Chilean Phenomenon #2: Confort

A reconsideration of the inelasticity of demand of toilet paper

In many places in Chile, one will not only find, but rather come to expect toilet paper not to be a luxury accompanying bathroom services. The industry, overcome by a Kleenex-like marvel in which the entire country calls the product by a brand name - “Confort” -, is also not graced with a Charmin-style quality level perhaps implied by the name (Comfort in English), but comes in a more which-grain-of-sand-paper-would-you-like variety? Nice bathrooms do generally have toilet paper in the stalls, however the majority of bathrooms just have one roll outside of all the stalls, which has a 3 to 1 chance of being empty. Some bathrooms employ people to hand out a few squares Soviet Union-allowance-style to those willing to pay. And then there’s the approximately 14.5% of bathrooms that just don’t have toilet paper. Coming from a country where toilet paper is so taken for granted that we have full Seinfeld episodes devoted to “sparing a square”, it can be hard for Americans to get used to the frequent lack of toilet paper. Most begin carrying a roll with them in their backpacks, some take up what we experts like to call the “drip-dry” method. Some of us with very small blathers have developed somewhat of a complex and wake up in the middle of the night, desperately having to run to the bathroom after nightmares of TP-less bathrooms. It very much depends on the person. Discovering that your own home, in fact, is out of toilet paper, is a rather special situation, but one that I gather from my friends is not as common as I might think. I’m just the one with all the luck. And if you think it’s amazing that I just managed to easily turn out 300 words on toilets in Chile, you’re only beginning to understand the obsession that overcomes you when living here.