Danny, no suggestion was made that the chap was foreign.
Mikey, as stated twice in my posts, the initial post did indeed report an outright act of rudeness, no contention there. I just expanded a bit on the subject of "rudeness".
No malice either in me highlighting that any negative experience you will have in Switzerland is not only down to the Swiss mentality as it is repeated time after time on this forum. Finally, not sure where you got this idea that the Swiss don't like to complain or expect what they think is the best (which does not necessarily means it is the best if you see what I mean...), in my experience, they(we) are a royal pain in the bum...
Anyhow, in a spirit of conciliation, I'd like to apologise on behalf of my fellow, probable, Swiss for his rudeness.
Zombie, reading that feedback is what I've been doing when I registered here, now it's my turn to give some, unless you do think that it's all one-way traffic and that only more evolved being like you are allowed to offer opinions?
What model should we follow though, in term of evolutive society?
a generalised impression is that swiss never apologise. in 15 years only two swiss dudes apologised in my presence, mistakes are not acknowledge, not even blatant ones. you can begin fixin this. this could convert switzerland in a better society.
Well, a cross-breeding program with English folks might help, they go way over the top when it comes to say "sorry"
It's a bit hard to take this seriously though, you seem to have a right bee in your bonnet about Switzerland and the Swiss that reminds me a bit of the one the Engish have about your country favourite son
Just for a bit of balance, I flew to the UK yesterday and got more sullen and rude service in one hour on Thameslink Trains here than I have in the last 6 months in Switzerland. You get rude buggers everywhere.
And a few weeks ago I went to or local post office to collect post from our PO box, I forgot they lock the doors to this room during lunchtime but a cleaner inside saw me trying to open the door. She let me in to get my post, even though I had to trapse my muddy boots all over her freshly cleaned floor. I can't imagine that happening in the UK, but then again, they wouldn't lock the doors at lunchtime in the first place I suppose.
There are bad examples of customer service in every country in the world. In a similar way, there are people making intelligent and unintelligent contributions to this forum. I'm sure that I'm not alone in thinking that your recent posts have fallen into the latter catagory.
I like Switzerland a lot for a lot of things: Clean, safe environment, no hassles in transportation, efficient infrastructure and the possibility to live nextdoor to nature, among other things.
However, I have to agree with the rest of the people here about the Swiss' lack to apologoze about anything. They can go blue in the face trying to prove that they are right. I cannot understand why its so difficult to reconcile that someone from another country can provide a perspective from which they could also learn! I have a (Swiss) colleague, who asked me to go back to my country if I didnt like the way things are run here!!!
And no, I am not generalising here, I have lots of Swiss friends and this (no apologies) runs through all of them:-)
[html]I have a (Swiss) colleague, who asked me to go back to my country if I didnt like the way things are run here!!! [html]
Funny enough i experienced this in "Ozz" all the time, i could wax lyrical for ages on all the plus points but as soon as i mentioned anything i found negative it was "F-off back to England then, you smart-arsed pommy bitch!"
I would suggest you have a word with your Swiss friends and accointances on this apology subject, see if they have also noticed something similar.
I live in the UK but my work has me in daily contact with a customer site in Switzerland and I have not noticed any particular tendency to refuse to apologise when a mistake was made.
I'd really like to point out that I'm genuinely puzzled by this and I'm not trying to get "all Swiss" on you and refuse to accept what you say
Wow, I stare, I refuse to back down, and probably fit into many commonly-held Swiss stereotypes, although I apologize once proven incorrect (it can take awhile). I've never picked up on the refusal of Swiss to apologize, but maybe I live in a bubble (very possible). My Swiss wife apologizes for practically everything; it gets to the point that I need to tell her to stop.
Also, I have to say that I have received exceptional service at my local post office, despite the fact that I speak High German. They are far more courteous than anyone you'd run into at the USPS (US Postal Service). For example, they've made many free photo copies for me (they cost 30 Rappen each at town hall) when sending registered mail. All that I had to do was ask politely.
I would venture that the man at Hauptbahnhof / Main Station was just agitated. That branch is always packed, never mind the fact that the Post announced recently that they want to shut it down (i.e. are the employees there going to be laid off if the city of Zürich doesn't win in its fight to keep it open?).
Well, OF COURSE, they all deny it!! But yes, one of my close Swiss friends admitted that they are not the best nation when it comes to admitting they are wrong about anything. But again, its only one person.
