Baking a Fight

February 2010:

On any average Saturday morning, I escorted my Turkish friend Burcu (along with her friend Tarik) to the train station very early. By the time we arrived it was exactly 6 AM, and we were all very tired and cold, having only gotten approximately a half an hour of sleep and then having walked in the dark, cold, and snow to get to the station.

After purchasing their train tickets, Burcu and Tarik proceeded to walk further down into the small train station to buy some food for their three hour trip to Budapest. I assumed they had gone to the tiny bakery at the end of the hall which offers fresh pastries, (not so good) fresh coffee, and sodas. An expensive place, but a quick and easy stop for travelers in a hurry who are hungry.

I finally decided, after a few minutes of waiting for them to return, to join them, and see what was taking them so long. Both she and Tarik, though his English is limited while hers is very good, can speak Hungarian hardly at all. A few words - but just enough to get them by for the six months they’ve been here.

When I walked in - I was still half asleep, and heard some arguing in English. She was yelling at the man behind the counter who also appeared upset. I asked her what was wrong and she said,
“He’s so rude! Tell him that I don’t have to speak Hungarian because I am the customer. He should learn English! Tell him I don’t have to speak Hungarian!”
I really had no idea what I had just walked into, so very calmly I asked the man,

“Excuse me - is there a problem?” Very roughly and slamming money on the counter he said,
“Yes! There is a problem! Because they’re not normal!” I was stunned by this - but why am I surprised by any behavior such as this put forth by a Hungarian - and so I told Burcu who began half laughing, but still upset,
“I’m not normal? I’m not normal? He’s not normal! Hungarians aren’t normal!” I asked her what happened again and she said that he started going crazy because she didn’t speak Hungarian and threw the change at her. I confronted him, again very calmly and said,
“Listen. I wasn’t here, but she says that you threw money at her.” Very defensively and upset again he said,
“As if I threw money at her! They’re the problem!” Reader, I was so tired I honestly could not think of a come back to the situation. The only thing that I kept thinking was that I had no call to get into it with him, because I simply wasn’t there.
After we left the bakery, we talked it out. She began saying that
"this is a train station" and that "they should speak English." My only defense to the man was that he doesn’t “have to” speak English. She agreed and said,

“No! He doesn’t have to! I started talking to him in Hungarian.” She said that she had pointed to one pastry and said in Hungarian,
“One, me.” Then to another pastry and said,
“One -” Then pointed to her friend. The man had made a mistake and placed two of one kind in the bag, and when she emphatically said,
“No, no, no” in Hungarian, and tried to explain the mistake he'd made in English. Wherein he began berating her in Hungarian - which is right about when I walked in. Someone said,
“Idiota” when I first walked in, which is not hard to figure out - and since that’s a Hungarian word, I reckon’ it was him.

We said our tearful goodbyes a little while later on the platform, as she was headed for Budapest, then on to Turkey. After her train departed, I went home. However, this incident did not vanish from my mind. I was very upset about it for a number of different reasons: The first of which of course, is that this happens here in Hungary all too often with the way people are treated. Not just us foreigners, but people - CUSTOMERS - in general.
The second reason is that I have traveled through that train station more times than I can remember over the past five or so years, and I’ve gone into that bakery a handful of times to either get a coke, coffee or pastry. I’ve spent some money in there. Nothing that would break the bank - but when they’re almost double what any other places would be, it’s enough to say that they should treat their customers a bit more hospitably. My mother has had problems in there too. In fact, about three weeks ago, when she and I were on our way to Debrecen, we popped in there to buy a coffee. The same man was rude to us and very annoyed asked,
“Well what kind of coffee do you want?” rolling his eyes, and then impatiently and abruptly preforming the oh-so-difficult task of pouring a cup of coffee. A previous time that I can recall, a young blond woman who works there, once sauntered over the half a foot to the cooler to grab a coke for me, then set it on the counter, rolled her eyes and asked in a dejected voice,
“Anything else?” Didn’t say thank you when I paid her, and just went back to looking upset.

Gee…don’t be grateful I’m spending money in there so you can stay in business or anything.

