Unscrupulous restaurants
06-09-2018, 01:26 PM, (This post was last modified: 06-09-2018, 01:27 PM by Waymond Smith.)
#1
Unscrupulous restaurants
Is there an agency to report unscrupulous restaurants?
There is a restaurant in Plaza San Fernando where the waiter attempted to "skim" (steal) $100 pesos when he brought me my change for my meal. I guess he thought that I was gullible since I was reading a book that was written in English about the Spanish language. Is there an agency in Guanajuato to report these incidents?
06-10-2018, 07:28 AM,
#2
RE: Unscrupulous restaurants
Not sure of your preferred purpose, but if you wish to report a crime, ie theft, then go to Ministerio Público located just above Alhondiga toward Dos Rios, opposite Coppel. You’ll see lots of municipal police and vehicles, easy to find. You can file a formal report and identify the offender.
There are also a city Tourism office. I’d start at main city government offices off Plaza de La Paz.
06-10-2018, 04:53 PM,
#3
RE: Unscrupulous restaurants
Your thread title suggests there is a collective of restaurants engaged in theft, while the reality is that one server in a single restaurant attempted to steal from you. Is that correct? Is there any evidence that the restaurant owner was part of the chicanery?
07-22-2018, 09:39 AM,
#4
RE: Unscrupulous restaurants
Funny to live an entire life and not hear a particular word, but first thoughts that came to mind are, I was wondering if that was a place where they only canned female fish LOL. (I've seen Asian women flipping crabs to determine gender so anything is possible.)

I would imagine Waymond is frustrated because money was taken and he may be new to Mexico and not yet realized that short changing in Mexico is more of a sport than a crime. God, I have even been short changed a dollar for a bottle of water in a souvenir shop at a convent, so they always seem to get to you when your britches are down! Anyway, Waymond, welcome to Mexico first of all and get ready for the ride of your life. You are going to be going through so many new experiences and have your life flipped upside down. Everything is a new way of doing things and along this path your gauges and expectations are going to be shortened and broadened at the same time. Just keep an open mind and respect those gifted with not much more than their cleverness in getting money out of your pocket and into theirs. Actually it is more than likely nothing personal.

Also a good rule of thumb when beginning to do business in Mexico is to remember that "money only goes one way" and I will let you guess which way that is as your experience builds.

Otherwise forgive the "tone" of the responses here as the often sharp and cutting responses keep most people afraid to speak their mind, due to that and thus really reducing the effectiveness of this forum. As an alternative I believe there is a Facebook group on GTO with a little more open minded banter. Good luck to you and enjoy GTO as the rest of Mexico as you realm grows. You don't have a couple of extra bucks do you, by the way?
07-22-2018, 11:05 AM,
#5
RE: Unscrupulous restaurants
The purpose of the post was to warn people of some "unsavory" characters and not "paint" all restaurants as crooked, but I suppose some are offended by it. I suppose I had the wrong impression about notifying others about what happened to me as a "warning", I will not make that mistake again.

For those that offered lighthearted advice, I thank you as I am new (6 months) . I'm learning a new language as well adjusting to the culture of Mexico. As for the others, you must have that you were new at one time and to have this haughty attitude is not helpful at all.
07-22-2018, 01:31 PM,
#6
RE: Unscrupulous restaurants
It's funny and I guess I’m one who, being an active online outspoken individual , seems to run into this quite often. The Mexico online groups appear to have more than their fair share of quirky people and dynamics that are sometimes difficult to get used to and are even more difficult to understand. What I think though is the best way to endure the plethora of “not always so helpful info with a shade of nastiness thrown in” is to realize that most of these online entities were established initially as a club or group of individuals who met on social terms and moved it online and with that comes the club mentality. And in general the best way I have found to deal with clubs is to look to what the late Groucho Marks once said …. "Please accept my resignation. I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member".

