Little Things: Grocery Shopping in Germany

As an American, I am accustomed to customer service. I’m used to giant, carefully curated and artfully decorated supermarkets. I am used to friendly, smiling store staff who are perpetually curious if I need help. I am used to being in no rush and everyone else being on my time.

In Germany, none of that is the case.

For the first time in my life, grocery shopping is stressful. The stores are usually small and minimally decorated. Products are placed on the shelf still in the boxes in which they were shipped, and if you want a single bottle of juice or can of Pringles, you’re going to have to take it out of the packaging itself. The store staff is nice, but they will not go out of their way to help you or smile at you.

The most jarring thing about shopping for groceries in Germany is checking out. You’re not on your time, you’re on everyone else’s time. You have to bring your own bag (or pay for one there), and when you check out, the cashier scans your things (very quickly!!!) and immediately shoves them off to the side for you to bag them yourself. It is expected that you do this very, very fast. Personally, I have developed a tactic whereby I place my items on the conveyor belt in the order in which I need to place them in my bag so that nothing gets squished in my rush to shove everything in there, but I still experience stress and a rush of adrenaline when it actually comes time to bag all my things. Just thinking about it is causing my blood pressure to rise, geez.

This, though, is one of the larger differences between America and Germany: here, you’re expected to handle a lot more by yourself and then get out of the way of everyone else trying to do their thing. In German grocery stores, there’s no customer service desk. There’s no woman with a soccer-mom haircut named Janet screaming at a 16-year-old cashier because her coupon is invalid. There’s no free plastic bags and certainly nobody employed for the sole purpose of putting your groceries into those bags for you. In fact, if you cause a stir here, you will get some severely dirty looks rather than a manager willing to help you.

To be honest, I kinda like it. I think a blend of the German expectation of independence and the American idea of customer service would be ideal, but for now I guess I’m stuck deciding if I should put the pomegranate or the eggs on the conveyor belt first.