Needless to say, all these factors inclined me to go back and have a word with the manager or better yet - the owner. They should be aware of the kind of service their employees are providing their customers with, and I’m willing to take some time out of my day to go up to the train station by bus in the snow, to do it.
I walked into the train station ready with a little speech in my head. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to use it when I found out the information, I’m about to dispense here in this blog.

I walked in, and it was the same blond woman I just described a moment ago. She looked unhappy as usual to be there. The truth is, it’s a combination of indifference and unhappiness. The point is - no smile.
“Good day.” I began, “I’d like to speak with your boss.” I was taken aback by her response.
“I’m the boss.” She said again, indifferently.
“You’re the boss?” My eyebrows raised in surprise.
“Yes, I’m the boss.”
“That’s sad.” I continued with, “I came here today to complain.”
“Yes.” She seemed less than thrilled, rolling her eyes at me.
“There are a lot of things I came in to complain about, but the first is something very important that happened on Saturday.”
“Yes?” She literally could not have cared less.
“I was here with my friends, and the man that works here was unbelievably rude to them.” She waited for me to continue.
“They don’t really speak that much Hungarian, but enough to ask for a particular pastry that they wanted. The man didn’t understand them, and when I came in they were arguing. When asked if there was a problem, the man responded, ‘Yes, because they are not normal. I was surprised and was angry with them that they didn’t speak Hungarian.'”
The woman had no reaction. She closed her eyes as if this story was boring her and had no interest in the fact that her employee was so rude to a customer and responded with,
“Let me explain the situation as to why this happened -” I stopped her,
“Were you here?” I asked, her understanding where I was going with this,
“No, but -”
“So then, why aren’t you apologizing that this happened?”
“Because, he was very sick that day with a fever of 40 Celcius.”
“That’s not my problem. Why was he here if he was sick?”
“Because I have been working five days straight and I needed a break.”
“Again - not my problem.”
“Fine. It’s not your problem. What do you want me to say?”
“Do you hear how you’re talking to me right now? You’re not even apologizing for what happened. You think it’s okay that he would speak to a customer that way?”
“Okay - let me explain something to you,” I nearly fainted when I heard the rest of her 'explanation', “When we have foreigners come in here that don’t speak Hungarian, what can we do?”
“So basically what you’re saying, is that every foreigner that comes through this train station has to speak perfect Hungarian?”
“No.”
“They tried to speak in Hungarian, actually - but because he didn’t understand them, they tried speaking to him in English.”
I started raising my voice at some point and we were both yelling at each other about different things, and I was telling her how rude she was, and how this is the problem here in Hungary that they don’t know how to treat their customers. At one point I said,
“Don’t you care, that after this conversation I’m going to walk out and tell everyone I know never to come in here because you’re so rude? Don’t you care?”
“No.” She shook her head. She continued, with her ridiculous excuses,
“How should I treat a customer? I’m standing on my feet all day, I have problems with both my feet - the other guy is at home sick with a fever of 40...what do you want me to do, call him up and yell at him?”
“Listen,” I began,
“I’m sorry he’s sick. But again, that’s not my problem. Why is he here in front of food if he’s so sick? He should be at home. And anyway, he should still be smiling and nice to the customers.”
“Well, this isn’t England,” Apparently I’m English, “I can’t just call up anybody and have them come in.”
“I’m not English.” I said,
“It doesn’t matter. Where are you from?”
“It doesn’t matter where I’m from. I’m still a customer.”
“No you’re not.” Oh no she di’ent.
“I’m not a customer?”
“No. Your friends that came in, they were customers.” I lost it, imagine Lisa yelling - cause this is how the rest of it went.
“No! I AM a customer. I’ve come in here many times and spent money. From the moment I buy one thing I’m a customer!”
“Fine.”
“And it doesn’t matter, my friends were still treated badly.”
“Where are your friends from?”
“It doesn’t matter where they’re from. They’re still customers.” The "customers = business = money = profit = food on her table" concept was gravely lost on her, as it is tragically on so many Hungarians even still today.
“Let me tell you this - if I’m in a foreign country, and my friends don’t speak the language then I go help them communicate.” This voluntary statement of hers, was where she crossed the line.
“Do you hear the stupidness you’re saying? There are so many foreigners that come in here, they can’t all speak Hungarian. You should be nicer.”
It was clear right from the beginning she had no interest in speaking to me, and finished the 'discussion', for lack of a better word, with,
“Okay, okay. I told you: I listened to what you have to say - and I will talk to my employee about it.” But since her initial attitude was in defense of him and what he had done, I smiled knowingly and said,
“I’m sure you’ll talk to him. But what you’ll say to him, I’m not so sure…” I said goodbye, and left.

