Russia Breaks My Brain
I don't understand this place, I just live here.
#09: Save your Receipts
Tuesday, November 25, 2003
Hi folks, here's another gut-wrenching edition about some of the oddities of living in the weirdest place on earth. Scarily enough, after these last 3 months(!), I've realized that I've started getting used to a number of things here, and will get to go through a reverse culture shock when I come home to the US (more than 6 hours of sunlight a day, a different set of bad pop music, fat people, etc.) But I can't say I've gone native exactly (especially when I try to say things in Russian), and so I've got some more tidbits to share with everyone.
To follow up the Thanksgiving update (which I guess came a bit early), I'm basing this email on the wonderful tradition of Black Friday. Granted, Black Friday doesn't happen here, but shopping can still be a total pain in the ass anyway.
It was particularly difficult when I first got here and couldn't communicate with anyone. As much as I wanted food, and even though I had money, I couldn't just go into any store and get something to eat. This is because many, if not most grocery stores here are still "soviet style," which means they're just ridiculous exercises in frustration. What I would have done for an "Express Checkout" line.
The way these stores "work" is that all products are kept behind counters, or on display in cases. You stand in line to get to the counter, then (and here's the important part) ask for what you want from the person behind the counter. Naturally, this wasn't much of an option for me when I didn't have any food vocabulary really. (Although I did better than another student I met who couldn't find a way to purchase water for his first 48 hours in the country.) All I could do was point a lot, but that wouldn't quite do it. Because after you've told them what you want, they give you a receipt to take to the cashier, in another part of the store. So you stand in that line, pay, then go stand in line at the original counter again to pick up what you've bought. Each counter has different products and a different person to deal with, and they NEVER overlap. So if you want something from the dairy counter, but the girl isn't there, even if there is an employee right next to you at the meat counter, she isn't going to come help you. You wait. You also have to stand in multiple lines to pick up your stuff. I've been trying to figure out what the potential advantages of this system may be, and I'm pretty sure they don't exist. It's just annoying.
The trick has then been to find "western style" grocery stores, which are starting to take hold here. You have no idea what a luxury it is to pick your own food off the shelf, then pay all at once. The Russians seem to like the new stores too, and the old ones are having to compete by acting more like small convenience stores (ha!) that are open 24 hours or something. This is also in competition with the many many kiosks on the street, usually open 24 hours, selling essentials like beer, milk, magazines, beer, cookies and beer. But you have to ask people for things there too which, with my bad pronunciation, means lots of annoyed looks and eye-rolling from the staff.
Non-food stores employ various degrees of the soviet style system too, although I think that is changing as well. You can now just walk up and buy whatever in lots of places, as long as you have correct change.
I'm not sure why change is such a huge issue here, but it is. If you walk up with a large bill, the cashier will often be pissed. And will tell you about it. Even if your bill isn't that much bigger than the total, they still want you to have coins so that they can give you your change in some denomination of 10 roubles. (ie- total is 32 roubles, you pay with a 50. They will demand 52 instead, even going as far as insiting that you show them whatever coins you have in your pocket to prove you don't have correct change.) I don't know if this is due to a simple lack of currency or what, but no one wants to make change for you unless it's a place frequented by tourists, who are considered to not be worth arguing with.
It does go both ways though. A cashier once didn't have enough single rouble coins for me, and so she wrote that I was owed 1 rouble on the back of the receipt, stamped it to make it official, and then told me I could use it later. I think I'm just saving it as a souviner instead, even if that one coin could later spare me a lecture in Russian.
Prices here vary quite a bit. Expensive items, like computer stuff or coats, cost just about as much as they do in the US. Food is a bit more affordable though. To demonstrate what good capitalists everyone here has become, prices are uh, very sensitive to external conditions. While I've heard stories of confusion with capitalist pricing ideas in the early 90's, (when a company wanted to buy supplies in bulk, they were given a price-per-unit higher than a single unit, because the supplier figured they wanted the supplies more than the average person and would pay inflated prices,) things seem to be very efficient now.
Produce prices go up in the winter. At my favorite cafe, they used to charge you extra for sugar with your tea, (just as McDonald's charges you extra for every packet of ketchup). But now, as tourist season is over, the tea is cheaper and the sugar is free. Movie theaters are also into time-sensitive pricing, as there are 4 tiers of prices for tickets throughout the day (only $1.50 to see a movie at 10:00 am!), and new movies cost more than old movies. Well, at the theater anyway.
Instead, you could always buy the movie on DVD for a couple dollars. Every big movie seems to be out on DVD here by the time it opens in the US, available all over the place thanks to a very good piracey system. Music is everywhere too, and you can even buy MP3 CD's, which come with extra goodies like Winamp and album liner photos included. And all that without the stupid receipt system!
So now you can all speculate about what you'll be getting for Christmas.
