Servus

"Servus?", the waiter asks as we walk up to his restaurant.

"What, he is asking us if we want service? And he is smiling. In Bavaria?", I ask the Frau.

She laughs. "No he is actually saying hi in Bairisch", she replies.

My face falls. Service, or rather the lack of it in banks, shops, restaurants, or in fact in almost any service type business, has been the bane of my life since we arrived in Germany. This has ranged from a simple inflexibility of opening hours, through to unhelpfulness, grumpiness greater than the Frau’s, and even downright rudeness. 

Although it has to be said that not all Munich businesses have poor service, it is very common. This Bavarian, and particularly Munich, form of boorish behaviour has such a long tradition in Munich that it even has its own verb, granteln, with noun derivatives like Grantler, a person acting with granteln type behaviours and finally Grant, a noun denoting the granteln attitude itself. Supposedly a Münchener is not a true Münchener if he or she doesn't granteln.

All the same perhaps the true Münchener has something there. A fully occupied German emotions researcher has established that being friendly and smiling at customers can be bad for your health. In his research he discovered call centre staff who snapped and got grumpy at difficult customers had a short, sharp rise in their heart rate and stress levels and a fast return to normal once the call finished. The helpful and friendly staff, however, had an increased raised pulse and stress levels hours after a difficult call. Obviously it is not only cigarette packets which should have warnings. Such clear findings are bound to lead to a movement by the Bavarian state government for compulsory warning signs on every smiling picture: 

"Government Warning! Smiling when you want to be grumpy can be bad for your health. Being friendly can cause cancer. Do something for your health. Be a true Münchener and granteln."

Still I suppose I should be at least a little grateful that bank personnel don't granteln. Although, perhaps that is just because with such short opening hours they never get the opportunity to meet their customers. Less than six inconvenient, for customers, hours a day. From 9am until 1pm, closed for an hour and then reopening at 2pm and staying open until 4pm. Oh and a late night on Thursdays. Until 5:30pm. Still, thoughts of providing a better customer service by remaining open during the lunch time and later in the evening, when customers might have the opportunity to visit, might not achieve the desired effect. It would provide way too many customer contact opportunities, and therefore a significant increase in risk of a granteln customer experience. And bad health for bank employees.

Swimming pool personnel also don't appear to granteln. However like banks, that might have something to do with their opening hours, or rather lack of them. Full of fitness ideas, shortly after we move into our flat, I am excited to notice a 33m swimming pool directly across the road. Great I think, I can go swimming in the morning before work. That will make a change from running and cycling. That is until I discover they do not open before 7:30am. Exactly the time I need to head to the train for work. When I finally have nothing else to do one weekend and decide to go swimming, I ask the woman at the entrance whether it wouldn't be possible for them to open an hour earlier at 6:30am, like most pools in Wellington did.

"Oh no, then we would have to get up earlier", was her granteln response.
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