Russia's Law Against "Discrediting the Army" and So-Called "Fakes"
It took me a while, but then it dawned on me: That same law perpetuates bad customer service!
The “complaint book” is one of the most important features of a store or restaurant in Russia. Rooted in the hopes and aspirations of the failed Soviet system, the spineless, little notebook, which is usually hidden from view but always lurking like a prehistoric weed that pops into heated conversations between a disgruntled customer and a rude worker, can either magically resolve an argument or act like fuel.
When I opened my cafe/pizzeria in St. Petersburg in 1996, “The Brooklyn Bridge Cafe,” many Soviet-era laws and regulations were still in play — one called for placing the “complaint book” in a prominent spot for all customers to see. The idea was that if the server knew that the customer could make a complaint easily, then the service would usually be good. Not wanting to have an ugly, Soviet-era book sitting on my “bridge,” messing up my interior design, I painted on the wall in bright orange paint on the corner: COMPLAINT ZONE. The government lady didn’t like what she called “disrespect” for the process but was happy it was in full view of the world.
Because Soviet customer service was so atrocious, with worker theft being a considerable problem, any official complaint in the book had to have a corresponding paper trail showing how the store director followed up. The store or cafe manager might contact the offended customer while an investigation is being made. A resolution of the dispute is then written up in the book. If it is determined the employee is at fault, then the actions taken by the director are written into the book, showing how the employee was reprimanded.
I was called when I complained about a woman in a pharmacy in St. Petersburg. She screamed at me that she was “eating my lunch and that she wouldn’t serve me until she was done eating!” The pharmacy had remained open, but she refused to come out and ring me up. I was in an airport and had to run to catch my plane. We argued, and she told me to “F*** off. You goat!” A “goat” sounds funny now, but “kozyol” (goat in Russian) is very rude in Russia. The woman was fired because her actions were also caught on the store’s camera. In this instance, the complaint book’s system worked how it should.
Nonetheless, many times over the years, when I have asked for the book or seen other customers request it, the store employees refuse to give it to the disgruntled customer. The guilty employees lie, saying, “We don’t have one.” All establishments in Russia have them. Once, with shaking hands, as I tried to write — the offended customer is required to report their complaint in the book by hand, standing near the cash register while the guilty employee verbally abuses you — the store director invited me into her office for tea and tried to talk me out of writing the complaint. Complaints in the book look bad for the store’s director and can draw the attention of not only the back office managers, who will begin to shine a light on the operations of that store but could also lead to problems with the authorities.
I didn’t back down and wrote my complaint anyway. After that, the store’s security guards for about a month harassed me each time I entered. Finally, on one occasion, I entered with a police officer friend and introduced him to the harassing guards — “This is one of the guys who regularly check my bags pretending he saw me steal something.” The policeman invited him out for a smoke while I was in line to pay for my stuff, and after that, I was warmly greeted by the security guys.
In this case, and this is regrettably how this system works, the complaint book procedures were slowly creating a situation where they were trying to set me up because I complained about a horribly rude and incompetent sales clerk. It would have ended with me paying a bribe to the store guards or the police they would have called when they accused me of stealing something — which they would have planted.
While customer service in Russia has improved since the Soviet and immediate post-Soviet days, it still can be awful. The assumption is that the customer is usually wrong, and even in many modern establishments, if an argument between an employee and a customer ensues, the managers, backed up by security personnel, will usually side with their employees. The whole system caters to extreme mediocrity and a continuation of the overall “shitiness” that is daily life in Russia. As lovely as life is at times, there did seem there is always an underlying sense that someone, somehow, and usually the “system,” will “f*** you.” In Russian, this word is “na-ebyot.”
The Russian army and “complaint books”
The incompetence of the Russian army, beginning with the officer corps, has stunned the world. The Russian government invested billions of dollars in modernizing not just the equipment used by the soldiers but also in training a modern force.
On the day the Russian army was ordered to start their tanks and move into Ukraine, the troops were hungover, and much of the fuel for their tanks had been used for heating and cooking purposes. Russia has proven itself incapable of command and control operations, which has led to disastrous and deadly results for tens of thousands of Russian troops. When the officers commanding the troops in the field are so utterly useless and corrupt, the soldiers in the field also engage both the enemy — and the civilians — in such a way, in a way similar to how the incompetent store employees treat the customers.
To hide the incompetence and corruption, though, the Russian Duma rubberstamped a law put forth by the Kremlin to protect the “heroes” of Russia’s war of genocide from being unfairly “discredited” and from “fake stories,” which we all know are the reality on the ground. When the torture of civilians in Butcha came to light, the Kremlin risked losing public support as well as being condemned in the eyes of the world — which it has been anyway — and so passed the law against “fakes.”
The system of the complaint book was in full force.
This past week, Russia has now passed a law stating that anyone accused of discrediting the army and fakes — telling the truth about the war — can have their property confiscated by the state.
This situation all adds to the daily sense of “shitiness” I mentioned above and the knowledge that sooner or later, someone, somehow, “na-ebyot!”
And it’s usually the government and its unrelenting system.