What makes up the available odd mix of online attendees and their online social structures? I don’t know. Perhaps it’s the unique situation of Gringos relocating so far out of their element and thus landing in Mexico which serves as the catalyst for craziness down to just plain old-school odd. I do have to say that from my own experience that GTOlist seems one of the most difficult to capture the dynamics of. On one hand it seems almost abandoned when it comes to discussion or anyone providing an answer to the many questions, but then you look at the “views” column one must ask how could that many people have looked at something and yet no one bothered to respond? But I think that is answered by what may be along your and my observations here which I call the “pseudo intellectual viper strike”, which may keep a lot of people lurking on the sidelines. Still there are some that strive to help (Barbara, Doyle, others I may have missed) who don’t mind dodging lurking serpents. But I do agree it would be nice if GTOlist were a friendlier environment.

Still the “what the F” element doesn’t end here. There are many Mexico-based Facebook groups as well with different strains of the proverbial question. There is the Canadian network and not that I have anything against Canadians because some of my very good friends are from Canada but it’s interesting to observe that they like to stick together promoting each other’s Mexico businesses which is evident if you hang around Canadian-owned Mexico Facebook groups long enough. These major player Facebook groups and the individuals supporting and following them often produce their own brand of comedy and quirks.

For example, the Facebook group “On the Road in Mexico” is established originally out of a group of Canadians who used to caravan to Mexico’s NW coast. This group as many others has a subset of overall nasty’s dishing out what I like to call “nursing home humor” with frequent put-downs with dancing GIFs and other grade school like humor. Within this group are also members of the original caravan group who remain loyal to the caravan owner turned Mexico car insurance salesman and they jump to his defense whenever any debate crops up involving a conflict with the owner’s opinion. There’s also “Expats in Mexico” which is another sales front for San Miguel de Allende real estate and immigration services. Then there’s “RVing in Mexico” which is an ad front for a Mexico RV Caravan company. All of these manage to block the free flow of information via person to person discussion about Mexico which is mainly accomplished by the non-stop ad traffic. And the caveat with these groups is that if one opens a Facebook group based on marketing one’s own services, that often makes it morally difficult to stop other advertisers who begin to pelt the Mexico Facebook groups with ads as the groups become more popular.

Then on the opposite end you have Facebook groups like “Living in Mexico, Pros & Cons” which barely exist. These are great in my opinion but strangely, once all the advertising and nasty talk is banned and immediately taken down, not many seem to use them as frequently to make them worth a great deal. So what is the answer? The Canadian network groups seem to get all the activity and are chock full of disinformation in the form of people’s food plates, condo ads, nightclub acts, real estate rentals and homes for sale, even vacation opportunities to other countries, yet they seem to remain more popular. It’s my opinion that there is no good answer today and that the near-perfect social media platform has yet to be invented. So for the time being, we just have to deal with what we’ve got. We're stuck here.
07-26-2018, 10:44 PM, (This post was last modified: 07-26-2018, 10:47 PM by Barbara.)
#7
RE: Unscrupulous restaurants
In addition to the Facebook groups Don Juane mentioned, there are two more:

Lovers of Guanajuato - this is the place to ask questions about living in Guanajuato Capital. I left the group because I shared a newspaper article with a photo from the shooting at the taco stand in Marfil - there was blood in the photo (!!!!) and the administrator deleted it without telling me because she thought it was too explicit. I had posted it in response to somebody asking about crime in Guanajuato City. Comments were deleted from me and other members who didn't think it was inappropriate. Later a friend who shared a post about the ministerial police officers who were assaulted near Plaza Los Angeles (there was some blood on the arm of the victim after the police shot him) was blocked after she dared to argue with the administrator about her post being deleted. I later learned that one of the moderators of that group runs a travel group for women in Mexico, so I guess our posts were bad for business. So if you need a place to ask questions about immigration papers, places to rent, and where to buy all those things from your home country that you just can't live without/ join that group.