The Kidnapping

Everyone warned him not to go. Me. His contact person. Even the head of our program said, "Do not go to the Ukraine without a Hungarian."
But he didn't listen.

Back in 2006, I joined a teaching program by the name of CETP - Central European Teaching Program. At the orientation in August, I met a fellow American, whose name I will not mention in this blog.

As it happened, he was moving to the same town where I'd been living with my parents the past nine months, and would only be thirty minutes from the new town where I would be moving. It wasn't long before we became pals, and we saw each other often enough, that it was more unusual not to see each other or hear from each other on the weekends. And so it happened, one weekend, that I did not hear from him. And in fact, I didn't hear from him for almost two weeks. This concerned me a bit, had me anxious and I even went so far as contacting our program leader, to find out if she'd heard from him. She had. And it wasn't until a month later, that I found out from the horse's mouth, just what had happened to him.

Being the cowboy that he is from Texas, he decided one day to go to the Ukraine on his own. Being a man, and a Texan at that, he figured that this would be enough of a shield for him to take care of himself. He was wrong.
He got up to drinking, the night before it all happened. Before the whole saga of the following day would occur. A bit of Mardi-Gras if you will, before the penance.
And so, stumbling into the lobby bar of his hotel at a solid hour of eleven the following morning, after the drinking fest, he found himself at the bar stool, chatting with the cute waitress.
Just then three Ukrainian thug-like men came into the bar as well. They made eye contact with the waitress, but it was only in hindsight that he saw this.
They walked over to the bar,
"Hello! Ver are you from?" They asked in a sounding tone.
"I'm American." Eh! Mistake number one. He continued meekly,
"But I live in Hungary."
"Ahhhhh! You are American! Come! Vee buy you drink! You like wodka?"
He accepted the strangers' gesture and began drinking with the three friendly men for a good hour. Enough time to slide back into the groove of the night before.
"Do you like gurls?" One of them asked coyly.
He smiled, and probably blushed.
"Well, yeah. Sure." He responded, unprepared for their next question.
"If you vant, vee can find you nice, not expensive gurl." He put his hands up in defense,
"Oh no...that's okay. I'm not interested in that kind of..."
"Okay. Okay. No problem. No problem. Vee find you nice gurl, yeah?" He nodded in agreement.
"Yeah okay. That sounds fine." Yes, put your love match-making prospective in the hands of three kindhearted Ukrainian mobsters.
They patted him on the back, and led him outside to their...van. Eh! Mistake number two. He got in. Eh! Mistake number three.
They slid the door closed, and while one mobster sat to his right, the other sat across from him, being that there were benches in the back. The third, obviously drove. And while driving, the third musketeer would periodically slam on the breaks. Because this would in turn force the other two rascals in the back to fall upon our hero, he decided upon later assessment that this must have been in order to pat him down to make sure he wasn't carrying any weapons.

They continued to pass bar after bar. Mr. America would ask why they weren't stopping at any of these bars to which they would find some excuse. Either it wasn't open, it wasn't very good, or there were no girls in there - they came up with anything under the sun.

Now, they were in the woods. Deep in the forest, one of them took out a knife, and flashed it before our hero's eyes. He forced him to hand over his camera. His very nice, expensive, professional camera. Then he commanded that he hand over his wallet. The mobster started rooting through it. He threw out card after card, looking for something of value. He picked up his Visa, and asked, "Does this have money on it?" to which the victim replied, "Only in America." The gangster through the card at the babe in woods, and was able to save at least this, if not his camera. The gangster then proceeded to steal his phone, all his money and...his American library card.
He gave back the passport (apparently the mobster was dangerous but not terribly bright, as American passports go for big money over on the eastern block) and then proceeded to open the sliding door, and kick our hero literally in the ass, until he fell on his face onto the ground.

