Things that I wish...

I would like to present the inaugural entry in what will become an ongoing series on this blog entitled “Things That I Wish…” This series will largely feature my small-minded and imperialist critiques of other cultures, specifically the things people of these cultures do that I wish they wouldn’t, or don’t do that I wish they would, or are secretly planning to do to me in my sleep but haven’t yet (Russia, I am on to you). Rest assured that the Russians will not be alone in bearing the brunt of my wrath. Given the manifold challenges and daily annoyances of living in a foreign country, there is plenty of brunt to go around. Such folks who see fit to wantonly act in a way that detracts from my comfort and convenience can expect to find themselves held up as an example of their people and their behavior generalized to every member of their culture or nationality. It’s on the Internet. You have been warned.

I’ve decided to kick off this venture with what will probably become the biggest bone of contention between me and the motherland in the coming months. I can 100% guarantee, or your money back, that this is not the last time you will hear from me about this topic.

Things that I wish Russians would do that they don’t: Customer Service

I wrote about this the last time I came to Russia, but clearly not enough Russians read my blog (shaaaame), so I’m going to write about it again right now, and I will continue to write about it every time I can’t think of anything else to say and an embarrassingly long period has gone by without my blog being updated. Americans tend to think that anyone who works in a business directly tied to helping us is a complete and utter incompetent, and not only an incompetent, but one whose grasp of English is so tenuous or heavily accented as to render it another tongue entirely. Well, I write you now to tell you to pick up the phone and call the first customer service hotline that comes to mind (yes, even if it’s Comcast), and thank them. Thank them for trying. Thank them for following a script, however begrudgingly, which demands that they pretend that you are always right. Thank them for the insincere smile in their voice. If you can, try to thank them in their native tongue. Do this. Think of it like going to your estranged relative on their deathbed to make things right. Do this, because Uncle Morty may die at any moment and you may find yourself in Russia, filled with a thousand regrets and no where near anyone who speaks enough English, or Spanglish, or Hindi-but-it-sort-of-sounds-like-English to help you buy your computer adaptors and kitchen utensils and wouldn’t bother helping even if you could make yourself understood.

Assuming you got through that tangle of mixed metaphors and are still hanging with me, allow me to elaborate. There is an unwritten law in Russia that states that no one may be hired in the service industries unless they indiscriminately hate people. It’s that simple. Here is what I imagine the application looks like for a job at, say, my local grocery store:

First Name:
Patronymic:
Last Name:
Do you hate people?
Discriminately or indiscriminately?

The follow-up interview, I imagine, goes something like this:

Which of the following adjectives would you say best describes you:

a) bitter
b) angry
c) disdainful
d) all of the above, and some other ones as well that you couldn’t print in a family newspaper

You can guess which applicants get the job.

The problems with the Russian service industry are magnified by a special, Russian form of torture known as the kassa. The kassa is kind of a mix between a store and one of the outer layers of hell. Instead of picking out the things you want and bringing them up to the checkout counter to pay for them—brilliant! who thought of that?—all of the goods in the store are behind a counter and you have to ask for each item you require specifically. If it’s an especially vicious kassa, you will not even then receive your item. You will receive a receipt for it, go to another counter, pay for it, get another receipt, go back to your original counter, and only then retrieve your purchase. This means that, at a minimum, you have to interact in a meaningful way with at least two of the most misanthropic specimens humanity has to offer. More likely, you’ll need to frequent at least three counters because, oh yes, did we mention that different kinds of goods are kept at different parts of the store, behind counters manned by different people, the only similarity between whom will be their inability to understand anything you say and their unwillingness to try? Well, let us mention it now. It blows the big one.

If you’re imagining this along with me, make sure you fill in the part where every time you approach a salesperson anew, they act as though they have never seen you before and have never fulfilled such an idiotic, time-wasting, incomprehensible request as you have made. What, fetch the Tupperware you purchased? Why would I do that? Oh, you say you were here five minutes ago? Wasn’t it enough that I went all out of my way to write you that receipt for the Tupperware? What more do you want from me? Don’t you know that I have important things to be doing? Can’t you understand that I just applied a coat of nail polish? You’re going to make me chip my nails. Fine, Jesus, don’t get all irate; I’ll bring you your damn Tupperware. God. Your Russian sucks.

That’s sort of what I imagine to be the inner-monologue of the woman behind the counter at my local home-appliance store.

An illustrative example: I recently had to purchase a water filter. I had high expectations for this water filter. I was depending on it to take the not-chemically-uncomplicated mixture that pours from the Russia faucet, which may or may not contain any or all of the following—dirt, rust, lead, giardia, chlorine, fluoride, cholera, multi-antibiotic resistant strains of tuberculosis—and render it close enough to H₂O boil pasta in. So you can see, the purchase of the water filter was a matter of some importance.

I go to a home goods store near my apartment, which turns out to operate kassa-style, vicious type. Skipping the part where I have to first find out where the water filters are, for brevity’s sake (too late), I stand in front of the glass case displaying the models the store offers, stare at them for an unnecessarily long period of time, and decide that the smallest, cheapest one will do just fine. I go to the counter and ask for it. No, no, the salesman says to me, you don’t want that one. You want this other one, it is larger and comes with two, yes two, filters! No, I say, that one is more expensive, and I don’t need two filters. I want the small and cheap one. But no! he says. This one is blahdy blah your sink blahdy blahdy blah two filters! I’m sorry, I say, I don’t speak Russian very well, and I don’t understand most of what you’re saying. I just want this water filter. This one, right here. At this point, he starts yelling at me. Let me repeat that. He yelled at me. Someone whose job it is to ensure my happy patronage of their establishment yelled at me, because I failed to recognize the logical superiority of their preferred brand of water filter. Finally, through a cunning combination of looks of incomprehension and poorly articulated pleas, I get him to give me a receipt for the thing, I pay the woman at the cash register, who has been watching this whole exchange with the scornful surliness that women at cash registers in Russia are so good at projecting, and return to the sales guy. He goes and gets my water filter, opens it up, and takes out the pieces to show me, banging each one furiously on the table and emphasizing his displeasure with remarks like, “Look, here is your small container,” and “ONE water filter.” Finally, he packs it all up, shoves it at me, and waves me away, muttering to himself. Did you catch the part where HE YELLED AT ME? Could I complain to the manager? Where do you think I am, Germany? And could I take my business elsewhere? No, because I’d been to two other stores already looking for a water filter and they hadn’t had any. This is part of the reason Russians don’t feel the need to be polite. Ultimately, any given store is likely to contain a fairly unique mixture of goods, the ones of which you need will prove impossible to track down at another store. They know they’ve got you trapped. Capitalism, fail. The kicker to this whole thing is, I get home and discover that if my filter was any bigger, it wouldn’t have fit into my fridge anyway. Me, win.