When my job gave me the opportunity to move to Puerto Rico they told me “Make sure you don’t do things on island time and make sure you give them some Texas.”  I really didn’t know what they meant.  I just said “OK, don’t worry.”

I now understand why the Texas facility treats the Puerto Rico facility the way they do.  Nothing ever gets done on time in PR.  The reason… the PR facility runs on “island time”.  Everything is always put off until manana.  Where I work, we have to keep logs of our daily activities.  I usually do 5x the amount of work they do daily.  It’s not because I am smart by any means.  I just want to get things done on time - today.

Island time can be good though.  When I want to see it, I head over to a city on the west side of the island such as Rincon or Aguadilla where people tend to be more laid back.  When I am here, I don’t mind if my meal takes 5x the amount of time it should have.  People are so much more friendly putting things off til manana.

So really what do you pick?  Being the gringo that I am, or at least raised how I was…  I was always taught not to do things half ass.  But when you do that you are more stressed and unfriendly.  I guess you should have a mix of both.