I write this post when I am actually not particularly frustrated with Spanish culture, so hopefully I'm not as blindly scathing and judgemental as I might be under different circumstances. . .

The other day I was wondering (and discussing a bit with my grandfather who understands) how I'm going to portray my experience living in Spain when I get back home. In the minds of most Americans, living in another country, especially one in Europe, probably sounds absolutely fabulous. With American ideas and perceptions of European fashion, Spanish food (and of course the tapas that have gotten over-rated reputations from Spanish classes in the US), and Royal architecture, I'm not quite sure how I will be able to genuinely convey my feelings about my time in Spain - it's really not all it's cracked out to be.

There are three things about Spaniards I've come to realize that might be hard for my friends back home to really understand and believe.

Stupid
First of all, I've come to realize Spaniards are quite behind on the learning curve. As my grandpa and I joke around, they're about 10 years behind the US. Perhaps this is an exaggeration, but I'll give some examples. Sure, there are computers, modern applications, fast internet, etc. But Spaniards haven't quite figured out how to efficiently use these just yet. You can give a village in Africa a slew of computers, but if they don't know how to turn them on or use them, then it's just as well as if they didn't have any. Here's my almost daily experience:

There are two other girls considered "becarias" or interns like me. The difference is they are doing a master in finance concurrently, so they work in the morning and go to class in the afternoon (nevermind that they get out of here at 2pm and don't have class until 5pm). And, of course, they are about 3 years older than me. Well, the one that sits next to me is not exactly Spanish. She is from Poland, but moved here a few years ago to be with her boyfriend, and is now basically a Spaniard. She does a lot of excel work for the corporate department that sits in our office, but since she's not here in the afternoon, sometimes her supervisors ask me to pick up where she left off. These are my findings: She leaves things in sloppy format (e.g. mismatching and incomplete borders, merged cells when you could just change the column width to make everything fit, etc), which I am asked to correct (and sometimes these seemingly simple but tedious corrections can take over an hour in such large spreadsheets); Formulas that make no sense or are just coded to do what she wanted them to do that instant with no real thought to what is actually going on (e.g. You have a series of available funding percentages for different divisions, but you want to know the overall available funding percent for all the divisions put together. . .you shouldn't add the percentages up . . .that would likely give you more than 100%, but she thinks, well, you add the amounts up, you should add the percentages up), etc. Perhaps I'm more anal-retentive about this because of my training at JPM but what really gets me is that she doesn't seem to want to understand or improve. Today I look over and she is copying formulas into cells, then going back and fixing the formatting of the cell she just ruined by copying it from above. I tell her she could use the "Special paste" option to just copy the formula so she doesn't have to redo the formatting, but she says, "Oh, it's all the same" ::Sigh:: not when it takes you 3 times longer to do it your way. . . And all this doesn't even begin to touch on the fact that almost no one here uses keyboard shortcuts to work in Excel, instead they use a mouse, which admittedly accomplishes the same thing, but isn't nearly as fast (those of you in banking or that consistently use keyboard shortcuts must know where I'm coming from). At least many of the supervisors realize this is useful and try to pick up tricks from me from time to time.

Even though I'm working in what everyone tells me is one of the leading companies in Spain, one of my coworkers even confessed he could tell my intelligence and education was well above the mean of the company. Pretty scary that a nationally reputable company can have such lackadaisical workers.

Another example of why the Spanish culture is way behind: This past weekend, Almudena (whom I rent my room from) had a friend over and were chit-chatting about life and daily problems, etc. Well, she mentions that her mom is getting nearly free DVD's by cutting out a coupon in the newspaper she goes down to the newsstand to buy everyday. "Wait, she buys a newspaper from the stand everyday?! Why not just get a subscription? It's always infinitely cheaper to subscribe to any periodical than to buy it at newsstand price," I say. "Oh no," they both assure me. "You can't get subscriptions, because they ask for your bank account or some form of charging you, and if you ever cancel the subscription, they will continue charging you, regardless. It's kinda like robbery, but that's just the way it works." I tried to explain how that would never happen in the US because a company that tried to steal $20 from a client would get a class action law-suit for $20 million for doing it, so they would never do such a thing and if it happened accidentally you would be immediately reimbursed. But not in Spain. So instead, they pay probably at least 3 times as much for things and just refuse to trust the system. The worst part: they just accept it. No one realizes that both the consumer (who is paying several times more for things) and the producer (who loses potential revenues from people who just avoid buying these things all-together or can't buy products because they spent to much money on newsstand papers) lose out in the process.