That's it for this edition of Bizarritude.
Paka,
-Angry Giant
Hi folks, here's another gut-wrenching edition about some of the oddities of living in the weirdest place on earth. Scarily enough, after these last 3 months(!), I've realized that I've started getting used to a number of things here, and will get to go through a reverse culture shock when I come home to the US (more than 6 hours of sunlight a day, a different set of bad pop music, fat people, etc.) But I can't say I've gone native exactly (especially when I try to say things in Russian), and so I've got some more tidbits to share with everyone.
To follow up the Thanksgiving update (which I guess came a bit early), I'm basing this email on the wonderful tradition of Black Friday. Granted, Black Friday doesn't happen here, but shopping can still be a total pain in the ass anyway.
It was particularly difficult when I first got here and couldn't communicate with anyone. As much as I wanted food, and even though I had money, I couldn't just go into any store and get something to eat. This is because many, if not most grocery stores here are still "soviet style," which means they're just ridiculous exercises in frustration. What I would have done for an "Express Checkout" line.
The way these stores "work" is that all products are kept behind counters, or on display in cases. You stand in line to get to the counter, then (and here's the important part) ask for what you want from the person behind the counter. Naturally, this wasn't much of an option for me when I didn't have any food vocabulary really. (Although I did better than another student I met who couldn't find a way to purchase water for his first 48 hours in the country.) All I could do was point a lot, but that wouldn't quite do it. Because after you've told them what you want, they give you a receipt to take to the cashier, in another part of the store. So you stand in that line, pay, then go stand in line at the original counter again to pick up what you've bought. Each counter has different products and a different person to deal with, and they NEVER overlap. So if you want something from the dairy counter, but the girl isn't there, even if there is an employee right next to you at the meat counter, she isn't going to come help you. You wait. You also have to stand in multiple lines to pick up your stuff. I've been trying to figure out what the potential advantages of this system may be, and I'm pretty sure they don't exist. It's just annoying.
The trick has then been to find "western style" grocery stores, which are starting to take hold here. You have no idea what a luxury it is to pick your own food off the shelf, then pay all at once. The Russians seem to like the new stores too, and the old ones are having to compete by acting more like small convenience stores (ha!) that are open 24 hours or something. This is also in competition with the many many kiosks on the street, usually open 24 hours, selling essentials like beer, milk, magazines, beer, cookies and beer. But you have to ask people for things there too which, with my bad pronunciation, means lots of annoyed looks and eye-rolling from the staff.
Non-food stores employ various degrees of the soviet style system too, although I think that is changing as well. You can now just walk up and buy whatever in lots of places, as long as you have correct change.
I'm not sure why change is such a huge issue here, but it is. If you walk up with a large bill, the cashier will often be pissed. And will tell you about it. Even if your bill isn't that much bigger than the total, they still want you to have coins so that they can give you your change in some denomination of 10 roubles. (ie- total is 32 roubles, you pay with a 50. They will demand 52 instead, even going as far as insiting that you show them whatever coins you have in your pocket to prove you don't have correct change.) I don't know if this is due to a simple lack of currency or what, but no one wants to make change for you unless it's a place frequented by tourists, who are considered to not be worth arguing with.
It does go both ways though. A cashier once didn't have enough single rouble coins for me, and so she wrote that I was owed 1 rouble on the back of the receipt, stamped it to make it official, and then told me I could use it later. I think I'm just saving it as a souviner instead, even if that one coin could later spare me a lecture in Russian.
Prices here vary quite a bit. Expensive items, like computer stuff or coats, cost just about as much as they do in the US. Food is a bit more affordable though. To demonstrate what good capitalists everyone here has become, prices are uh, very sensitive to external conditions. While I've heard stories of confusion with capitalist pricing ideas in the early 90's, (when a company wanted to buy supplies in bulk, they were given a price-per-unit higher than a single unit, because the supplier figured they wanted the supplies more than the average person and would pay inflated prices,) things seem to be very efficient now.
Produce prices go up in the winter. At my favorite cafe, they used to charge you extra for sugar with your tea, (just as McDonald's charges you extra for every packet of ketchup). But now, as tourist season is over, the tea is cheaper and the sugar is free. Movie theaters are also into time-sensitive pricing, as there are 4 tiers of prices for tickets throughout the day (only $1.50 to see a movie at 10:00 am!), and new movies cost more than old movies. Well, at the theater anyway.
Instead, you could always buy the movie on DVD for a couple dollars. Every big movie seems to be out on DVD here by the time it opens in the US, available all over the place thanks to a very good piracey system. Music is everywhere too, and you can even buy MP3 CD's, which come with extra goodies like Winamp and album liner photos included. And all that without the stupid receipt system!
So now you can all speculate about what you'll be getting for Christmas.
That's it for this edition of Bizarritude.
Paka,
-Angry Giant