made a girl cry today

Wasn't my intention, but hey I think I had a right complain.

One thing that continues to really piss me off about Norway is the absolutely craptastic service you get wherever you go. Now I get the egalitarian social attitude of this country and mostly agree that it is a good thing. Yet, I think that there is still room for decent service even if everyone is equal.

The problems to me seem to focus around the following, firstly - Norwegians put up with it. In the UK or Oz bad service would be the death of a shop in the long run. Possibly with the exception of Glebe's "Badde Manors", where the name pre-warns customers.

Secondly, the government almost over-protects the workers. It's so opposite to the situation in the US or even under Work Choices employment contracts in Oz. Base salaries are quite high and overtime/weekend salaries can't be removed in some fine print of a contract. In addition, it is much easier to take significant amounts of time off for being burnt out or work related mental illness, and your job will likely be protected until you return.

This makes employees expensive, and means employers can't afford to have 5 staff working a cafe on a sunday when only 2 would still keep the place open.

Thirdly, there is a fundamental problem attitude wise in Norwegian culture, potentially this is because of the egalitarian culture, I'm not sure. Workers will not structure their workflow in such a way as to maximise all customers satisfaction and reduce queues, instead they will rudely focus on serving the first person in the queue even if that is obviously going to cause the queue to ballon to 4 times it's length with quick fix customers. Nor do staff work together to make a more efficient workflow, like one person taking orders and another making coffees. The same person does it all, takes your order, makes your drinks, clears your table. Notice I made no mention of bringing your coffee to you, in Norway you hover around the bar waiting for your coffee to be made so you can carry it to the table. This just further clutters the long queue that inevitably forms at any cafe or service orientated shop.

Today we went out for Pizza to a chain restaurant. We ordered quickly and waited, after 40 minutes we enquired about our pizzas, coming soon they said. Twenty minutes later another enquiry started to bring pizza to the table, but they were stone cold.

Turns out they had made the Pizza, but not told the single girl who was taking orders, bringing food to the tables and then cleaning the tables.

We were adamant that we would not pay full price for cold 1 hour late Pizza, and both Astrid and I made a point of telling this young woman how bad the service was. When I said that I had experienced plenty of bad service in Norway, but this event took the cake, the waitress retreated tears in her eyes.

I later apologised, as it wasn't my intention to upset. However I thought that the proper reaction on being told that the Pizza was cold was, we're very sorry it has been busy tonight and you can have the Pizza for half price/free whatever. Instead they completely screwed up the handling of their customers by ignoring the issue until pressed.

Yes they are young and inexperienced, but when we asked to see the manager, they were off on "mental health leave" due to being burnt out.

Someone needs to remind the Norsk population that the service industry is now the largest of any in the world finally having overtaken Farming for the number one spot. While they are at that it could be good to remind Norwegians they are mostly not farmers any more and that their queuing skills could be vastly improved by studying the mindless mass movements of sheep!