Supermarkets, hypermarkets. If we want to eat we are forced to use them. And boy do they know it. The lack of any real competition in the field means that they can treat their customers (who they view as little more than potential thieves) very badly.
According to Romania”s supermarket managers, this country is little more than a nation of thieves. We are all apparently unable to walk into a supermarket without feeling the temptation to empty the contents of the shelves into our bags and pockets, before prancing out nonchalantly without paying. Am I wrong? Well, let me tell you what happened when an ordinary, reasonably honest chap (me) tried to walk into a very popular and well-known big store last weekend with a small rucksack on his back.
What happened? I was pounced on basically, much as a bikini clad blonde walking into a mosque would be.
A short, fat woman with bad breath and a security guard told me in no uncertain terms that said rucksack would have to be sealed in a plastic wrapping before I could enter the store; a privilege that I would have to stand in a rather long line and wait for. Resisting the temptation to scream, “I have come to steal all your asparagus”, I simply said, “I refuse”, and walked with my wife and small son – another big time potential thief – into the store before proceeding to steal kilos of asparagus (why is asparagus so awfully expensive in this country?).
OK, I made the last bit up, but you get the point. I go to these stores to spend money – to go shopping is the verb we use in England. In Romania – according to the people who run them – things are different. We don”t go shopping, we go stealing; or at least we would like to, were we not foiled by draconian security measures.
More dutiful potential thieves than me were therefore lining up to have their bags sealed, so as to prevent them from stealing things on their way around the supermarket. I would suggest to the management that if they really want to eliminate stealing from their stores they should take even stricter measures. Making people sew up their pockets, perhaps, before entering the store could better save them from their thieving instincts.
Or making people take off all of their clothes, sealing them in plastic wrapping and only then allowing them into the store could be a workable idea. It would certainly make the weekly shop a lot more interesting.
Yes, I know. I can vote with my feet and not shop at that particular store ever again. Problem is that anywhere else I go I get the same treatment (and can”t find asparagus).
Be it the other place at the end of Bucharest, be it the smaller supermarkets in the centre of town: all have the same policy. If you have a bag of any description other than a small lady”s purse (and I try not to carry mine in daylight) then it has to be left with a woman whose terrific job is to look after your bags, or you have to have it hermetically sealed in plastic wrapping, lest your criminal urges lead you to the dark side of the shop. Some places do take a different approach.
A do-it-yourself chain of stores, for example, lets you in with your bags, but then insists on checking them and the goods you have in them against your receipt before you are allowed to leave. Hardly customer friendly.
Why do stores do this? I cannot believe for one moment that Romania has more petty criminals than anywhere else in the world (Britain, for example); Indeed, given the level of expensive, branded clothing worn by the unemployed in Britain right now I should think it has far fewer.
So why is it that we are treated not as customers but as potential thieves?
The reason I was given by the salaried drone in sensible shoes that I was fobbed off with last weekend when I asked to complain to the manager was that “we do have things stolen, and we ask people to seal their bags to prevent any embarrassment at the checkout.”
Quite how accusing every single customer of having the intention to steal (for that is what it amounts to) can spare any embarrassment I do not know. Just imagine those fine retailers Waitrose, Tesco or Asda implementing such a policy. They”d be bankrupt before you could say asparagus.
We, alas, do not have Waitrose, Tesco or even Asda to choose from.
And the point is that until we have an alternative, our alternatives are that we have no alternatives. We are prisoners of these people, forced to go back week after week in our search for asparagus.
I have now resolved to go back with even bigger rucksacks. Lord knows this week I might even take my suitcase, and watch how the jobsworth security staff has a collective nervous breakdown as I wheel it into the store.
* Craig Turp is the Editor of Bucharest In Your Pocket