Using game theory to live your best life in Cuenca

Every week the internet offers fresh advice on how to live your best life. Some experts recommend mindfulness. Others recommend yoga, cold showers, quiet changes, herbal tea, journalling, intermittent fasting, coffee enemas, or rising at five in the morning to contemplate your personal goals while staring at sunrise over a high-rise construction site, but I have discovered a simpler approach. It begins with a twenty-dollar bill, two competing queues at JEP, and what economists like to call game theory. For those unfamiliar with the term, game theory is the study of how rational people make decisions when the outcome depends partly on the actions of other people and partly on factors that cannot be predicted with any certainty. Economists use it, military strategists use it, diplomats use it, even educated fleas use it. Investors use it, although it must be said not always successfully. Retired expatriates in Cuenca use it when attempting to exchange a crumpled twenty-dollar bill for dollar coins, which places us in distinguished company. This may sound like an exaggeration, but anyone who has stood in the downtown JEP branch on a weekday morning knows otherwise. JEP is a good place to change notes for coins if you don’t feel like trekking down to the Central Bank of Ecuador, because they usually have plenty of coins, and although I do have an account there, in a hundred visits for purposes of coin exchange, I have only once been asked if I have an account. (If you don’t have one and you are asked, you can just mumble that you forgot your cedula number and they will probably take pity on you anyway.) The first thing one notices is that the main downtown office of JEP operates two distinct queueing systems. One line serves priority customers such as the aged, while another serves the general public. The priority side may have four cashier windows open while the general side may have ten. At first glance the solution appears obvious: when you have the option of choosing either line, join the shortest line and wait your turn. This, I am afraid, is the kind of sloppy thinking that separates the amateurs from the pros. The experienced observer understands that counting the number of people standing in line is merely the opening move in a considerably longer calculation. If there are four customers waiting in the general line and ten cashiers serving that line, the ratio appears highly attractive. Meanwhile, the priority line may contain only two customers feeding four cashiers, and the queue appears shorter, but the mathematics are no longer quite so clear-cut. The novice customer counts people, but the experienced customer knows to count cashiers and the true expert counts document folders and consults the clock too. Obviously a gent carrying a thick envelope bulging with banking documents is rarely good news for those standing behind him in the line. A woman consulting multiple forms while searching through her handbag may indicate a transaction of considerable duration. The young man carrying nothing but a telephone and an ATM card may be gone before you have finished assessing the situation. The difficulty lies in the fact that all of these judgments must be made at speed, from incomplete information, and often at a distance of several meters. Complicating matters further is what I have come to call the Cashier Lunch Variable. The priority side may officially have four cashiers, but one may already have left for almuerzo. A second may have just returned from lunch, while a third appears to be approaching that stage of the afternoon where thoughts of account balances are gradually giving way to expectations of soup. The customer is therefore confronted by a critical strategic question: when the absent cashier returns, will another cashier immediately depart for the same destination? If so, the apparent increase in service capacity may prove entirely illusory. The general side enjoys a certain stability in this regard. When one cashier disappears among ten, that is only 10% of the cashiering capacity. When one cashier disappears among four, that is a FCLD (Fractional Cashier Lunch Deficit) of 25%. Then there is also what we might call the Smartphone Exclusion Factor. My suspicion, totally unsupported by hard evidence but reinforced by years of observation, is that younger customers increasingly conduct routine transactions through the JEP phone app. Transfers, payments, balance inquiries, and other ordinary tasks can often be completed while walking down the street and bumping into other people. Older customers may be less inclined to trust a phone app with their financial affairs, or they may simply prefer the reassurance of a human being who can be reasoned with. If this theory is correct, it may help explain why priority lines do not always move as quickly as newcomers expect. The issue is not the age of the customers, but that a larger proportion of the transactions may be precisely the kind of transactions that somebody has specifically decided not to conduct electronically, which tends to mean they are not the quick ones. Then there are the hidden variables that no amount of preparation can fully anticipate. A customer may suddenly remember an additional transaction on behalf of a friend. This is known as the AFAF factor. A missing document may also emerge as a critical issue at the exact moment the cashier reaches for the stamp. The cashier may discover that a signature is absent, a form is incomplete, or an additional verification is required by a new regulation or governmental edict that was introduced yesterday or the day before. All of these possibilities must be evaluated while standing in line holding a twenty-dollar bill and wondering whether one will eventually leave with a pocketful of dollar coins or with the same twenty-dollar bill and a growing appreciation for the complexity of modern life. The great economists refer to the Prisoner’s Dilemma. The citizens of Cuenca face the JEP Dilemma, which poses a far more practical question: given two competing queues, uncertain transaction times, possible lunch breaks, unknown dossier thicknesses, and a limited supply of dollar coins, where exactly should one stand in line for the optimum outcome? After years of careful observation, I have reached a conclusion that will disappoint the mathematically inclined. Observation helps and so does experience. Counting cashiers helps. Evaluating folder thickness may help marginally. Estimating lunch schedules may even help, provided you have a reliable feel for what time soup starts. Hint: usually around 12:15 pm. Nevertheless, there remains a stubborn element of chance that no theory can entirely eliminate. In spite of the diligent application of game theory, the customer who arrives after you will occasionally choose the other line and be served first. This outcome is unavoidable and should be accepted with resignation. There is no need to submit a written report to CHL, Facebook, or the Journal of Gringo Studies. At that point, the wise person pockets whatever coins have been obtained, walks to the nearest café, orders a coffee, and reflects upon a truth that applies not only to queues but to a great many other things besides. Game theory can improve your odds, but it cannot change your luck. The post Using game theory to live your best life in Cuenca appeared first on CuencaHighLife.