The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain: Why shopping is a pain in Ukraine.

I used to like shopping. I thought it was fun. I love closure, and so nothing was more satisfying than crossing items off a list. I enjoyed the experience of checking out new stuff, looking for bargains, and of course everyone knows that buying stuff feels good.  That was then. This is now.

Shopping here is a pain.

Let me explain (hey, I’m a poet and I don’t even realize it)!

First, we don’t have a car. That means we are at the mercy of public transportation, and so we have to keep that in mind when choosing what store to go to. Is it close to a bus or metro stop? Do we have to transfer metro lines? When we lived in the city center, we were really close to two metro lines. We like this store called MegaMarket, and it was only a few stops away on the metro. So, we would grab our backpacks, walk a block to the metro, go down a ridiculously long escalator, then hop on a metro and ride a couple stops down.  Then we would walk a few blocks and there it was..…Megamarket!

Second reason why shopping isn’t fun here: Backpacks aren’t allowed in any store. So you have to go find a locker and stash your stuff. In some stores, that’s fine, but other stores will have like 5 lockers, so you have to wait until someone’s done using theirs. More waiting.

Once that’s done, we grab a cart, which brings us to our next point. All carts here have free moving wheels, which makes them extremely difficult to turn, and extremely easy to run into aisles, people, hippopotami, other carts, etc. Last week Meisha and I bought gifts for 300 kids, including juice boxes and shampoo. They weighed the carts down, and it took two of us to turn corners. That gets old fast.

Back to the story, next we start the process of shopping. We start chucking stuff into the cart, pausing occasionally to try and read a label to figure out what it is. We usually end up getting the same old stuff, but we always have to keep in mind that we can only buy what we can carry. As our cart fills up, those voices in our heads will start chirping: “Remember what it’s like to carry a ridiculously heavy backpack plus a shopping bag or two? Sure, the journey to the store seemed easy, but the way back won’t be fun. In fact, the way back will seem like forever since you are carrying the weight of a dead yak. Those few blocks to the metro will seem like a few miles, waiting for the metro will take forever, and riding and trying to balance everything while standing up will be horrible! You probably won’t get seats on the metro, and so you will get to stand up with the weight of the earth on your backs on a moving train with no free arms to grab the rail because they’re full of grocery bags, because of course you bought too much stuff! Riding that escalator will also be forever and oh yeah, forgot to mention, you’ll be roasting, because Ukrainians love excess amounts of heat. Once off the metro, you’ll get to walk up some more stairs, then a block to the apartment, and then up three more flights of stairs!”  We really should listen to those little voices, but who does that? We have that mentality of “go ahead, buy juice. It weighs a lot, but shopping is a pain. You’re going to be miserable if you buy the juice, and you’re going to be miserable if you don’t buy it. All good fun! But back to shopping.

We head to the check-out lines, and more often than not, get to wait. Finally when it’s our turn, we load our stuff on the conveyer belt, and hope that the cashier doesn’t ask us any questions. Sometimes they do, and we don’t understand, and they get mad, and it makes the whole shopping experience unpleasant. 

The third….or is the fourth? reason why shopping isn’t fun is because costumer service is next to non-existent  here. Most cashiers are grumpy and will snap at you and roll their eyes at you and will always demand exact change, even when you don’t have it. We missionaries always joke around with each other and say, “oh yeah, we’re walking banks! Of course we have exact change, because we are wearing these transportable cash register belts so we can just press the button and cha-ching! Exact change for you!” Not only is the cashier grumpy, but all the people in line after you are grumpy. It adds this interesting dynamic which we like to call pressure. “Pressure” usually turns into stress, which results in shopping dread, and the only cure I hear is chocolate. Mass amounts of chocolate.

The next reason shopping is a pain is that you have to bag your own groceries. That’s why Daniel and I almost always shop together, so one person can load the conveyer belt and pay, and the other person can run to the locker, grab our backpacks, and then load them. It’s always “Hurry! Hurry! Hurry! Don’t make the other costumers mad!” When that’s finally over, we head home (see above paragraph for that process, the one about lugging around a dead yak).

That’s grocery shopping in a nutshell. Now sit back and enjoy what’s it like to go to Epicenter, Ukraine’s version of Home Depot.

Last week, Daniel and I had to go to Epicenter because we had a massive list of stuff to get for Smile House. Luckily, we were able to use our organization’s van to get there, so that cut our anxiety in half, as well as calmed that mad twitch in Daniel’s left eye.

This will really give you some insight into Ukrainian culture, how they love lines and documentation.

