Czechs at the checkouts

A weekly trip to one of the local supermarkets, 'Kaufland', has proved to an intersting & sometimes frustrating experince over the years that I have been living here. “Customer service” is an area with room for improvement here as a whole in Czech Republic, but moreso in “Kaufland”! If you are wheeling your trolley down an aisle and you come across a stacker who is in the act of stacking goods…then, you turn around and wheel back, and go all the way around to get to the other end of that aisle. Stackers are immovable objects. This is quite different to what I remember back in England, where not only the customer was 'right', but the customer was there to be served. Sadly, at Kaufland, I sometimes feel like I'm 'in the way' of the staff. Once I was looking for something which had been moved - (this seems to be part of a conspiracy by supermarkets all over the world, perhaps to prevent the early on-set of Alzheimers Disease...?!) and I came across a staff member who was concentrating on a clip board & a mobile phone at the same time...I asked where such & such was...without making any attempt at eye contact they replied - "Nemáme!" ("We don't have it!")

One of the worst days to go is when Kaufland has its 'special offers' (at the moment, Thursdays). Having been on this day at various times I came to the conclusion that it's best to go on another day! It seems that from when the doors first open at 7.00am, all day through, there is an endless river of customers...most of whom seem to be elderly, and who seem to thrive in rugby scrums as they grasp for the special offers! Trolly rage is a certainty! And I thought that this kind of behaviour was supposed to have finished with the fall of Communism back in '89... No. It is alive & well here in 2010.
 
And then after running the gauntlet you get to the checkout! It has to be said that Kaufland employs cashiers who are highly skilled and primed to operate at a ballistic speed. The rate with which they run your goods through the bar code scanner sometimes convinces me that tomorrow is most definitely not coming! No sooner have you unloaded your trolley, than it’s all been scanned, you’re fumbling for the money and trying to pack at the same time…and the next customer’s stuff is coming through too…and perhaps the one after, if he’s only got a couple of items! 

Then it's back to the car & unload the trolley & put it back in the storage space...but there's another problem, which I guess is a general human condition, not just a Czech one - laziness! There are usually 3 lines for the trolleys in the storage space...and you can guess which one people use - the longest one. A while ago I made a deliberate decision to walk the extra few metres to the shortest queue & park my trolley. Though there are some negative aspects to shopping at Kaufland, I can at least try to bring something positive there :-) Actually, I even believe (for now) it's one of the most important things that I can do - to be kind to the staff & customers there & make a difference...