Peruvians are savvy. One example… napkins (aka servilletas) in restaurants. They typically come un-plied, and sometimes cut in half or fourths. We noticed the trend right away in our first days in Peru. And I’ve seen a restaurant employee de-plying paper napkins in between attending customers, which confirmed that the napkins don’t originally come that way.
It’s a savvy-thinking move, but short sighted because when the napkins are thin and small, I just end up using more of them. (Although sometimes restaurants ration the single-ply, cut in fourths napkins to one per person.)
p.s. This reminds me of another cost saving move I saw in a restaurant in Cusco. The server showed a bottle of wine to his customers, only to pour their glasses out of a box of wine behind the counter. Unfortunately, the snobby customers saw and went on and on complaining until they were done with their meal and left. Talk about uncomfortable for the rest of us. Wine is wine!
[...] Hoarding napkins. [...]