From: stachour@sctc.com (Paul Stachour)
Subject: Re: Shopping Hours, etc.
Organization: SCTC
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1992 01:16:16 GMT

Pankaj Saxena <U09416@uicvm.uic.edu> writes:

>I have followed with interest the comments on shopping hours, bathrooms, cars
>and machinery in Germany, as contrasted to the US. It seems to me that we are
>basically discussing an interesting issue, without quite naming it: that is,
>how culture and geography affect consumer preferences and practices. I would
>like to start a discussion along this thread, if enough people are interested.

As an American who has had the good furtune to work two short jobs in
Europre (5 months in France in 86, 12 months in Germany in 89-90),
I'd like to add a few impressions to the discussion.

1) Shopping hours are definitely shorter in Europe, but I find that
   I didn't need longer hours there; I do here in the USA.  
   To be specific, both France and Germany have quite strict rules
   about how much one is allowed to work, or to state it differently,
   how much one's employer can ask/demand/subtly presure one to work.
   In both France and Germany, I worked a reasonable ( < 40 ) number
   of hours each week.  Sure, the shops were not open for very long
   after I got off work.  But, since I always was off "on time", I
   had all the time that I needed to buy the little-things.  And, for
   the big-things that I wanted to shop-for, there was always 
   Thursday night or Saturday.
   
2)  Vacation-time influences this as well.  Given the quite-standard
    30-days per year, if I HAD to do something that would take a LOT
    of time, and I HAD to do it with the standard businesses, I just
    took a vacation-day.  And since I had 30 (instead of 10..15),
    I could do this without worrying about shorting my family vacation.

3)  Since Europe grew up in the era when many people (read peasants)
    did not even have the wherewithal to own a horse, the style of the
    country became (my opinion) one of denser villages separated by
    open-space.  And this pattern continues.  This means that I still
    had easy-walk to shop for groceries, pharamcy, etc.  And that my
    family could walk and shop when they needed to during the day;
    thus not requiring me-and-my car to go to a shopping center after
    work to buy basic necessities.

4)  Since the public transportaion is better, this even cuts down the
    need for lots of vehicles.  In Sindelfingen, most post-delivery 
    people took the bus to the post-office, picked up their post-carts,
    pulled them back to the bus, and took the bus to the start of their
    routes.  They delivered their mail, and took the bus back to the
    post-office and then home.  In my USA-town of similar population,
    there are over 100 post-office jeeps for the post-people to drive
    to the start of their routes and back.  Note that when you have
    government agencies using the bus-system regularly for routine
    business, you build and keep a base of traffic that allows the
    system to run economically.  As well, most school-children walked
    to school, or took a public-transit bus.  Here in the USA, there
    are lots of school-buses going directions that I could use them
    for; however the busses are private, so I can't use them -- so I
    wind up driving.

In conclusion, my work-time (for a branch of the same US company
I work with here) was much more controlled, much shorter, and thus
made my life more pleseasnt.  I enjoyed my fixed-time-jobs there,
and very much appreciated the change in culture and understanding
that I learned.  Yes, I signed up for and took night-school classes
in both languages (French in France, German in Germany) to better
understand the people and culture.  And while I had a year of French
in colllege (20-years rusty), I had effectively no German when I went.
It's an opportunity I wish you all could have; I think the world would
be better for it.

  ..Paul
-- 
Paul Stachour          SCTC, 1210 West County Rd E, Suite 100           
stachour@sctc.com          Arden Hills, MN  55112-3739
                             [1]-(612) 482-7467