Don't Forget Your Towel (Card)

I've been in Akumal, Mexico for the past week or so at an all-inclusive resort with my immediate family. Resorts are unique places. Those, like the one I stayed at in Mexico, offer this alternate universe inside an otherwise poverty-stricken area. Inside its walls its often Western guests swim and play and dine while on the outside the people who call the area home live off of a minimum wage of roughly $4 a day (according to our tour guide). Tourism obviously provides revenue for areas like the Rivera Maya, but its hard to ignore the irony of these two worlds and the relationship between the people in them. I think this was best exemplified in an encounter I witnessed between an employee of the resort and a guest:

This particular resort provides its guests with beach towels. Specifically, it provides its guests with one beach towel each. Each guest is provided a card and each card can then be exchanged for a towel at any of the little towel kiosks stationed around the resort. It's a pretty simple concept: 1 towel card = 1 towel. Anyway, each of the kiosks is manned by an employee who takes the cards and gives out towels. Again, simple.

My mom and I were waiting at a kiosk one morning to pick up a fresh set of towels, behind an American or Canadian family of five who were also picking up towels. This family had apparently just arrived and did not yet understand the complexities of the resort towel exchange system. The young Mexican employee who had the unfortunate luck to be on towel duty that morning was trying to explain the "one card = one towel policy" to the family but they just didn't understand. The father, middled-aged, balding and with an hard-to-miss chip on his shoulder, grew increasingly angry when the "towel boy" refused to bend the rules for him and his family. I could tell they were related because they all shared the same undeniable chip on their shoulders.

"We have five people, but they only gave us four cards. Give us another towel," the father demanded.
"One card = one towel," the poor kid tried to explain.
"WE ARE CINCO PERSONAS. GIVE US ANOTHER TOWEL!" again demanded the father, holding up five fingers and showing off his Spanish skills.
"One card = one towel. Go to the front desk," the poor kid said, pointing to the lobby.
"WE ARE CINCO! CALL THE FRONT DESK. TELL THEM WE NEED ANOTHER TOWEL."

At this point the mother and three children were doing their part to help their father in his attempt to be the biggest Ass at the pool that day. "We're CINCO!"

Meanwhile, my mom and I stood there, feeling like asses in our own right for not standing up for the poor resort employee whose only crimes were coming to work that day and following his employer's policies. The family finally just gave up and walked away, no doubt their day of relaxing at a five-star resort in a tropical paradise ruined. The towel boy gave us our towels and we walked away, swiftly kicking ourselves for not helping him out against the unruly guests.

I'm not in Akumal anymore, but I'm sure that inside its resorts the guests are relaxing and enjoying their holidays. I wonder more what the people who wait on them are doing.