Hi,

I am a newbie here, and something tells me that I may just be spending a bit too much time on the Complaints Corner section of this forum. I am sorry to say that, but it's true.

Anyway, I have to start my first thread by getting off my chest what annoys me on an almost daily basis. What is it with people in this country that makes them crowd train, tram, and bus doorways, and don't allow others to get the hell off the vehicle first ? F**k, it annoys me. It's like their sorry little lives depend on catching that particluar service. But what I really don't get, is that I often get a bus that goes to the station, and that is the last stop. The bus stops and waits there for 10 minutes or more, and the driver goes for a coffee, but still when I get off there are crowds and crowds of people pushing to get on the bus even though the damn thing has stopped and won't move for another 10 minutes. My God, I sometimes wish I had a machete in my hand, and it was legal to slice my way through crowds of infuriating w**nkers pushing on public transport.

Secondly, please please someone tell me why most supermarkets here even bother with having more than 3 cash registers installed ? My Coop has about 10-15 of them to serve people, but I have never seen more than 3 or 4 open at one time, despite the fact that the shop is crammed with people wanting to pay and go home !! There are loads of registers closed, and huge lines of people stood at the same till. I have never seen such stupidity in my life. But what gets me really wound-up, is the fact that the shop can be packed with people, and some f**ker will decide to close his register and go for a break, leaving only 2 or 3 open to serve 30 or 40 people waiting to pay ! It makes me so damn annoyed. Or is it just me ? There is absolutely NO concept of customer service anywhere in this country. It is soooooooo backwards sometimes.

I am off to cool down now.

wow.... I can sense a lot of resentment in there...

okay, first off, I have taken trains and buses regularly to get to work for about 12 months now, and haven't seen the sort of behaviour you describe. I find the Swiss to be polite, well behaved, and in general, agreeable fellows... maybe its just that we are judging them by diff standards, but it seems you are, in general, turned off by the ppl here for entirely different reasons...

second, there are good reasons why there are not 15 check out lines operating at your store. it's called 'cost'. most businesses will size their resources to meet peak demand. I am guessing that they do use all the counters at certain times of day (or certain days of the week)... besides, you always have the choice of not patronising them if they are really so bad, don't you??

If you travel via ZH Hauptbahnhof especially platforms 21-24 you'll see the behaviour described above. If you haven't seen it, lucky you. All ages are guilty from school kids to old gits in their 80s...

Oh, and don't ever be polite and let a little old lady go past you, you'll be knocked for 6 by all the healthy locals pushing past instead.

Dear Sausage,

I think it's safe to say that we can all feel your rage.

I might know of a breathing technique that could help - pucker up like you're going to drink from a straw and breathe in slowly like that. Unpucker, and exhale normally.

Inhale saying in your mind "I love humankind"....exhale and let the images of the machete chops dissolve.

You might need to repeat this about 4,000 times a day for the first six months.....but I promise results!

There's also the taxi-rescue method.

Good luck!

Zurich is no city, it's a town and a small one at that, the thongs of seemingly badly behaved vermin worthy of the rusty machette or a Quake IV fragging are in fact harmless. Oh, how I long for the morning madness of Paddington station via Embankment, Ealing Broadway and the docile, smiling and friendly tsunami of frantic zombies in a crystal meth induced stampede.

England has it's queues, we're proud of them, we know how to queue and wait. Don't we? In CH the people are influenced by the number ticket system, but there aren't any of those on platforms, take your ticket, get your place in the queue for the train. All civilisations are savage when it comes to transport, we're civil towards each other until the train arrives. London always made me laugh that way, there's a queue until the bus or train arrives and then there's an almighty scrap. We are after all cattle being poked about and transported from one field to plough to another to graze in.

Get a cattle prod and ride the human Mexican wave of people that breaks when you zap them, maybe even a Tazer, that might come in handy.

"When in Rome...." etc

I now regard getting off some buses with hordes of kids waiting to get on as a game of human 10 pin bowling. Little baskets.

And when visitors come over, the missus and I are half way to Oerlikon before we realise our friends are still being British polite trying to get on the train...

My "favourite" for this is the platform at somewhere like Landquart or Arth-Goldau around 5pm on a fine summer Sunday afternoon. Hordes of grey haired little old ladies in hiking gear, armed with pointy walking poles. I'm usually knackered after being dragged up some mountain by my wife, waiting at what seemed like a remote spot on the platform for the train to Zurich. Then as the train appears I'm swamped with them, coming at me like Agent Smiths from the Matrix. I used to be polite, now I dont give an inch. My wife says she thinks I actually enjoy the tactics and battle!

Ahhh, feels good to get that one off my chest so early in the morning. Bring on the challenge of summer!

Gooner,
Pucker...suck in with "I love humankind".
Open....exhale with dissolving images of tazering people!

Yep - queueing is an unknown art here - it's everyone for themselves with no pity for the very old or infirm. In time you'll think it quite normal to barge an old lady out of your way to get on a train or tram 1 second earlier than otherwise

My own personal take on the 'why' is that people here generally don't interact much with the rest of society, outside of their family and close friends (and of course organised clubs and groups). Hence, they really don't care too much for other people. Not in a negative, malicious way - just in a totally neutral way. You really don't factor into their lives at all, so they're not going expend one second taking your feelings or needs into consideration.


As for the shops, I totally agree. I've seen the 'lack of open checkout ' situatation happen SO many times and it still bugs me. The short answer is that CH is just not a very consumerised society. Retail businesses rarely put any emphasis on customer service and there's a culture of 'who cares' amongst many workers anyway. They get reasonably well paid, their jobs are safe no matter what ... so, 'who cares'?


The annoying this is that the attitude runs throughout most businesses so that chances are that their competitors are just as bad! Coop are actually one of the _better_ stores in my experience. They do seem to have been getting an idea about how to run a supermarket in the last year or so. The big, out of town, modern ones could almost be 'real' supermarkets as someone from the UK knows them. Almost ...

Gav

Most of the time the barging on trams, trains etc does not bother me; I see it as part of living here. But having said that there are times it has made me mad; I spent quite a long time on crutches after surgery and still people would barge me out the way and not give up their seat. The other time it has annoyed me is when pregnant or carrying my son in a baby carrier, still no bloody consideration from most people. I have noticed this behaviour elsewhere too; when in Paris, my friend who is permanantly on crutches as she only has one leg was pushed out of the way by some guy deperate to get the disabled seat that she was aiming for on a bus.

Lou