Romanian Life: Shopping (a primer)

Let's begin.

Lesson One: There is no such thing as customer service here.

I don't mean like when you go to Home Depot on the first warm Saturday in spring and it takes you 20 minutes to locate a sales associate who breathlessly informs you that the potting soil you seek is on aisle 12 and then rushes off to assist the other 400 customers needing help and you think to yourself "gee, there's just no customer service in this place."

No.

I mean like when you walk into a store where you are the only customer and where there are half a dozen employees who stare you down like they are Russian models at a private party and you've somehow sneaked past the bouncers and uncovered their exclusive suite.  (Note to any young men reading: don't stop here and rush to a buy plane ticket. The employees don't look like Russian models, they just act like them. Sorry, I know I got your little hearts racing for a second there.)

During the initial moments of this wordless rebuffing, your first reaction may be to apologize and back out, offering some lame excuse about trying to find the door to the toilet but then you stop yourself because it dawns on you that this is a retailer who is ostensibly in business with the goal of selling you merchandise for some sort of profit.  Lesson Two:  if you are ever going to shop in this country you will need to develop two necessary attributes: 1) the determination of a dieting bridesmaid, three days before the wedding and 2) the obtuseness of a celebrity interviewer. Easier said than done.

And to that end, let me disabuse you of any American preconceived expectations. (Forewarned is forearmed, yes?). First, in no way, shape or form are the employees interested in how your day is going and if you are finding everything you're looking for. The predominating interest will rest in intimidating you off the premises so they don't have to be bothered with you at all. At that point they can resume their primary activity which involves leaning laconically against vertical surfaces and performing an in-depth examination of their fingernails.

The second thing you need to know up front is that nothing you request will be clear or convenient for the employee.  Its not a language thing; you can be a native Romanian and still have this issue.  Whatever you ask, it will at first appear to be extremely confusing and then extremely tiresome.  Even if you are in a shop which only sells pastries and you ask to buy some pastries, this will be very confusing to the person who is working at the pastry-only shop.  They will look at you with an expression that suggests you have told them you need to use their backyard for an afternoon of sea turtle racing.

My advice is that you try a pastry shop or two and get the hang of that before you attempt something requiring more staff involvement such as shoe shopping.

Your shoe shopping experience will probably look something like this: you approach the nail-examining employee and ask if you might try on a particular pair of shoes in a size 36.  The employee then glances briefly at the sample which you took from their display and asks "This style?" in a tone that suggests you found this shoe in a random garbage can 2 miles away and just brought it in to mess with them.

This brings us to the third point which is that you must not make the mistake of thinking that you will be expected or even encouraged to try anything on. You see, its enough that the pair of size 36 shoes have been located and handed to you, is it not? You asked and received which has gone far beyond what the employee clearly believes should be expected of them. To wait around while you slip your old shoe off and this new one on is really asking an awful lot. Yet wait they do, all the while observing your shoe testing with an expression that suggests you lack the intelligence to understand the concept of shoe sizing. It would seem there are no variances to Romanian feet: no high instep or narrow heels. A 36 is a 36 is a 36. Period. You don't go and ask for a 36.5 to compare. This request will garner you a look that would wither stone and you imagine the story being told over a beer later that evening:

“And this American, she's so dumb, she doesn't even know what size her foot is.”

“No wonder they can't balance their national budget.”

The end result of all of this business is that you may or may not go home with a new pair of shoes that may or may not fit properly. Be prepared for that.  Bring plenty of spares from the States which is a challenge it itself since new airline standards have reduced your alloted luggage weight to 10 grams, barely enough for underwear and toothbrush.  Well you can try and wear more than one pair on the airplane but that's a rather complicated trick and difficult to pull off without raising the hair-trigger suspicions of the FAA employees.
Or you could ship a container from the States which involves traveling to a shipyard, filling out customs forms, paying three separate customs houses as your package travels the world en route to its final destination where you will have to provide a blood sample and barter the life of your first born in order to obtain the release of your own property.
But its always good to know that you have those two options if you need to avail yourself of them.  
Anything is easier than shopping here.

Some things just don't translate well at all....

Fish egg salad is in these packages, for those of you who are curious.  Don't want to be an irresponsible blogger and fail to provide important information (Leng)
And my father would say there is no problem with the translation as it stands.