In Russia, a customer has no right, no matter what the law says. A customer could very well be treated like a thief, humiliated, disdained, neglected, robbed even, and still expected to pay and be happy he - or she - is even served anything for his money at all. And I do not mean waiters alone, that's the most easier example and I'll get to others later in the post.
I do not know if this kind of behavior is widespread or not - certainly, it's not to be seen in Moscow or St. Petersburg so very often - but in my city, Rostov-on-Don, clients are roughly divided in two groups: those looking handsomely rich and those who are not. And of you happen to be put in the second group, you are gonna be neglected as much as possible. It doesn't matter if you are ordering a dinner in some cafe or having someone do a job for you, or buying something from a boutique - if the person who are supposed to be your manager (and is paid to do what you want from them) thinks you aren't "rich enough", your life gonna suck.
Let me show a few examples. When I started living in Rostov, I was always scrawny and thoroughly neglecting any fashion trends, because i couldn't find female shoes of my size and had to wear either male or unisex models, thus forced to dress accordingly male-like or sport-style. So i looked much like a poor student who cannot afford any fancy shoes, dress and those gold bells and whistles females are supposed to wear.
If I wanted to go to a caffe - say, to have a coffee and a cheesecake, like everyone else - I had to wait so long that people who came after me were served, ate their whole dinner course and were long gone, all before my order was served. The longest record was 1,5 hours for a coffee and a piece if cake; the waiter was resolved on not serving me at all, it seemed, and i was resolved to not go anywhere until served first, and used their free wifi instead. Guess what? They kicked me from the wifi network because i was occupying the precious space some other client, a more welcome one, could be sitting on!
I stopped going to anywhere but McDonalds for several years, unless with my father - he always looks kinda like a businessman who could afford to buy your ass from under you.
When I went to shops alone, I was regarded with much disdain, and no one would came to help me browse or find the right size. With my dad around, managers would line up in hopes he'll buy something really expensive and they'll get a cut. Much like in that old Hollywood movie, "Pretty Woman".
After some time I racked some wealth of my own, and started to go out again. Even if I had a photo camera worth nearly $3,000 total on me and wearing clothes bought overseas, I was still thoroughly neglected, because average morons would not recognize its cost or origins, and i had no state-of-the-art cell phone that they would recognize.
By the way, a cell phone in Russia is what defines your income in the eyes of other people - and everyone are buying cells they could't easily afford, going as far as to buy a new one long before they finished paying off the credit they took to buy the previous one. Because, you know, the new phone is so NEW and so HOT and everyone around look like they could afford it, but you. Morons.
After a few years, dad gave me his old car to use, and finally I could breath easily! As soon as I sat, I would take my car keys out and put them in plain sight, the keys obviously showing I drive a SUV and not some cheap shit, therefore I am to be welcomed warmly.
To tell the truth, personnel in restaurants and cafe are being schooled out of this outrageous behavior, because many Moscow networks began settling in our market, and they are aware of the notion that people should be served equally, being all clients, and not discriminated. But in other field, people are still pretty much unbearable.
Two weeks ago, I went to an atelier because I needed two of my dresses enlarged in the breast area - they became uncomfortable. An easy task, that could take two days at most, and I know that for sure because I can sew by myself, just don't have a sewing machine at hand these days. But this isn't like I was ordering a new dress - my order would bring much less income to the atelier. When, after two weeks of silence, I went to check upon my order, you guess what?
My dresses weren't even out of the package I brought then in, and everyone fucking FORGOT what I wanted in the first place!!! So I had to tell and show them all over again, but not before I had to wait over an hour first for some old lady to figure out, what kind of blouse she wants ordered. Oh, they said they're sorry, because they had some "urgent orders" and there were dresses to be made for school graduates and such - like I should give any fuck and agree that my cheaper order is to be put out as soon as someone comes along with another one!
And if that wasn't enough, there's an average disdain for clients, any clients at all, in many places. Like you are some beggar on their doorstep, and not bringing their salary at all. Shops where managers are plainly hiding from clients to talk among each other, and turn their back on you pretending they are deaf and blind both. Managers at car service, who would browse the web with no other clients around and tell you to go and stand somewhere else ten more minutes, because you came these ten minutes early. Managers at a book shop, who would openly stalk you because they've been provably told people are coming to steal their book, not to buy them; and with signs telling you of hidden cameras all around, when your wallet is stolen in their shop, suddenly no one were watching these cameras at all, they were too busy stalking someone else at the time!
