When my trip to the Dominican Republic was ending, I was waiting for a bus to take me to the airport. I saw a “limpiabota,” a shoe-shine boy, and decided it was a good time to get the mud and dirt off of my hiking boots, regular shoes, and dressier shoes.
They typically ask ten pesos for a shine but tourists might be asked to pay a few times that and natives five to ten pesos. In any case these are some of the poorest boys there and people might give them a five peso tip on top of whatever they ask. They are desperate for the money and are selling a ‘luxury’ good that the purchaser doesn’t need to buy so it is possible to negotiate with them. I practiced my spanish talking him down from the asked for 30 pesos for the three pairs, and engaged in a tough negotiation, turning away several times and eventually getting him down to seven pesos for the three pairs. I let him shine the shoes I was wearing and gave him the other two pairs, telling him I put more than seven pesos in the shoe and it was a tip for him to take.
At the airport, everything was sold in dollars, not that I thought I’d much want to buy anything there anyway. i still had a good deal of money left in Dominican Pesos, so I put it all in my shoes. A few thousand pesos. The thought of the huge cut they take at the currency exchange counter galls me.
When my trip to the Dominican Republic was ending, I was waiting for a bus to take me to the airport. I saw a “limpiabota,” a shoe-shine boy, and decided it was a good time to get the mud and dirt off of my hiking boots, regular shoes, and dressier shoes.
They typically ask ten pesos for a shine but tourists might be asked to pay a few times that and natives five to ten pesos. In any case these are some of the poorest boys there and people might give them a five peso tip on top of whatever they ask. They are desperate for the money and are selling a ‘luxury’ good that the purchaser doesn’t need to buy so it is possible to negotiate with them. I practiced my spanish talking him down from the asked for 30 pesos for the three pairs, and engaged in a tough negotiation, turning away several times and eventually getting him down to seven pesos for the three pairs. I let him shine the shoes I was wearing and gave him the other two pairs, telling him I put more than seven pesos in the shoe and it was a tip for him to take.
At the airport, everything was sold in dollars, not that I thought I’d much want to buy anything there anyway. i still had a good deal of money left in Dominican Pesos, so I put it all in my shoes. A few thousand pesos. The thought of the huge cut they take at the currency exchange counter galls me.