vevőszolgálat

Vevőszolgálat. Customer service. Often an oxymoron in Hungary, at least compared to the US.

Now I know what they say, "It's not wrong, just different." I try to adhere to that as much as possible, but sometimes, it just doesn't work. Like today for example.

We finally find a table and chairs that is "reasonably priced" for what we want. I think it's still expensive for US standards, but for here, it's not bad. We arrange with Zsolt to have him help us because we can't clearly communicate with the store clerks. He brings the trailer, we go to the store, the table is there. Success!

Then Zsolt talks with the clerk, explaining things to her and whatnot. She goes to get the "warehouse" worker in the back. Then the two women and Zsolt talk about a lot of things I mainly don't understand, except I keep hearing "Nem tu dom," which means "I don't know." I assumed that they were saying that they didn't know if they had any of those tables or if they'd be getting any more. That wouldn't have surprised me because that's happened before where they still advertise something for sale even if they don't have it and won't be getting it. I heard Zsolt ask about their other store in another town, to which she also replied, "Nem tu dom."

After several more minutes of the three of them talking, I realized we weren't going to be getting any table and chairs. Zsolt explained that the store closes at 7:00 and it was 6:45 so they wouldn't do anything about it. We had to come back tomorrow. I was really trying to bite my tongue because that is just wrong to me. Seriously? If your store did that in the US, you'd lose business quickly and soon be completely out of business. But that is definitely more the norm here. Zsolt told us on the way out that he was bothered by their "mentality" and that it was dumb for them not to be even able to check if they had the table and chairs when there was still plenty of time. It's not like the store was super busy with only one person working. I felt a little better after he said that. :)

Maybe one of these days we will have a table and chairs and can finally have people over. That's part of the reason we wanted to move! Of course we were itching for more space, especially with another baby coming, but we really wanted to be able to host people and do those sorts of things. We just didn't have the room before.

Just like I hope for the internet one day soon, I hope for our table and chairs.