Once, my new jacket beeped when I entered a store, a manager jumped at me and I've been told openly to either leave or undress, or they wouldn't be able to tell WHEN I'll steal something of theirs, unable to see would it be my jacket beeping or their stuff. And another time - a long time ago, when I didn't knew they had no authority to do so - I was forced to undress down to my undies and be searches by SportMaster store security, because after trying some things one of the markers stuck on my sock, and I beeped when trying to leave the store. I dunno, maybe they though I stuffed a shirt up my vagina to steal it? Fuckers.
Oh, and more of those: in almost every store you are forced to leave whatever you had with you, a bag, a package, stuff bought in another shop, in case you'll hide something In it and steal it. If someone steals your stuff in turn, the shop's administration claims to be impossible to be held accountable in such a case, though the laws say otherwise, but you would have to sue to prove it, court expenses would cost much more than anything you could have possibly lost.
Security at a cinema were searching people and confiscating bottled water, because the water is also sold by the cinema's bar and they want everyone to buy theirs, so they made up a rule "no water past this point" and are enforcing it.
All of it is absolutely illegal, against both federal laws and constitution, but it's no use arguing, because what would you do if some beefed-up security asshole won't let you enter or take your stuff? Call the police? Like they'll give any fuck...
Check this out: in my building, there's a small food store on the first floor. I was looking for some bread, they had none, so I bought a bottle of beer and went to check other shops for bread. I wasn't given any cheque for the beer, though I should have been. When I did not find any bread, I came back again and wouldn't let me enter, unless I leave that bottle! The security guy, who perfectly saw me some ten minutes ago, spoke looking me in the eye, that they wouldn't be able to tell if I stole this bottle - like he is not seeing me entering with it! - and that I have no proof of purchase - they did not give it to me!! - and If I enter, he will make me pay for that bottle AGAIN, and just see if he would not. This was the absolutely most outrageous, infuriating experience of them all, and I was pretty happy to dance when these dicks went bankrupt and closed.
Fucking asshats, I can see why half of the world is hating Russians, if they see ones like these come and shit all over the place with such kind of behavior.
Customer is always right-less, or - how they treat clients in Russia
Breaking the horror-story myths or Russian cemeteries
It happened so that we went today to one of the local cemeteries - my husband's mother wouldn't want to go any other day, when it's NOT +40'C or more outside, oh noes! The hotter the better. I've seen cemeteries of USA and European countries in movies many times, well, Russian ones are nothing even close.
If in other countries they have civilized kind of cemeteries, with green lawns and neat rows of tombstones following one another, a typical Russian cemetery is a maze in the most literal and practical sense of that word. By Russian traditions, each grave should have at least it's own fence (encircling the space) and a headstone, preferable with a picture. Trees, bushes and flowers are then planted around it, and those can afford it are buying larger plots of land to put benches and other stuff around, or to be able to bury several people in one place.
Bushes and trees sounds nice, but after some years, when there's no one to care and tend to them, the plants are growing widely, and with the land generally untended by anyone, it is overflown with wild flora and even fauna: we saw a pheasant just today, and I hear there are plenty of rabbits around.
In huge cities cemeteries are big and old, many placed at the city's boundaries so it is growing and expanding all the time. For people to be able to get around it's divided in blocks, with roads between them, but inside a block there's often to way to get around other than climbing from grave to grave. Those blocks older or out of the main ways are overgrown completely and look like a piece of a steppe or a grove: with life taking over, it's hard to guess dead are still there, too. And much more harder to find if one of yours is somewhere out there.
The only thing that the cemetery's administration is doing, is taking out trash from the main roads, and collecting money for the burial grounds, the burials themselves and the headstones. From the looks of it, either these money are stolen completely, or no one are doing any other work. During Soviet times, many old cemeteries - those within city limits - were converted into something else: headstones and greenery removed, they became stadiums and children playgrounds and other things. Kids now play football where their grandparents lie. My grand-grand-father's grave was lost to a railroad built upon his resting place, grand-grand-mother buried in a different place and her grave is the only one left of them unmolested.
So, you see, there is no myth of a scary cemetery in Russia, the one so many times repeated in Western horror movies. How can it be scary if I was taken on a walk in the nearest park by my mom as a child, and then, as an adult, I learned there were graves all around underneath? Even if you take an active cemetery, there could be found as much of scary stuff like in any given forest or grove or wherever else you might go to "connect with the nature".