Smelly
One of my grandfather's most vivid memories and quips about Spaniards is their smell. I noticed this when I first got to Spain, particularly because it was still fairly hot from the summer. Getting into the train in the evening, a wave of mixed odors of sweat overcame you. Fortunately, I only took the train during rush hour a couple of times during this season, and often walked longer bits before getting into the metro, to make my time in the train shorter. Basically, many Spaniards, especially late in the day, will smell wretchedly of BO. That's right, they forgot to (or just plain purposefully don't) use deodorant. Additionally, many tend to shower infrequently, for various reasons, but probably including wanting to save money on water/electricity at some point or as kids, and over time just growing accustomed to the smell and not realizing anything was wrong. I had sort of forgotten about this phenomenon because it's winter time and, like in most places, the issue of sweating and smelling tends to be less of a problem during this season. But more than anything, I think I've noticed it less because I've unconscientiously begun mentally screening people when I enter the metro. For example, if there are two seats open, one next to a woman with make-up and heels and one next to a scruffy-faced man in jeans, I'll sit next to the woman - there's a better chance she showered yesterday (or at least sometime this week) and doesn't smell as bad. I realized this the other day when I was in the metro and a stop or two later a man and his 3 daughters got on the train. The daughters took the 3 empty seats in front of me and he took the seat next to me. Even though his daughters looked very well groomed and ready for school, he smelled like he hadn't showered in at least 3 days. At this point, though, every other seat in the car was taken, so I couldn't move. Even though I was sitting in the aisle and had my head turned away from him, it was still hard to not get a foul whiff from time to time. Overall, I've noticed this showering/deodorant problem seems to be most applicable to middle-aged to old men. This is one reason, I guess, to be thankful that it's winter and not summer. I can't imagine my 40+ minute commute home in trains of stench.

Smoking
My greatest pet peeve of Spaniards is their incessant smoking. Not only do smokers light up repeatedly, almost all bars, restaurants, clubs, lounges, etc allow smoking. Very few have a non-smoking section (although that has varying degrees of effectiveness) and fewer still are completely smoke-free. Just about the only places assuredly free of smoke are metros (although even then I can think of several instances where I saw someone sneak one in) and offices.

Not only is second-hand smoke a health hazard and to me just plain disgusting, it leaves your clothes with the pungent smell of burnt tobacco, tar and whatever other garbage they put in Marlboro's these days. This is particularly problematic for winter coats. The smell penetrates all layers and coat fillings. Unfortunately, in Spain very few people have a clothes dryer in their home. So any clothing you wash must be hung to dry outside and, given the cold, dry really means freeze, then thaw once you bring it inside where it will eventually finish drying. The other option, then is to take it to a professional cleaner, which is incredibly expensive. When I first came to Spain, I went looking for a drycleaners for my suits. My jaw almost dropped when I found out suits cost 15€ to dryclean; that's over $20! (In NYC I can get them for $10 and in Florida for probably $7 if that, and note the currency.) Besides the fact that this would be an expensive thing to keep up and certainly unfair for me to pay when I wanted nothing to do with the smoking in the first place, it still does not remedy the problem that a winter coat is indispensable in the winter. I certainly could not go a whole day without it, as I'm out in the morning as the sun is rising and going home long after the sun has set. If I had more than one winter coat with me, perhaps, but since I'm tight on baggage space, I only brought one. Better to only ruin one from all that smoke, anyhow.

Finally, food just doesn't taste the same when mixed with the aroma of a cigarette. They say smell is a very important factor in tasting foods and drinks. If Spaniards were really food savvy, you would think all this smoke would interfere with their meals, but apparently not. Even worse, are the bars that have appetizer plates sitting out all day - only a glass pane facing customers separates these plates from the smokers sitting right in front. Essentially, these plates (especially any breads or potato tortillas) are one big sponge for the smoke that fills the air throughout the day. At least many meat and cheese shops don't allow smoking, but some restaurants with the ham legs hanging for months or years at a time still do, and just imagine what must cling to those. It's nice to know this is acceptable to serve to customers.

It's not all bad ... I think
I must admit, I feel bad about not being able to take away more positive memories of Spaniards. My coworker, before his temporary assignment to Brazil, asked if I was liking Spain and Spaniards and going to bring home wonderful reviews. I had to scramble a little bit and said something about enjoying traveling (having untouchable weekends to do so), people's openness/approachability, and the overall relaxed nature of things. Quite frankly, though, I don't necessarily mind working a weekend or two, and in fact I would prefer a more rigorous work environment, but I know that's more because of my personal work ethic. I wish I could even say I love Spanish food, but honestly, I like the variety of American food, where you can get Chinese, Italian, Thai, of whatever kind of food you want. And the service (e.g. cleanliness) and freshness (e.g. stale bread) is not nearly at the quality as in the US. Perhaps, I will be able to make a more positive list when I get back to the US. . .