Customer Servisz

Ok, I should start by saying Hungarians aren’t unfriendly. I’ve seen politeness between total strangers just because they sat next to each other at a café. But man you can get some spectacular rudeness in shops. Not so much ‘the customer is always right’ as ‘the customer is always an annoying distraction from texting my friends or gossiping with my colleague’. It takes you back as you politely try to get served, and get looks of disdain, irritation or sheer boredom for your custom. ‘But don’t they think its cute you’re trying speak Hungarian?’
oh man you’re living in the eighties! You can’t rely on that anymore. Where does this come from? Is it the legacy of a communist past? It’s a common explanation, and I guess when you’ve had customer service plonked on a country without years of competition and management-thinking it may not come naturally.  And some jobs are boring right? And a lot of customer friendliness is superficial. But am I to commend them on keeping it real and not stooping to adopt friendly smiles just for pretence?

But no, although ‘the customer is always right’ might be a little vacuous (I mean what if the customer tells you they’re allowed to take the whole shop home free, or gives you next weeks lottery results?) there’s just something better about being friendly to other humans who come to buy what you’re selling. Sure, some customers will be arseholes, but most people just want a pleasant transaction with another person.

 And on top of that some shops here are just odd. They’ve thrown up a load of shopping malls in Budapest, brand-and-price heavy. When they’re pretty quiet, which seems to be often, they seem to have been built in hope more than expectation. An aspirational statement like a big advertising board ‘Look we’ve got Hugo Boss!!’. I went into T-mobile, and it was a shiny palace of 20 serving counters, and shiny new products. Only about four of the counters were manned, by the young and the bored. One bloke is smiley and stands out because of it. He’s kind of round and jolly and his name-tag says his name is Csabi. Which is cool, because it’s a jolly sounding name, and he disproves the generalisation.