Quarter Life Crisis

The world according to Sven-S. Porst

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Retail horror

359 words

I may have made clear before that I don't really like to go shopping. I may have also made clear that I am particularly disgruntled with the level of service and friendliness you regularly experience in Germany. Today there were two further experiences to add to the bad image.

First we went to buy wine. For a change we went to a proper wine merchant. I bought wine with them before in their downtown shop and the service was competent and friendly and the wine reasonably good – and actually not more expensive than in the supermarket. As I want to invite people on Sunday, I needed a few bottles which aren't too good to transport by bike so we went to their out-of-town shop where you can go by car. And that guy was having a bad day.

He was really stressed because the shop was packed, i.e. three parties trying to buy wine. And while the couple who were first in the queue were rather annoying, he should've handled them more efficiently. Then the little machine for the debit cards choked on the paper and he lost it, cursing and all. I don't mind cursing really, but I don't consider it particularly professional behaviour either.

Later, in the supermarket, the checkout girl was very nervous and had the most irritating voice. The guy in front of us disputed the price of an item – and while again he was a pathetic moron, she should've still remained friendly. When I paid, she even checked the lower crate of beer whether I didn't cheat with its contents and checked whether some boxes really contained the items they were supposed to contain. I find this insulting. In particular when she doesn't check the box of eggs as well for possibly broken ones as I'd expect from a polite checkout person.

Throughout the mall with the supermarket there were lots of different annoying 'promotion' activities each of them playing their own loud music. Eeek. And we parked the car in the Itchy parking lot – no the Scratchy parking lot – no the Itchy parking lot ...

Bad bad bad.

September 5, 2003, 21:09

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