Always one step behind

I had a bizarre taxi driver incident today. I had to go to a mall for only about an hour to get some prices. Well, taxi driver was afraid he was going to get bored, so he wanted to take a walk. Him taking a walk turned into him following me around one step behind everywhere I went. Even worse, it was that very awkward hmmm do I wait up for him to catch up to me? (I think we North Americans walk much slower than they do in Latin America). He rarely even talked to me. I didn’t know if I should tell him what I was looking for, although I doubt that would have gotten me very far. I asked him to tell me where one of the stores that I needed to go to was and he took me to the exact opposite side and there it was NOT. I had to get prices for Hard Rock Café and immediately the girl thought she was going to be seating the two of us. Haha, not so much. Even that was awkward, I felt like I had an annoying child tagging along behind me.

Lastly, for the very last experience of the day, I met Mario the realtor. He was kinda a pain in the ass. As soon as he opened the door, a good-looking, egotistical man greeted with a “hi we’ve been waiting for you, we’re very busy”. Umm… I was 10 minutes early, for once. I was already pissed off. So after explaining a little more why I was there and what I was looking for, he kept giving looks like “I don’t have time for this”, and everything came out came out like one of those people who were totally smug and thought they were just better than you and again, like you were wasting their time. He explained to me that a lot of people came to just “look” around and they didn’t want to deal with that. And then, he asked me if we had a lot of clients coming into Panama. What a dick, really. Whatever. I was going to get as much as I could out of them before I leave. I’m not sure what happened, but all of a sudden the mood changed a little. Suddenly he wanted to be helpful, and maybe it was when I mentioned that P&G, whom they had relocated in the past, was one of our clients. After I gave up with asking questions, Mario and I small-talked. About Panama, about Boston, suddenly he wasn’t in so much of a rush anymore. He gave me some sightseeing books, put me in touch with a sightseeing driver, and I even got a kiss on the cheek when I left. It was a strange meeting and I didn’t get much out of it.