Hi,
It called Mazliah (successful) method.
The name is after the joke: Two people sit in a restaurant, eat and drink. When they ask for a bill the waitress serve them the piece of paper and they going through it. It got all the dishes they ate and their price, and another thing called “Successful”. They don’t remember anything like it and asks the waitress what is it. The waitress is taking out his pen, erasing the price, change the total sum and write “un” before the word successful which now spells unsuccessful….
Well, if you think it is funny wait till you realize it is not a joke, but a way of living, the Mazliah Method. Maybe it is the Israeli chutzpah, that us do it to one another. I can tell how today someone asked me to do something that is under responsibility, and hope I won’t pay attention and do it for him. When I told him, he need to do it, he laughed and said “it was worth trying” :-).
But when it is part of how people treat to each other, I can (half) understand. But not when the authorities act that way. Yesterday I got two letters from the water authority of the city we used to live in. One asked for 40 NIS (about 10$) and the other for 80 NIS. They claimed we haven’t got my final water bill right for the apartment we lived in, and I still owe them money. I kept all my water bills for the those apartments (Atzva keep ask me to throw it away), and I was planning on dealing with them. But the amount of time I will probably have to spend on it, is probably much more than 120 NIS.
This is how it goes here: everybody’s try to get some, and if they get cought we smile and laugh. Even the government and authrities (they don’t smile, but still try to get some).
Take care
Gad