Travel Tips

Send Photo to a Friend

A Short Story from Cancun

On the morning of our second day in Cancun, my uncle and I went to enjoy a free breakfast and spend the afternoon basking in the luxury at the Krystal Cancun Hotel. We had signed up for it the night before at the urging of a guy on the street who was sitting beneath a sign that read “Cancun Information”. This benevolent ambassador of good will was certainly looking out for us because of our many endearing qualities and our suave appearance (it must have been Rex’s $2 straw hat or possibly the strategically placed stains on our shirts from the Rainforest Café that separated us from the masses). He kept insisting that we were VIP’s and that we were, apparently, being offered this privilege due to our inherent greatness. Sounded reasonable to me. So we take a morning cab to the Krystal and let the hotel pay for our cabfare as we had been instructed – high rollers like ourselves aren’t expected to even bother with such a mere pittance. We stroll into the lobby looking much like the undignified tourists that we were - $2 hat and all. Proudly, we start telling everybody that we’re VIP’s and, pretty soon, they roll out the proverbial “red carpet” that we were quickly growing to expect.

We are assigned a hostess and as she briefly takes us out to show us the luxurious pool area where we’ll spend the afternoon, I suddenly had a moment of clarity. I was, in fact, a VIP. People back home have simply denied it for years. To not acknowledge this fact is pure folly. We are finally receiving the pampering that is due us.

So she takes us to breakfast and I laugh to myself as I scope out the SUV driving, golf playing, Bloomingdale’s shopping, gated community dwellers scattered about the room. They were in awe of our style. That look of contempt that I saw in their eyes was no doubt directed at their own inadequacies which were now becoming undeniable in the presence of true VIP’s. With unmistakable savoir faire, we stroll up to the beautifully decorated buffet and start unloading it as expeditiously as two men possibly can without the aid of a conveyor belt and a UPS truck. Free food!! Proudly carrying the plunder back to our VIP table and leaving the scuttled buffet in our wake, we proceeded to enjoy a rather tasty breakfast (I do recommend it!) as our hostess described the finer points of the hotel ad nauseum. As I ingested fresh fruits, meats, and Danishes (is that the plural form of Danish?) I really didn’t pay any attention to anything she said except for when she would occasionally allude to our VIP status – which, by now, had become inherently obvious.

So after Rex and I had inflicted as much damage as we possibly could on the breakfast room and its inhabitants, our hostess starts to take us on a tour of the hotel. She proceeds to regurgitate facts and semi-intriguing anecdotes like Howard Cosell, pausing occasionally only to ask if we were impressed. Picking the last few morsals of that delicious breakfast out of my teeth with a toothpick, I had to politely answer “yes”;I mean, it’s not every day that you get a free meal like that one. So this goes on for probably an hour and the hotel is pretty nice and the suites are nice yada, yada, yada…

Then she takes us to the top floor and as the elevator door opens, I sense a different atmosphere. It was the feeling Luke would get when his ship was passing by a ship that Darth Vader was on. It was a feeling of being in the presence of pure, unmitigated evil. It was…salesmen!!! I knew this was coming. That breakfast was the equivalent of a last meal prior to a lethal injection. She betrayed us! I mean, timeshare salesmen exhibit the sleaziness of a lawyer only without an education. But I can’t say that I was totally surprised by this. I was just getting used to flaunting my VIP status and by now I had even developed a walk that I thought looked VIP. But as we entered this rabid shark tank of high stakes sales and dozens of jabbering predators and victims squared off at various tables, the term “RIP” seemed more appropriate than my beloved “VIP”.

We sat down at the table that we were directed to and I kicked back and let Rex do the talking because I figured “hey, you can’t scam a scammer”. After some phony introductions, a lady sits down, opens a folder, and starts her sales pitch. My mind almost immediately begins to wander. Like when the waiter at Olive Garden goes into his unabridged spiel about the house wine of the day. Like when the woman at Famous Barr tells me about all the benefits of signing up for a Famous Barr card. Like when AT&T calls me to say that my VIP status merits special treatment if I switch to them. Salesmen simply put me to sleep. I guess that what they don’t understand is that I simply don’t believe anything they say so it really doesn’t matter how eloquent or witty they are. And I don’t believe this lady. Rex pretends to be a high-roller but says that he’s “not in a position to do this currently due to concentrating on other investments”. She is simply overmatched. She shakes our hands and crosses the room to report to her sleazy superiors.

As we await the next obstacle, I scan the room and make note of their sales strategy. The strategy is “confusion and disorientation”. Potential victims are served free alcoholic drinks. There is an indescribable amount of noise in the room. The music is so loud that everybody has to yell to be heard across a table. They have bouncers at the door but these bouncers keep you in rather than out. And I saw innocent victims who were virtually defenseless against the sales juggernaut because they lacked the ace in the hole that Rex and I were fully capable of playing at any moment: rudeness. And we were given the opportunity to exhibit that very quality when the timeshare morons shifted into high gear. They had determined that they couldn’t succeed with a soft approach so they brought in one of the big guns. This woman walks up to the table, introduces herself, and starts pulling out all sorts of paperwork. With the confidence of an undefeated prizefighter, she leans across the table and looks us right in the eye as she explains how stupid we would be if we didn’t sign up for this. Again, I am letting Rex do the talking because I can barely keep a straight face. Someone had apparently convinced her at some time in the past that boldness and aggression would be perceived by potential customers as superior intellect. I found her high pressure technique to be laughable. When it finally appears to her that we are using the word “no” a little to frequently for her tastes, she slams her folder shut and asks, “Okay, where did I lose you?”. I felt like saying “after the free breakfast”. She starts repeating all of the benefits and how you can’t lose on this deal. Rex decides to go on the offensive as he starts picking her apart and hitting her with all sorts of tough questions. You know, you can’t scam a scammer. Finally, she realizes that her blitzkrieg has failed and her and the Axis Powers have lost the war. She makes an abrupt exit and goes to the next potential victims.

Before leaving, I snap a picture of the panoramic view of Cancun below us (see photo) and, once downstairs, we start hounding the employees in the lobby until they point us in the direction of the free t-shirts that we were promised (to this day, I feel like a VIP every time I put on that shirt). So the moral of my story is this: the cliché of “there’s no such thing as a free lunch” also applies to breakfast and this adage also apparently transcends geographical boundaries.