Change, please.

The other day, I bought a couple of lemons from the fruit and vegetable vendor down the street. "Seis pesos," el hombre me dijo, and I handed him a 10-peso bill and waited for my change. (Which, for those of you who do not know either math or how to say numbers in Spanish, should have been four pesos.)

He came back with a five and said that, since I was so pretty, the lemons would only be five pesos, after all.

Now, undoubtedly this is partly true, since I was wearing short shorts that day. However, I've been in Argentina long enough to realize that the main reason for the extra peso in my pocket was that the guy didn't have the proper change to give me.

This lack of small bills and coins -- in a country whose largest bill is worth about US$25 -- is epidemic. When you pay, you will almost always be asked for the exact change, or at least for a smaller bill. When you happen to give exact change, you will almost always be thanked for it. We've talked to business owners who have said that the hardest part of doing business in Argentina is that it's so hard to get your hands on change.

I once had to buy two more pesos worth of dried kiwi because la vendadora didn't have any combination of bills or coins to give me two pesos in change, so we had to round it to the nearest-sized bill I had. It's not unusual to wait -- and wait -- at the checkout at the grocery store, because the checkers don't keep enough change in the drawer and they have to beckon the woman who is in charge of small bills and coins to bring them some every time a person needs it. Brent realized that they are doing this on purpose, because having to wait 10 minutes for 50 cents inspires some people to just say "olvídalo" and walk out without their change, giving the damned Disco a little unearned profit. (We shop there as rarely as possible.)