So I know you may all say that this is natural, but I don’t lie. I have no need to lie 24/7. The odd time I feel the need to lie to protect myself, but is it a normal course of my every day life? Absolutely NOT!!! I may lie once or twice a year, sometimes never in that year.

After being in Panama for 8 months now, it’s become clear to me that most Panamanians are chronic liars. No one every told me that before I moved here, so I feel you need to know.

Now does that mean that EVERY Panamanian is a liar? I hope not, but here are examples of what I’ve encountered:

1. When you walk into a business, many times the person I’m having a problem with will lie to me & either tell me THEY are the manager when clearly they aren’t (when I ask to speak to one) or there is no manager around.Cable & Wireless has done that to me 3 times at 2 different locations.What’s interesting is that they don’t fear losing their job at all. In fact when I ask for their name they are more than happy to give it to me since clearly lying is encouraged at the managerial level.
   Tica Bus did that to me too.
2. They will say they are going to give the manager a message, but they never do. 9 times out of 10 your phone message will never get delivered.
3. Instead of just telling you they aren’t available, they will lie to you & tell you they are & then either ignore your phone calls or just disappear.They also say they will call you, but never do. If you think you know someone like this in North America, imagine a WHOLE country being like this.
4. It seems some Panamanians like to threaten. I had a landlady who swore she was coming with the Mayor to throw me out onto the streets with no notice. Almost 3 weeks later, still no Mayor. I heard they like to tout they know people & connected, but aren’t.I just spoke to the Mayor’s assistant & she said he is a fair man, he would never come to a house to throw someone out without just cause.
5. Just had a security guard from Novey lie. He wouldn’t let us in to buy a lighbulb. Of course it wasn’t quite 8 pm yet, but that doesn’t matter in this country, stores close whenever they want with no regard to wasting a customer’s time.Anyway, this was in Albrook, so he told us to go over to Do it Center.

   Sure enough, we walk all the way there up the escalator lugging all our things, & they were CLOSED too.

   There’s no way in hell this guy didn’t know that. They are just 5 minutes from one another.

6. Not all the time, but sometimes Panamanians will tell you they don’t speak English & then they start speaking English. While technically this is a lie, sometimes I think it’s because they are ashamed they aren’t fluent. Other times it’s because they don’t want to be helpful in communicating. They think if you don’t speak Spanish, forget it, don’t talk to me.