The First Icecream in my life
I did not eat an real Icecream before I was probably 7, or close enough. There was plenty of Icecream - and good stuff, I've been told - but by the time I was born in 1985, all of the good stuff was mostly gone and people were struggling with finding soap and sugar, save for Icecream.
I wonder, why iPhone Blogger client keeps spelling Icecream with large I all the time?..
At each 1st of May there was a huge celebration on USSR (google it - too long to describe the nature of it here), and by his line of work my father was obliged to take part in it. I am not quite sure what he was doing, according to my mother - mostly drinking with women while she was away, but he had to give a speech or two for the gathering of people on Communist party's behalf. And after one of those, he somehow managed to find us an Icecream.
The weather was already hot and when he got home, the Icecream was already thawing. It was a simple kind, just frozen milk with a bit of sugar and butter in it. Adults got all agitated, they had no Icecream in a while, I gather, and I didn't even knew what it was. Dad insisted on giving it to me right away, but under the assumption that I am a sickly child and should not be eating cold stuff, mom kept waiting until the Icecream completely thawed back to its milk state. Then, I was let to spoon in, not understanding why all the fuss about cool sugary milk. Milk I knew pretty well.
Only a few years after, when USSR collapsed and the country was open to import goods, I ate my first real Icecream. Still remember it pretty well: it was 400gr package 3-in-1, with apple, chocolate and vanilla fillings. We usually shared it with mom, I ate the apple one, she ate the chocolate one, and the vanilla one we ate together, taking turns.
I am often told stories about how great was Icecream in USSR - especially full-cream "пломбир" (plombeer) type, and how you could get full on just one piece of it with 70% fat, but what I will always remember, is some unnamed imported stuff with chemical apple flavor that is not to be sold anywhere anymore.
Read more...
Aerial view of Moscow’s outskirts or why all houses are cloned
Looks like i completely forgot about this blog, I’m sorry. Here’s something interesting i found – a bunch of pictures taken from a helicopter flying around the outskirts of Moscow.
All pictures are copyright of Ilya Varlamov and the full photo session can be found here, in his LiveJournal post.
What i also wanted to point out – if you look at the larger version of those picture, you’ll notice that there are rows by rows by rows of houses looking like they’ve been cloned with Photoshop. These are “sleeping districts” – areas of the city designed to hold only apartment houses and a bit of supporting infrastructure – place, where everyone are leaving for work in the morning and coming back to sleep in the evening. Hence the name. All Russian cities large enough to be separating living and working zones have these “sleeping districts”, and in every city they look the same, more or less. But why the hell those houses are identical?
There’s a long story that calls for another post, but I'll write the beginning here.
After the Worlds War II, Russia was utterly and completely devastated. Recovering from it took time, and after some of the most pressing matters were attended to and people began to breed again, another problem arose: there was not enough housing for everyone. After the war ended people kept living in communal housing, which meant whole families of 3-6 people living in a single room of a 3-4 room apartments, with almost no furniture. In small cities and countryside people could build houses – and everyone who was able to did so, alone or with the help of others – but in bigger cities it was impossible, so population was in dire need of housing.
When Stalin died, Nikita Khrushchev took over and during his 10 years of rule, USSR took on a governmental program to fix the problem by building a massive amount of affordable housing around the whole country. The program lead to fast urbanization of Russia and continued from 1959 to 1985, long after Khrushchev’s time. About a 290 millions of m² of living space was built during the program – 10% of all housing space in Russia by the end of it – which is a quite huge amount. These houses had to be cheap and fast to built, and they were popped out like soda cans out of a dispenser – built by the same blueprint over and over again. That’s why they look alike.
A house built during that program, or an apartment in such house is called “khruschevka” (хрущевка, plural ends with -ky) by Russians, and these houses are still where most people are living even now.
Now, can you imagine, that not only half of your city looks identical save for names of those streets, but no matter to which city you go, the houses are still the same everywhere? People tend to go crazy in such environment – or make comedy movies about how a drunk chap misses his plane and goes to the wrong city, to a wrong apartment, completely unaware of the mistake, because everything is cloned around him - but that’s a story for another post.
Russian Post-apocalyptic Post (it's called "snail mail" for a reason!)