The van sped off, and left the poor, now penniless American stranded in the Ukrainian wood.

At this same time, I was on the phone to a mutual friend of ours, asking if she'd heard from him. When she said no, I offered, "Gee-wizz. I hope he wasn't kidnapped."

Ten Cents

I met with her at 7 PM. I hadn't seen her since before I left for England nearly six months ago. When I arrived at the indoor cafe, I waited only a few minutes before she showed up, and the waitress had been very eager to take my order with a big smile on her face. A very uncommon occurrance here in this land of the negative Magyars. Even still, friendly customer service is starting to become a fad, and I'm glad for it. After six years, it's really about time. And that's just six years of my life: God only knows how long it's been like this prior to my moving here. As an American, it's very difficult to live in, not only a post-communist country, but a post-communist country that believes Communism's practices are still in effect. E.G. no friendly customer service. When I was in Prague several years ago, upon searching for some postcards, I found my favorite among the 400 or so that I have collected throughout my life. A drawing, it pictures a factory worker with the Communist symbol in back of him, with the statement, "We're not open, we don't have it, go and bother someone else". This, to me, encapsulates the Hungarian mentality. And, more likely than not - though I wasn't here prior to Communism - it is largely in part, due to Communism. This doesn't mean that Hungarians aren't by nature very pessimistic people, negative, self-pitying, or depressed, but Communism more than likely didn't contribute any positive attributes to their despairing disposition.
And so, unlike in America - or most of central and western Europe nowadays - the customer is always wrong, cheating your neighbor is necessary because he will just cheat you somehow, and I'm never wrong: it's always your fault.
So, the friendly waitress who asked me twice in a friendly tone, if I'd decided on what I'd like to order, was a pleasant change of pace from the daily morose that I find in any given cafe of restaurant I might happen upon. She was happy to deliver our coffee and tea once the girl I hadn't seen in so many months finally did arrive.
The waitress was also accommodating when I asked if she had a pad of paper I could use. She was by all accounts, someone I would have gladly tipped. Until she displayed her true colors: Which she just can't help.

The cafe I'd ordered was 370 Hungarian Forint on the drink menu when I'd ordered it, but when the bill came, was 390 Forint. Perhaps not a big increase for most people, but enough to make me raise an eyebrow as to why the receipt was different than the menu. When I pointed it out to her, she shook her finger at me, went back to the register then came back saying, "No. The machine says 390, and whatever the machine says, that's what it is." Her friendliness had suddenly pivoted now to defensiveness. I asked her why the menu said 370. She had no answer except, a bit roughly, "What can I do? It's not my fault." I looked at her, trying to temper my temper, and said, "I didn't say it was your fault." To add insult to injury she said, "Give me exact change, 'cause I don't have any to give you."

It may only be 20 Forint, but here is the problem, and the difference between Hungary and all other countries, aside from perhaps a place like Communist China: In America, in Italy, in England, in Sweden, in Spain, even in Romania - and I could list other countries I've been to - if the menu says it's ten cents less than it actually is, guess what? You don't have to pay that ten cent increase, because that's the establishment's fault - not yours. Am I suggesting it was the waitress's fault? Absolutely not. It's the boss's fault. Because if the customer doesn't pay that ten cents, he'll make the waitress take it out of her own pocket. In all the other aforementioned countries, the waitress would not only not make you pay that ten cent increase, but there's a chance she may even say, "Don't worry. Because of the inconvenience, it's on us today." Because the establishment values customers, and wants their money. Hungarians, as a whole, have yet to catch on to the value of customer service, and the nicer an establishment is, the more business they'll receive. Slowly but surely business owners are starting to realize that they have competition, and to gain repeat business, you have to have friendly staff. But I have known two waitresses who have been fired in my city alone, for having been "too friendly with the customers", and this was the employer's reason for letting them go. Clearly, it's still an issue that will take time. Communism is dead, and has been dead for over twenty years. Ten cents, is such a little thing...but it can be such a big thing...