Little Lingonberry Jam

Moving weekend has come and gone. I have succeeded in getting out of the old apartment and leaving it in tidy shape. Getting into the new place is another story. I have no furniture yet, just a cushion on the floor to sleep on, 20 boxes of stuff and a mess in every direction. Time's up on the weekend and looks like it will have to wait until next weekend.

I ordered a table yesterday afternoon and afterwards I managed a trip to Ikea to get a few basics to jump start the apartment. It was the usual madhouse. If you don't know what I mean, I am about to tell you.

The Germans love, love, LOVE Ikea. It is completely packed any hour during which it is open. Combine this with the German inability to sense others around them, add in two hundred lost and screaming children and aisles wide enough only for precisely 1.5 carts (no room for passing) and you get the picture. You spend the hours cart ramming, getting butt rammed, wishing they would ban children from all Ikeas and wondering why people can't pull off the main track for discussions about the avocado green vs. the burnt orange and why the heat is on full blast when it is already 30 degrees in the building.

And the hours? Yes, Ikea is designed as a rat maze and only the most clever stand a chance to get out of there for the reward of the Exploding (as my friend A. calls them) 1 Euro Hot Dogs at the end. Exploding because they are so tightly wrapped in the casing that one bite causes a pressure release sure to land half the hot dog on the wall across the room.

As usual, I digress. I paid my dues. I walked for 2 hours through the maze. Sat on furniture. Opened and closed drawers. Bounced on a bed. Piled up my cart with nothing I came for and everything I didn't. Good girl.

When I came to the checkout lines, all about 10 people with heaping carts of things they didn't come for long, I remembered two small things. One, they don't take credit cards. Only cash and EC cards. Two, I had 40 Euros in cash and my EC card somehow got demagnetized and I am waiting for the replacement.

Scheiss. Scheiss. Scheiss. To put it politely.

What to do? I remembered that last time my card lost its magnetic strip it worked in some stores if they had the kind of reader where you leave the card in and just punch in your pin number. So before going through the whole line, having the cashier zap my two hundred unnecessary items and then finding out my card didn't work, I decided to do a test purchase. I slid my cart out of the way, went over to the food store and looked for something to buy.

At Ikea it could be none other than the Lingonberry Jam. Well, either that or the thin ginger cookies. But I am on a diet so I went with the Lingonberry Jam. Handed over the card, sure enough, it worked. Excellent.

I headed back to my cart which had patiently waited for me and got into the endless line to check out. Three rounds of bumper butt later I pulled up to the register and watched all the items go. Handed over the card. Fail.

What?

Two more times. Fail.

How utterly predictable. Me, two hundred items, 10 German families behind me and the card doesn't work.

But I don't give up that easily. Oh no. I assured the cashier I would be back. She canceled my order and I placed my cart again in hiding. I wasn't going to let 3 precious hours during an extremely busy weekend go to waste. No way.

I got in the car, headed down the road and looked for an ATM to use with my American bank card. Plenty of money there and the card still worked as far as I knew.

I arrived at the bank, stuffed the card in the machine and started punching. Pin code, withdrawal amount. Clickety click, clickety clack. Fail.

What? Now what?

'Your bank has instructed us to keep your card.'

I started seeing red and breaking a sweat. The precise moment when it can only mean one thing. Everything is stupid. Stoopid! Ikea, Germany, bank cards, not taking credit cards at stores, Ikea closing for the weekend in 1 hour, the timing of my card breakdown, moving.. ugh.

I get knocked down, but I get up again.

I decided to call Wachovia. The nice lady on the phone told me that I was trying to take out more than my daily limit. No, she couldn't change it. In the end, I left with significantly less than was needed for my purchases. Somehow I was feeling like a student again, sweating my account balance to the penny.

I got back to Ikea, went for my cart. Fail.

They were cleaning up for the night. All abandoned carts sent for restock.

In my broken German I asked one of the guys on the floor where the cart was that I had left right there. Right there! He explained I may be able to find it near warehouse door 27. So off I went running.

Reunited and it feels so good.

Trying to salvage what I could of my evening in Ikea, I started to make the hard choices. Spatulas or cutting boards. Small frying pan or bathmats. Slowly the inevitable sunk in. I was going to have to come back as there wasn't enough money for all the must haves.

I got back in the 10 person line. This time we played ankle biter with the cart behind me. Not as much cushioning on my ankles as my butt. Ouchie. I bought my reduced inventory and headed out into the cool night air trying to breathe normally again away from the stifling heat.

After arriving home, a message from A. on my Facebook. 'I need new pillows. If you fancy a trip back to Ikea soon, let's ride together.' I immediately broke out in hives.

I'm going downstairs to make a Lingonberry sandwich and contemplate the beauty of amazon.de.

Posted from Munich

Customer Service

My grandmother used to work in retail and would tell the stories about how customer service used to be back in the day. She would tell funny stories about women returning purses used for one special night and acting completely oblivious to the fact that the lining was full of face powder. In the end, the customer was the customer and the customer was always right.

While I think the US has become more of a sales focused economy without too much worry about customer satisfaction or service, even in the selling stage there seems to be a lapse in attention. I mean, walk into a cellular store to buy a new mobile phone, a fast food store to buy a cheeseburger or a shoe store to try on some shoes that you could potentially buy and your odds of being helped let alone someone being friendly about it are slim to none.

Since I have been here, I have been impressed with the customer service. Start with Lufthansa for example. On my first flight to Germany, the people at the check in counter didn't argue with me about 3 lbs over the luggage allowance. The flight attendants were pleasant but not in your face. I didn't feel like they were doing me a favor giving me a second glass of wine or even acknowledging my existence.

On my first shoe shopping trip, the woman polished up the shoes, sprayed on some waterproofing spray and gave me some shoe forms for keeping them in shape. When I bought a pair of sunglasses, the shopkeeper fitted a brand new pair for me (not the one on the display rack), cleaned them up and gave me a nice case to keep them in.

When I bought skis, the salesman was knowledgeable and listened to what I wanted from my skis. He knew every model in the store and could recommend several in the right price range and skill level.

A few months ago, my DVD player went kaputt. It was past the warranty and I had lost the receipt but when we brought it back to MediaMarkt they took it and offered to try to make the repair or they would exchange it.

Not everything is so rosy. Waiters are notoriously slow and forget you exist once they drop the food on your table. Store workers always have right of way, even if they are blocking the one jar that you must have for your dinner that night. Sometimes the rules are the rules and there is no bending them. That one day past the warranty is one day too late.

All in all though, the service here is more like the days my grandmother told me about, when the point was to sell once and keep them coming back for more.

Posted from Basel