So, I had to go to a post office to receive a payment from Google (my first one, but how I had to temper with settings for 3 months to get my money sent to me and how they do it via POST, is another story), and spent nearly an hour standing in a line. It was my city's central post office, so it's a huge one, full of (not working) counters and people looking for a right counter to stand in a line to. The lines are huge, because stuff like paying bills or receiving money - the kind of business that attracts a lot of people - are done by a single clerk, while at least 60% of workplaces are unmanned or there's 2-3 people doing nothing, with no customers wanting the kind of things these clerks do.
Those working counters are all unmarked. There's a ticket system supposed to give you a place in a corresponding line to the right counter, but I never seen it actually working. It's supposed to tell you which clerk does what, but the station is always frozen with some error, or just plain broken. And with those unmarked counters the only way to know where is the right one is either to ALREADY know it, or to stand in a line to discover after 30 minutes of standing that it was the wrong line and wrong counter. Right what always happens to me, always. I so much hate lines! Then, the paperwork... To receive my money I had to fill up a few forms, they had fields saying what I need to fill in - part of my passport's data, mostly. But when I turned the forms in, they were rejected because I was supposed to fill in more data, NOT mentioned in those forms whatsoever. I asked, where I am supposed to write this data, when there's no appropriate fields in those forms for that kind of data. Oh, the clerk said, you write it wherever you want, just all over it. Why do I even need to write anything if the forms don't mention it? Because the federal law needs it, she said! Then why on fucking Earth don't they have some normal forms with all the fields required by law?! They're probably printing more of them each month! Fuck my brain, this is madness! No, this is Russia!!!
People of Russia hate Russian post. Here are some pictures circulating around the Internets. Mouseover for a translation.
Oh, and while I'm at it, there's nothing like receiving a parcel by Russian post service. There's a 50% chance they'll fuck up the delivery and no one will be able to find your shipment ever again. In fact, I think they have some vast underground facility where Russian post service is secretly developing a portal gun, which they test on randomly selected shipments. A couple of years ago, me and my husband ordered custom-tailored dry suits for scuba diving from Germany. They were about 1800$ a piece, quite expensive price tag for Russia. Plus, it was a huge package and how far is it from Germany to Russia? I mean, my grandfather walked all the way up to Berlin during WWII, and they now have things like planes and trains all over the place.
After a couple of months of us not receiving the suits, the company that sent them began searching for the package. They failed to find any trace of it after it crossed the border and had to produce a second set of suits for us for free. That second set did found its way to us, but the first one never surfaced anywhere.
Dad once ordered some seats for his fishing boat from an Australian online shop - a huge package too - and they were lost and had to be replaced for free again. God bless those sellers who replace lost things... Once I ordered a bandana from CCP's Eve Online merchandise shop, it was lost too on the way and they even refused to give me a tracking number of the package they sent, so i could search for it from my said, not mentioning to refuse to even search for it by themselves - the overall attitude was just short of openly telling me to go and fuck myself. Nothing like a Russian post service together with CCP's outstanding customer support, I tell you...
Also, I never received a pay check on 50$ from an online company I worked with, they sent me the money in February - I did not receive them - and they're just gone, like sucked in the black hole that Russian post service is.
Things are often just stolen outright or used before they reach their destination. If you subscribed to a magazine, receiving it with a broken package or even with pages torn out is not uncommon: post service workers want to read too, after all! There was a huge scandal in our city when Ozon.ru (Russian analogue of Amazon.com) found out that some worker in the central post office ransacked their packages, replaced contents with garbage and papers to match those packages' weight, and sent them back, like unclaimed, stealing stuff worth about 5000$. It appeared that the thief wasn't even officially hired(!), just replacing someone on a long sick leave.
Oh, and also delivery time... Once a parcel from China came in 14 days. The next time a parcel from the very same city came in 6 weeks. But it doesn't really matter, in Russia late delivery brings happiness nonetheless, because your package WAS delivered after all...
Summer Cabin, Spring Flowers and Open Green Fields (Pics)
Just a bunch of pictures i took during the trip i mentioned in the last post. It was the time when garden flowers begin to blossom, i really love it. Besides eating 4 kilos of shashlyk per 5 persons, we went to drive around and stumbled upon an illegal sand mine – you wouldn’t want to fall down one of those, believe me! There are pictures of flowers and open green fields behind the cut. Also, it’s 1 May today – a huge celebration in Russia, but i will write about it later, have to go celebrate, you know ;)
This is how a road to the place looked like, some real country/rural style, isn’t?
The sand mine pics:
Some green fields - planted with nothing useful as of yet, but cool-looking nonetheless:
And some of my favorite spring flowers:
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