The service desert

It has been a while since Germany defeated me. I would say I've been on a winning streak for at least the past year. But just when I started to get a little too comfortable, a little cocky even, I wandered into the service desert.

These things happened to me on the same day in Hannover:

I had to transfer a chunk of money from my German savings account to my German checking account (so that I could transfer it to an exchange service that would wire it to my US checking so that I could transfer it to my US savings... such is the fun of international banking). I knew that the amount was too big to do an online transfer, so I went to the bank. I filled out the form. I talked to the guy. He looked at my form, took it and sent me on my way. A week later, I got a letter from the bank saying that my form was unreadable. So I went back to the bank with the letter, filled out another form and talked to the very same guy.

"It's says 'unreadable' but I don't know what I did wrong," I tell him.
"You didn't put a line after the zeros," he said, looking at me as if I must have flunked third grade math (which I actually did).
"Yes," I said, "but you looked at this when I gave it to you. We talked about the amount. You didn't tell me to write any line."
"Well, some people put a strange number of zeros and if you don't write a line then they don't know what you are trying to say. You should go to the machine downstairs and type in all the information. Then it will be correct."
"But I am here now, talking to you."
"Yes, so just go down there and type in all the information."
"So you want me to go to the machine so I can do all this again and throw the form away?"
"Well, you probably shouldn't throw the form away until afterward when you know the transfer went through".
Danke.

On this same day I went to the Mac store. After four years, our beloved MacBook was starting to break down. I had taken it to the Mac store to get looked at, and was sent home with an appointment for ten days later. So I returned on the appointed day and left my computer at the store. The tech told me it would be ready in two days. Five days later they called to say it was ready.

The Mac store is supposed to be a hip, cool place. The staff wear t-shirts and headsets and jeans. There are no service counters, just a big table called the Genius Bar where the customers wait. Obviously, however, we are not geniuses. Otherwise we would not be here. We have dropped our iPhones in toilets and smashed the screens of our iPads.

The Mac store in Hannover has the same open floor plan as any other location, and the staff call all the customers the informal 'du' rather than the standard 'Sie'. Except the open floor plan doesn't really work in Germany. People here are used to order and hierarchy and this whole laid-back California attitude just won't do. It doesn't take long before a single-file line forms behind the Genius Bar. When I got to the front of that line, I was instructed to go wait at a different table. Then the guy with the headset showed up and told me I was at the wrong nondescript wooden table and needed to sit precisely at the end of the next one in order to be served. Silly me, I thought we were relaxed around here.

There's a word in German: Servicewüste, which means service desert. It originated from a Der Spiegel article in 1995 entitled 'Servicewüste Deutschland'. It's a word in German, created by Germans, who seem to know that their customer service stinks and they can't do much about it. I thought of this word when I saw a grocery store cashier arguing with a customer at the register the otehr day. It's not service with a smile. If you want a smile you'll have to earn it. We don't give them out for free.

I've found that on visits back to the States, I am shocked when the sales girl in a store asks how I'm doing and whether she can help me find anything and just so I know denim is buy one get one half off today. I don't know how to respond. Part of me wants to tell her to quit being so nosy and leave me alone to shop in silence like they do in Germany.
I guess I've gotten used to the desert.

So if you are in Germany, just remember that the customer is not necessarily right.  And bring your own canteen - it's a desert out there.