Guana What - I started this Facebook page about a year ago after Karen stopped her meetup group. You're all welcome to join. It's a page to share upcoming events here - music, dance, theater, lectures, films, etc. I don't translate anything into Spanish, but you can copy/paste and use Google translate. It's a public group, and I encourage all members to share upcoming events. If you post something other than a event, it will be deleted. Here's the link to Guana What:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1587748181247376/
07-27-2018, 01:22 AM, (This post was last modified: 07-27-2018, 01:34 AM by DonJuane.)
#8
RE: Unscrupulous restaurants
Yes, it's getting more difficult to speak your mind anywhere online I am finding when you look at the DE-facto management skills taken on by most unskilled Facebook moderators (considering some who are a knee-jerk shy of a full body rigor). Censorship seems to grow on Facebook as one of the few avenues of expressing power in an environment that provides very little else. And they do say as little as the subject power play may be, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Facebook is really out of control and especially lately as more and more people use a facility with fewer and fewer support staff and thus the facility in the past few years has started to automate as much pf the uncontrollable amount of data that moves through it as possible. One major limitation that just struck me was it's not that they believe you are doing anything morally or ethically wrong or that they actually care, it's most often they think you are cutting into their revenue by putting up too many links to products on your FB Group posts, which they have not yet determined how to capitalize on. In fact in the past few weeks this has just started to affect me because I tend to follow some RV groups where some product is usually always the answer to "how can I get this to do that". The result I have found is that all of a sudden every post I make that has a product link, the entire post gets deleted about 10 seconds later. Really a phenomenal disconnect on Facebook's part. But instead of getting upset here, I simply snapped to realizing that maybe too much time was being wasted on Facebook - a really nasty habit to get into (as my 90 year old Mother just reminded me she was doing and maybe I should look at).

But the type of "emotional whim" or raw censorship you speak of in Facebook is probably the most frustrating. All I can say is that as bad as our politicians are, I am really glad that some of the Facebook Group owners I have met don't quit their day jobs and shoot for a government position. And speaking of censorship that's why I don't mind that the owner here will let someone call me an asshole. I'm able to observe it as someone's point of view, disagree (are we also talking percentages? LOL) and move on. I enjoy the freedom and openness of this forum, although like I said since not very many comment or participate on the many topics, or some act in a condescending manner to create an seemingly unfriendly environment making some afraid to comment, it's not as effective as it could be.

I will attempt to join your Facebook group and hope it remains an open place to share ideas. I've found that ideas that are radical enough often manage to shut themselves down and actually without the help of a moderator. I've also seen this in a lot of "club groups" and with not really overall radical ideas being presented in these small enclaves, but the fact really is another way is being expressed of looking at things. Now if this "out of status quo" message will not inspire a full on delete of a newcomer's post, many times it will instead generate a "full-on snub" at a higher level. A mutiny occurs against the newcomer who doesn't know how to fold to those in charge. In the case of the open minded moderator, this usually results in a "snub out" or "ignore out".

In other groups there may be an assumed set of "founding fathers" so to speak, say of 1-4 who set the precedent and no one will dare challenge or deviate. After they pounce on a new guy or two in an effort to embarrass him enough to squash his contribution, at that point if he continues on seemingly unscathed by them, they will often go into "full ignore mode". And even this doesn't always resolve the issue and make the attempted shifter of paradigms run with his/er tail ducked between the legs. What you often end up with is one person talking to themselves and the rest not responding or acknowledging at all, the newcomer's existence.

So from this I am in the process of determining that social media really depicts the non-social aspects of the human experience, and you may agree if you experience it yourself, long enough.

But advertising is a different story and spam and ads will always run away with themselves, destroying any information source which is a tough job for a moderator to stay on top of. A "full swing" moderator ready to batten down the hatches and bat down the ads is extremely necessary.

So should the true "fake media" today be penned "social media". Maybe not a bad idea ;-)
07-27-2018, 11:12 AM,
#9
RE: Unscrupulous restaurants
Hello Don Juane,

Thanks for sharing your thoughts here.

You are welcome to join Guana What; just remember that it's for sharing local events only. I try to keep it concise and current, so I don't want it to get blogged down with comments, even if they are about the events. Each time a person comments on a post, it gets moved to the top of the page, so I also ask that members keep their plans to meet other and/or other comments in personal messages. There is so much going on in Guanajuato that if members (there are almost 800 now) used it otherwise, we wouldn't be able to quickly see what's happening. Also, I delete advertisements, unless they are for a new place in town of interest.

Saludos!


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