Back in the USSR

Back in tenth grade, the sister of my government professor, who formerly worked in the Soviet Union and in the satellite nations, came into our class and talked about what it was like to live daily life under communism. The one thing that has stuck in my mind the most is her descriptions of restaurants in the Soviet Union. She described how one would walk into such an establishment, hoping, like the ridiculously over-pampered capitalistic westerner one was, to be served food. The waiters, however, had pretty much gotten the hang of this communism thing by that point, specifically the classic description of communism as "We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us." The restaurant staff took the "wait" out of "waiter" and ran away with it into the night, cackling madly. You would enter the restaurant. They would look over in your direction, and, if in a generous mood, grant you a sneer. You would sit down. Maybe they would take your order, although your order would in no way correspond to the food that they would bring you, which was really okay, because the food would in no way correspond with the dictionary definition of "edible." Eventually you would leave, probably without giving them the tip that they weren't allowed to accept anyway. In conclusion, it was a highly successful experience for all involved, with the exclusion of the underfed customer, the underpaid staff, and the underworked Soviet economy.

I try your time and mine with anecdotes of times gone by because I'm beginning to suspect that communism just gave restaurant workers an excuse to be just as surly as they would have been anyways without the benefit of a fixed income no matter their job performance. Trying to eat in Russia is a frightening prospect, and I'm not only talking about the food. (This, at times, transcends frightening into another whole dimension of badness yet to be covered by the English language but for which Russian probably has five or six words. Like the Inuits and their forty-some words for "snow," the Russian lexicon is rife with very specific ways to describe your terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.) Russians have a saying which, roughly (re: poorly) translated means, "He who smiles for no reason is an idiot." What this means for you trying to live your daily life in Russia is that customer service is nonexistent. If at a cafe, you will place your order for food with a cashier who will not promptly acknowledge your presence, will not greet you once she deigns to notice you standing there, will certainly not smile warmly at you, will resent the fact that you have troubled her and be down right angry that you do not have exact change, will almost certainly not hand the right change back to you, will mumble and slur in order to as much as possible hinder your understanding of the transaction, and in the end, will bring you the wrong food. I'm pretty sure that all of the build-up leads to that moment when you receive the wrong dish (a healthy amount of time later, I might add) and are by that point to afraid to change it for the right one.

I experienced pretty much every single one of the above-described steps today when I went to a sushi bar in downtown St. Petersburg.(Fun sidenote: Russians are crazy about sushi. I don't know why, but I approve.) My experience was not helped by the fact that I was the lone American with two Russians, who, obviously, being Russian, spoke fluent Russian instead of annoying, halting foreigner pidgin Russian. We had to hail a waitress three or four times; we ordered the simplest items on the menu; our food came 40 minutes later, and when it did, it was minus half the order (this is where the two Russians came in handy, as they were brave enough to demand the rest of the food). On the plus side, this particular cafe has частливые часы, which makes no sense in Russian but directly translated means "happy hours." Supposedly this means that two eat for the price of one, but what it really means is that if you order something relatively cheap, they make you pay the full amount and the bring you twice as much food (which is an important distinction, as you end up paying the same amount of money and end up eating more than you wanted to or wasting half the order and getting no discount, unless you have someone to split with). On the even pluser side, I am now full of sushi.

In conclusion, I'm at the point where I sort of find the attitude towards customer service in Russia kind of funny as opposed to deeply aggravating. It helps that I've now realized that wait-staff are rude to everyone, and that it's not the fact that I'm mildly incompetent at speaking Russian that's getting me the communist treatment. Furthermore, I'm willing to brave pretty much all but the most dire of circumstances (or high of prices) to get my hands on food that isn't some re-combination of meat, potatoes, and salt.

Fun economic note: Most facilities in Russia are chronically short on change, which explains some of the widespread resentment of foreigners, who walk around trying to use 1000 or 500 ruble bills for 50 ruble purchases. If you have correct change, it's worth it to take a few extra minutes digging around in your purse to get it before you walk up to the cash register. However, complicating this problem is the issue of Russian pride. I tried to hand the cashier at the local food supermarket 52 rubles for a 42 ruble purchase, only to have her throw the 2 rubles back at me and say loudly, "Here we have change." In conclusion, shopping in Russia is never just shopping, but a cultural exchange in which the opportunities for behaving like a stupid American are not only multifarious, but in fact impossible to avoid.