I must say I have come across many people here in customer service in the last 6 years who have goofed up, but did not apologize.
I appreciate that you are genuinely puzzled and would like to understand this. But would so many different people from diverse backgrounds and with different experiences here all be wrong about this? As I said, I like Switzerland, I just dont like it when I come across this stubborn wall of everything-is-right-here-and-you-are wrong mentality.
Whilst I find the german-swiss tend to be a bit on the sour side, I reckon that's just a front. Just this year alone I've had some amazing customer service. One was from Franz Karl Weber on Rennweg.
I went in looking for a gadget for my husband's birthday. It's was nothing big, just these magnetic oval things that you could fiddle with. I described it in my bad german and three shopgirls came in to help (I had to repeat my descriptions). They had this big discussion and went checking around the store and then one other girl came around, opened the drawer at the cash register and in a tinned pastillle box pulled out the exact gadget that I was looking for. Except of course it wasn't packed/wrapped and it turned out they didn't carry them anymore. So I asked the girls where I could find this in Zurich and three of them started a list of possible toy/gadget shops when the fourth who found the gadget just said "why don't we sell her this one". They stopped and watched this girl walk to the supervisor who then just said to give me what they had. The whole episode carried a really friendly air of helpfulness and the four girls were really happy that I could "have" what I was looking for.
This might be an exception to the "normal" service, but it really does prove that there is good service too. Another example was just last tuesday in Bern. I went to a petshop looking for a tube of malt paste for my cats. The shop was closing down and its keeper in Bärndüütsch asked me what I was looking for. I explained and he apologised for having sold out but then pulled out a small tube from behind the counter and explained that the tube was actually brand new but was returned when the previous customer had pressed all of its contents to the one end to show him how much "air" was in the tube. It was such a ridiculous notion that I just started laughing. But yet, to please this customer, he took the tube back and exchanged it for new and then gave it to me for free. Anyone who'd put up with that sort of customer .... there was really hardly any "air" in the tube.
There are many such little examples I could give.
I could also give one in NY, after arriving from Zurich on thanksgiving weekend to find out my Amtrak ticket was cancelled eventhough I had told them when I booked on the phone that I was travelling in and couldn't pick it up beforehand. I explained this to the two ladies at the ticket counter and they spent about 10 mins punching in stuff on the computer, both of them working at the same time until they found me a seat. It was incredible and they were really friendly and happy to have been able to help. And then, as a parting shot, they said something like "we only help nice people. The guy before you, he was really rude and arrogant and so we didn't help him".
Customer Service? It's a completely different ball-game!
And I won't even start with the UK public transport service.
Seems like a clash between a still formal continental culture and more relaxed anglo saxon culture here! I tend to like more formality when dealing with strangers in public so I don't really mind the "formalness" with which one is treated on the continent.
Having lived in the US for years though, I can also roll with the faux friendliness of people. However, I tend rather not be bothered when I shop so I find I actually enjoy continental formality more than I do the faux smile and friendliness in US and UK. Go figure
I'm going to do some investigation on this, there seems to be something in that lack of apology stuff although even amongst expats there is not a clear consensus emerging (see spmull06 comment).
And no, I don't apologise for wanting to investigate this thoroughly
Well said! Generalizations are what keep me from more participation in expat forums. I was part of one when living in the UK and after a while I just get tired of all the negativity. There's a rude lady at my local post office (in Switzerland) but a nice one too. Just like at my post office in the US, and when I lived in the UK. People are people - and some are grumpier, ruder, and less helpful than others - wherever you go.
BTW - for anyone who wants to read up on Swiss culture (sometimes we judge less when we understand more), the book Beyond Chocolate is an excellent introduction to life in Switzerland from an expat perspective.
I'm American, so I don't count, and my wife is not "typically Swiss" by any stretch of the imagination. That being the case, she probably wouldn't be a good example, as she seems to run counter to what everyone has experienced. I've noticed that I've adapted to most things here rather quickly, so they no longer seem out of the ordinary to me.
My post office experience is more than likely also out of the ordinary, as I live in a small town and the post office is not hectic like the one in Hauptbahnhof. I've been to the one in Baden regularly as well, and I would probably rate its quality of service in between that of the country and the city of Zürich. The post office in HB is always a pain in the ass to use with the long lines and people ducking in and out, although it is the most convenient.
Then again, the American phrase "to go postal" might be related to the fact that postal worker are stereotypically disgruntled in the US, just as this man was. http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=postal