The Trade Off

No matter where you live in the world, there are always going to be things that you nit-pick about in your location. It might be the food, it might be the way the coffee is made, the cars people drive, the cultural traditions...there are a variety of things which can crop up.

In our case, it's customer service and pride in your work. Neither exist in Bulgaria.

Please note, this is a generalization. There are those who exist outside of the following stereotypical descriptions, but they are rare.

Customer service does not exist. I've covered this in another blog post, but it ties into what happened to us today, so I thought I'd re-touch on the matter. Here, the customer is never right. In fact, the customer's only right is the right to be flat-out ignored and pointed in the direction of the door should they bring to the attention of the clerk the negligent attitude displayed.

If you hop on over to my wife's blog you can get her side of the story as well, but what it boils down to is this: a couple of weeks ago she and her mother went out to buy a new bed for our bedroom. No one thought to measure the size of the mattress (I was not involved in the process. I'm not blaming anyone, but let's just say that the matter was entered into with a rushed state of awareness and some things were left to the side, only to come bite us in the ass later), and lo and behold when the bed is delivered, it's larger than the mattress. The memory foam topper that was ordered was also larger than the mattress, because they ordered it to fit the bed.

K, no big deal. Order a new mattress. Her mother dealt with it, because it was her gift to her daughter. Now, here's where matters get sticky. Because customer service does not exist here, certain questions are never asked, such as: what kind of a mattress are you after? Apparently, here, there is no difference between a box-spring/frame+mattress hybrid and a regular old mattress. So, when the mattress was ordered, no questions were asked. The guys show up today, and it takes them (no joke) 20 minutes to get it up our 6 flights of stairs to our apartment. They were also 5 hours late. They were due here at 4 p.m. and didn't show up until 9 p.m.

We go to unwrap it and it's....not a mattress. At least not what the two of us were expecting to be a mattress. Instead, it's a mattress+box spring/frame combo that weighs well over 100 lbs. But we didn't pay for it (the whole thing was a gift) so we don't have much room to bitch, and considering the fact they were 5 hours late and it's been such a hassle to get this all worked out in the first place...well let's just say I threw my hands up in the air and said F-it, let's make it work. Then I find out...it's built out of square. More than 1/2" out of square. Which means it doesn't want to fit into the bed frame.

What followed was an hour's worth of grunting and heaving as I forced the damn thing to fit within the confines of the frame, with a little squeaking as things adjusted and were forced into square. Not an easy task, and one that had me wishing for good old American craftsmanship and customer service, because if it were built in America it would likely have fit in the first place without me having to break my neck.

Now don't get me wrong. I grew up as a third generation craftsman in the ceramic tile and natural stone trade. I've been on job sites since I was 5 years old, and I have seen some horrifically bad construction in my day, but today's experience just sort of put me in mind of some of the things I miss. Which aren't much. I very rarely miss anything about the US.

The point is...it grates me the wrong way on occasion. Last year we had a horrific experience that I simply have to explain so you can understand just how bad things can be in certain parts of the world, so you can appreciate the things you take for granted. We live in an apartment building, on the 6th floor. We got a notice on our door that plumbers would be coming in to replace pipes in the floor above us and below us, in the shower room.

The first thing that happens is the guys walk into our apartment smoking cigarettes. They then proceed to put out their cigarettes on our tile floor, leaving the cigarette butts behind, completely IGNORING the fact that my wife and I were raising holy hell over the matter. They rip holes in the wall, create a shitload of dust and mess, rip out the old pipes, put in the new pipes, and then leave. Without cleaning up one iota of their mess. They did this to half a dozen apartments. Then they have the gall to present the apartment complex with a bill, expecting 400 dollars from each apartment.

Now, in America two things would have happened. First, the company would have been sued. Secondly, they wouldn't have received a dime of their money. Here, there is no such thing as a Better Business Bureau or anything of the nature, and when we complained, (I did more than complain; I went on a 45 minute F-bomb laced cursing spree that involved hurling pieces of pipe down the hallway) everyone simply shrugged their shoulders and we were told "tough luck. That's just the way things are here".

While I do agree that "the customer is always right" is an over-used gig in the States, and too often people become arrogant to the point of ignorance, believing that they are in the right by default, it has its benefits in the sense that it has created a sense of responsibility that doesn't allow for such happenings as occur here.

What have I learned? That despite the many benefits we have in living here vs. in the US, such as an extremely low cost of living, the opportunity to travel to all sorts of great European destinations out our back door, and being close to her family, there are nonetheless a few trade-offs that you get in return, such as a lack of customer service and common courtesy, as well as people taking pride in their work and giving you honest and accurate craftsmanship.

Still, we do love it here, and we would rather have to put up with a couple of inconveniences in comparison to the literal boat-load of them back in the US. The main thing is the cost of living. Our bills are 500-600 USD a month. Tops. That's everything. We lived fairly bottom-of-the-middle-class road in the US and our bills were 4500 a month. I'm willing to put up with a little bit of inconvenience to get away with such cheap living.