First, we had to get some cabinet doors, and so we went upstairs where you had to order them. Nobody was there. We waited around for a while, but still didn’t see anyone. So we decided to go look at the faucet displays. We picked one out that we liked, and then Daniel went back to the cabinet place. Still no one there.  Janna stayed to find the person who could get the faucet for her. Finally, after 10 minutes of waiting, the faucet employee came around, and Janna showed him which faucet she wanted.  Now this is a normal procedure in Ukraine. First, he opened the box and showed me the faucet. Yes, that’s the same faucet as the one displayed, and I want to buy it. Then he went to his little desk and filled out some forms and gave them to me. I had to go across the store to this booth, and show them the paperwork, then pay for the faucet. Then I went back to the guy’s little desk, and he gave me the faucet. Daniel came back by then, still no cabinet guy. We looked at some other stuff, then he took off again, and finally the cabinet person was there. Daniel showed him the cabinet doors he needed, and Mr. Cabinet took Daniel to the back, showed him the cabinet doors, and filled out the paperwork so Daniel could go back across the store to pay for them. Daniel then had the privilege of going back to the back to pick up the cabinet doors, of which they had already loaded onto another cart. Meanwhile, we had picked out the sink we wanted to buy, and so I tracked down the faucet guy, but he was with a costumer, so I waited. Finally when he was done, I pointed to the sink we wanted, and he had to grab his ladder thing and get it. Though the sink cost as much as the faucet, we didn’t have to pay for it beforehand, but could put it into our cart. It’s weird; we have no idea how they decide what you can grab off the shelf yourself, what an employee has to get for you, and what you have to buy beforehand in one of those little kiosks, or what you can pay for in a check-out line. Cost isn’t a factor, because one time Doug bought some little hangers for a mirror that were locked in a glass case and cost $1.50. Anyways, back to the story. We grabbed some other stuff for the bathroom, and then were looking at the mirror displays. We saw one we liked, and were trying to match the display numbers to the box numbers which were located under the display. Naturally Mr. Faucet had to come over and check out what we were doing, to make sure it was legal and all that. We got the mirror we wanted, and then headed downstairs to buy a front door. Daniel had already picked one out, I just had to approve of it, and approve of it I did. We then waited around for the door guy, when he finally came around we showed him the door we had picked out.  He looked at our cart, and told us we needed a different one. So Daniel had to run across the store and out the front door to find the right kind of cart. Meanwhile, the guy was asking me all kinds of stuff I didn’t understand, so finally he grabbed like every color of trim and put them next to the door. Daniel came back with the right kind of cart, and we loaded the door on it, and picked out trim.  Next we needed to get a countertop for the bathroom.  I had already picked out the color, but when Daniel went to the countertop area, they said they were out of that color. But, they had leftover fall-off pieces that we could look at. So we did, and of course during that time the countertop guy disappeared.  We stood around for another 30 minutes, and then I left to go get some other things on our list. According to Daniel, the counter guy showed up after I left, and Daniel told him how long he wanted the countertop (100 centimeters); they took the piece over to the cutting area, then they filled out paperwork. Daniel had to run across the store to the kiosk and pay, because the kiosk that was closer was closed. Then he went to back to countertop saw area,  showed him the receipt, and then they cut it the wrong length, after Daniel told him 100 centimeters five times.  By this point Daniel was like “oh well. I’ll cut it myself later!” After the countertop experience, Daniel had to buy 2 power tools: a miter saw and a sander. He had already decided which saw to buy, so all he needed to do was point at the saw and say, “я хочу купить” (I want to buy).  But the guy in charge of the tools was intimidated by him, an American, and the fact that he was buying a wood tool (in the land of concrete).  So he took Daniel to the instrument kiosk, where the manager told him wait for 5 minutes, though Daniel didn’t know why. All Daniel wanted was the saw that was on the shelf, but he waited … for 10 minutes.  Then Zhenya came; he spoke English.  Daniel got it at that point.  Everyone was scared of talking to him.  So Zhenya and Daniel headed to the saw, followed by 4 other Ukrainians, who, as far as I know, were there just to see the show (An American buying a big saw).  Daniel said to Zhenya, “I want to buy that saw.”  And then the Ukrainians talked for 5 minutes.  Then came the question, do you want to cut metal or wood.  “Wood” (But why do you need to know that?).  More talking ensued.  Finally after all that someone grabbed the box, took it over to the testing stand, unpacked the saw, plugged it in and pulled the trigger.  They have to test every piece of electronic equipment you buy, which is good and bad, but at this point it was a real pain, we just wanted to leave.  Finally, they loaded it back into the box, and onto a new cart (cart #3 by this time).  Lucky for us, we got to repeat the process with the sander. Thankfully it took a lot less time, because by that time we were going nuts. Daniel’s left eye was starting to twitch violently.  

After what seemed like forever, we were finally done! As you know, we had three carts, but one cart was full of things we already paid for. However, you still have to go through the checkout line, therefore it’s more waiting. They slowly look at every item you have and cross-reference them with your receipts, and then they unpacked the saw and the sander all over again to make sure Daniel wasn’t trying to steal something. I (Janna) went to a different check-out line with the remaining two carts, and the process took forever.  All in all, we were in Epicenter for I think 4 hours, the majority of it was spent waiting for employees to help us, waiting in lines, running around to different kiosks to pay, etc. We loaded everything into the van, hopped in, and just collapsed for awhile!

That is why shopping is a pain in Ukraine. Maybe I’ll move to the plains in Spain.