So as I mentioned, I've been in Bucureşti for the past several days, on a medical visit. In addition to medical appointments, I've been wandering around, writing letters, picking up some things I'm not able to find in my little town (mmm ... wasabi paste), and trying to do some planning for a trip over the Easter holiday, as the Romanian Orthodox Easter rolls around later than the Catholic Easter.
Thanks to a lack of planning before I came here, I forgot to bring any travel guides for the places I wanted to visit. As it's too late to buy one online and have it shipped here before I would leave, I decided to check some bookstores here to see if I could find a Lonely Planet/Rough Guide for Hungary (my Romanian proficiency is definitely not to the point where I would feel comfortable reading a guidebook in the language). Lo and behold, I did manage to locate a shop that carried Lonely Planets, and had the Hungary 4th edition ... for 90 lei. For those not interested in doing the currency conversion on their own, this works out to be about $40, or double the list price for one of these books, and significantly more than if one was to order from someplace like Amazon or pick up a used copy.
I waffled on it for several days. It's my own fault that I didn't plan ahead and pick one up when I could get it for a more reasonable price, and so the only relevant question at this point was whether the book was worth that much money to me. This morning I finally decided it was, owing to the fact that I'm planning this trip solo largely because I want to be able to wander around and see as many things I want to see in Budapest and its surroundings while I'm there, and not picking up a guide that gives information on what to see and where to find it sounds like a textbook definition of penny wise and pound foolish.
So I drop into the shop and pick it up, then take off to locate the Bucureşti Mall, in the hopes of satisfying another one of my embarrassing American cravings and getting a cup of Starbucks coffee. After some wandering and a few wrong turns, I make my way to the mall, and poke about a bit, checking the place out. This is when I find the "media" shop in the mall's lower level, chock full of ... wait for it ... used travel guides. Including the Lonely Planet guide for Hungary. The fifth edition. For 50 lei.
Good Lord, was I annoyed. I'd specifically bought it this morning, instead of waiting until the evening, or tomorrow before I head back, because I was planning to go to Starbucks and wanted to have the book to peruse whilst I sat and people-watched over a giant latte. If I'd waited, I could have gotten an edition that was three years newer and 40 lei cheaper.

I'm sure every American reader is looking at that last paragraph right now and thinking "Big deal. Go back to the original shop and return it." Which is, to be honest, what a part of my mind was thinking as well. Problem is, the entire concept of "returning an item to a shop for a refund" seems utterly alien here, sort of the same way that "giving exact change for a purchase" is similarly strange and mysterious.
Thinking back on it, I don't think I ever even bothered asking anyone if it was possible to return something here. It seems to be one of those cultural things I just picked up by osmosis; the entire vibe here is very anti-customer service, and it seems like I just intuitively knew that bringing things back to shops just wasn't done. Still, I held out hopes that I'd get lucky this time--I'd bought the book not four hours earlier, I had the receipt, and it was still shrink-wrapped, clearly unused. I dropped by the PC offices to take an informal poll of the staff; they seemed cautiously optimistic about my chances, so I decided to give it a shot.
Was I ever in for a surprise. Not only did the clerk refuse, but her manner implied that she was very much looking forward to watching me choke to death on my own vomit for so much as bothering her with such a question. It was one of the rudest responses I've gotten since arriving here, and believe me, she had some stiff competition to get that top billing.

Now, I'm one of those people who's never been a fan of the American approach to customer service. The most ubiquitous, extreme-that-best-illustrates-the-norm example of this would be the Nordstrom story: A man walks into Nordstrom with a tire, approaches a clerk, and informs them that he wants to return his tire. The clerk cheerfully accepts the tire, gives him a refund, and he exits the store. Problem is, Nordstrom doesn't sell tires. Depending on who's telling it, this anecdote either illustrates the absurdity of the Nordstrom customer service approach, or is held up as a shining example of the heights every retailer should be striving to reach.
Perhaps it's a result of those shitty retail jobs I worked in high school and college, but for a while "customer service" was one of my most hated phrases in the English lexicon. People in the States are accustomed to being able to bring anything back, in any condition, for a refund or store credit, and when they're told no, they just get louder and angrier and work their way up the chain of command until they get someone who gives them what they want so that they a) shut up, b) go away, or c) don't cause bad publicity/word of mouth for the company. I've always felt, and continue to feel, that this is a horrible business practice--I've heard arguments that it increases revenue, as people will be more willing to come back to stores that are more accommodating, but I've always held that the inverse is true: the more people know that you're willing to be taken advantage of, the more likely they are to take advantage of you. More subtle, and more sinister, is how it provides people a venue in which they can deny responsibility for their actions.
Here, however, we're on the polar opposite end of the spectrum. Here, customer service is an unheard-of concept in almost all places. Walk up to a chiosc window and you'll like as not be prompted with a glare and a curt "Spuneți". Spend thirty minutes standing in line outside of the package office (which is only open for a couple hours a week to begin with), waiting while the postal officer ignores everyone waiting and stands outside smoking cigarettes and chatting on her mobile. Get verbally abused at the train station's ticket window, or worse, just ignored ... standing there, waiting, the moments of your life ticking by one by one as the clerk sits not two metres away and pretends you don't exist for a few minutes. Nowhere else in the world have I experienced someone expressing such an apparent grudge for the fact that you turned up expecting them to do their job. It's like the entire country is auditioning for a Kevin Smith film.

It was bad enough that she wouldn't let me return the book. Never have I been to a country in which a large, chain retailer would refuse to take back a sealed item in perfect condition, which had been purchased only hours earlier and didn't have an explicit "not returnable" clause attached to it. To be verbally abused in addition to having a polite, reasonable request refused was just the icing on the cake. I suppose I should try to be more understanding, accept the fact that this is just one of those cultural differences one needs to learn to navigate at times like these, that whatever, it's just 40 lei, it's nothing in the grand scheme of things, this is just one of those quirky little things that makes Romania different.
Perhaps I'll get there eventually, be able to recite the story as an example of the wide range of entertaining experiences I had during my time with the Peace Corps, but in the meantime you can bet that Libraria Noi is joining Unicarm on the quickly-growing list of places in Romania I refuse to patronise out of principle. Not to mention that I'll be fervently hoping that Lonely Planet didn't do any major updates in the three years between the 4th and 5th editions.