‘I just can’t face all the questions’ my wife declared, head in hands. I tried to comfort her, but I knew it was pointless. My wife was exhausted. We’d been travelling up and down the east coast of the USA for two and half weeks and we were only hours away from flying back to Germany. All she wanted was a sandwich, a relatively modest aim, but apparently the idea of going into a sandwich shop and ordering had broken her. ‘They always ask too many questions; I just want a chicken sandwich!’ she complained. My wife had finally been defeated by American convenience culture. Over time, this culture and the mantra “The customer is always right” has created an environment where buying a simple sandwich involved answering a series of increasingly detailed questions on bread, filling and salad. It’s not that Germany is devoid of choice, it’s simply that the US consumer market has more. In Germany, a person walks into a bakery, looks at the sandwiches available, chooses one and buys it. Even when a customer goes to an American export like Subway, there’s only a few simple questions about bread and salad. Should anyone find the process confusing, there’s a big sign to explain.

My wife had a right to feel overwhelmed. If America is the land of convenience than Germany is the land of inconvenience culture. From the choices available, to ease of access, through to customer service, it often feels like things are just that little bit harder to do in Germany. The service industry and Supermarkets specifically are great examples of this. Discounters, such as Aldi, Lidl or Netto aren’t designed with customer experience in mind. If anything, they’re designed to get the customer in and out quickly and efficiently. The layout of the store is always the same; narrow aisles to make it hard to stop and peruse items, while most products are placed in such a way as to minimise any need to ask staff for help. The aim seems to be minimum customer/employee interaction.

Even in the larger supermarket chains, which are visually more familiar to US and UK natives, customer experience is not the first consideration. Many supermarkets in Germany are franchised and carry the name of the franchisee above the door. They may contain the branding and point of sale of the franchiser, but the layout and organisation are at the behest of the owner. In practice, customers must decipher the owner’s organisational logic; is the sugar next to the flour? Why is the dog food next to the jam? Where the hell are the peas? For new arrivals to Germany, the lack of uniformity can be frustrating.

When a customer is unable to find what they want, the default is to ask a member of staff, but this too can be a bewildering experience. Germany once espoused the concept of "der Kunde ist König” (The customer is king) but it appears those days are over. German Supermarket staff, like most service industry employees here, really don’t care about whatever privileges a customer imagines they have. The service industry employee is the great societal equaliser; you might be a king or a pauper, but they have no responsibility to be nice to you. They aren’t rude, they just have an innate ability to remind a person how insignificant they truly are in the grand schemes of things. In extreme instances, they won’t move out a customer’s way when blocking a shelf and more than once I’ve had to move quickly to avoid being mowed down by an employee with a towering pallet of products. Some staff are nicer than others, but it’s frequently hit and miss.

Even at the most interpersonal point of the shopping process, paying, German consumers can’t expect to be treated with anything other than general disinterest. Many non-Germans focus on the rapid scanning performed by German checkout workers, but this is only part of the story. A friendly bit of small talk is often expected by native-English speakers while paying, to the point it’s a stereotype of the average cashier. It can happen in Germany, but it’s certainly at the employee’s discretion. The distance between employee and customer is widened further by the fact that informality is practically impossible in these situations, unless of course you know the employee very well. The German language has both formal (Siezen) and informal (Duzen) forms and given the situation, saying ‘Du’ to the cashier could cause a serious intercultural incident. Moreover, most shop employees go by Frau (Ms.) or Herr (Mr.) creating another chasm of separation. It’s difficult to engage in friendly conversation when you have to use someone’s title.

You might assume from the above that I’m an opponent of inconvenience culture, but you would be dead wrong. I love the fact that the German service industry and its employees have a healthy disrespect for the customer. I worked in retail for almost ten years, during a period when US customer service practices were introduced to the UK. Working in customer service, haunted by the concept of “The customer is always right” was a thankless task, peppered with dispiriting interactions with people newly emboldened by repeated messaging about how important they were. There is nothing worse than an entitled customer. If German service industry disinterest prevents the spread of entitled customers, I’m all for it.

Image Credit

Photo by Eduardo Soares on Unsplash

Photo by Kleomenis Spyroglou on Unsplash

Photo by Franki Chamaki on Unsplash