My First Experience


I waited for my wife near the "Star" market. At the exit door I saw a Russian man with a shopping cart full of food. Maybe he was going home.

That is a big puzzle for me how I recognize Russians without conversation with them.

Suddenly a bottle of apple juice fell and it broke. He was shocked at first, but then he got an idea. He told me in Russian, "Look after my shopping cart". I answered him "O.K". He picked up the broken bottle and ran into the shop. After a little while he came back with a new bottle and put it into the shopping cart and went away.

As I understood, he exchanged his broken bottle for the unbroken one for free. He did not say to me "thank you" or other words.

The behavior of this Soviet person did not surprise me as a Soviet person, but I was surprised that the shop replaced the bottle.

In the Soviet Union I remembered a similar experience but there was a procedure there different from shopping in American shops. There a customer paid money to the cashier; then he received a receipt and went to a sales person. The sales person took the receipt and gave the customer the products, for example, a bottle of oil or packet of sugar, etc. If the customer dropped or broke for example the bottle or the packets, only the customer would suffer the loss. I witnessed much fighting between customers and sales people in that kind of situation.

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