Service with a smile

I reached a milestone today, my local supermarket became home.

A GS opened nearly two years ago just a few blocks away and I am a faithful client (when I need things that Pina doesn't supply). I have passed through one of the four cash registers hundreds of times that are manned by the same cashiers, day after day, week after week, month after month, and now year after year. No one had ever noticed or acknowledged my consistent presence across the bar chart reader -- never a "have a good day" or "can I help you" or any one of those quaint phrases. Nothing beyond, "card?" "change?" "how many bags?". Never any direct eye contact, nor interest. Any conversation took place among themselves, talking through you to the cashier on next line over.

Until today. The gum chewing 20-something year old with the black and blond streaked long hair and lots of eye-liner that makes her look slightly Egyptian suddenly looked up as the last item beeped passed the bar-code reader, actually saw me, and asked, "How do you cook this?" The item in question was a bag of mixed greens (cabbage, spinach, escarole and such). After recovering from the shock of this intimate interaction, I told her that I usually just boiled it, like spinach. She turned the bag over, looked at the ingredients and continued, "Could I also pass in the pan with some oil?" Suddenly having become a mixed greens expert, I responded slowly and with authority that she could also do that. But it didn't stop there (although the line was getting longer), "What does it taste like?" she continued as she turned back make a total. "A bit tart, with the cabbage, but not too much because of the other vegetables. I like it, my kids a bit less." She smiled (!!) and that was that.

It has taken over a year, but I have slowly, silently created a "relationship" with my local supermarket cashier just by regularly showing up in front of her. Who knows what may come of this new development -- maybe she will even keep the line open for me when it closes for everyone else, or whisper in my ear that she is going to open a new cash register so that I can discretely be the first in line.

Creating relationships takes time, but they always pay off. You rarely receive (what we would consider to be) service on first sight, you have to earn it by becoming a regular, day after day, week after week, month after month....

a domani,
E

Starting over, again

I had lunch today with a friend who is visiting from the US after having lived in Rome for a few years.

I asked her about "return culture shock" as she and her husband are now living in a small town in the deep South. "Well, life is certainly is different than it was in Rome!" she replied, as she dug into a plate of bresaola e rughetta con gusto.

Her husband, though, is enjoying being back in the land of certainty with all its clearly defined rules and direct communications, especially on the work front. But when I told her about this blog entry on differences in "tolerance of ambiguity", she nodded and added that, for him, it is also a "lack of continuity" that keeps American businesses from investing in Italy. Potential investors often find that working with one company management does not guarantee that the ball will be passed to the next, particularly in the case of large mainly state-run companies. With long and complex projects, you keep starting over again and this can wear on investor's patience to the point where they take the ball and go home. "Just like in government," I inserted -- this frustrating way of cancelling the previous administration's good works in order to start from scratch with brand new program.

Is it a question of trust? After so many centuries of starting over and over again under new ruling kings and popes and countries, Italians have learned not to believe that a previous administration's work could flow into the present one in the name of pragmatic progress?

Complicated and long-reaching roots to a contemporary problem.

a domani,
E

Two bills and a ballot

I had a good post office run this morning. There was practically no line and a smiling, polite woman exchanged friendly banter with me as I rustled in my wallet for exact change. Who could ask for more. The only tiresome part was filling out the payment forms, called conti correnti, to pay for next year’s school enrollment taxes and fees – one to a central state office in the amount of Euro 15,13 and the other directly to the school in the amount of Euro 100,00. Today's mystery is not why I couldn’t pay these fees directly to the school, but the two are connected.

Instead, my cultural moment for the day came on as I read the warning on the back of the form which states, “fill out each part fully in black or blue ink with no abrasions, corrections or erasing or the form will be invalidated.” Since I have to copy the same information three times along the long rectangular form, I get nervous as I get to the third section – one mistake and I will have to start all over again! My hand starts to quiver and I break out in a sweat.

The last time I filled out an electoral ballot to the state of Connecticut, I couldn’t believe my eyes when I read, “You may cancel or erase your vote as you wish as long as the final result is clear.” Clear to whom was not specified but this is not the point.

Two cultural factors come to mind:
1. Trust. Although we may not trust each other on an individual level and keep shotguns by our sides to prove it, we somehow trust each other on an aggregate level through a system of rules and regulations that are universally applied and generally followed. Unnerving for an Italian – ma ti fidi?? This is the underlying reason why I am not able to pay the school directly – ma chi si fida that the money would be managed correctly and who would be responsible for any missing funds? No problem – all school payments have to be made to a conto corrente at the post office, even a 2 euro fee for a new absences booklet.
2. Change: Even changing something as small as a misspelled street name on a form is suspect. Anything written down is very difficult to change – this is an oral society.

A domani,
E