Anna got herself a wee job in Lidl out of school hours about six weeks ago. After a few training sessions and some shelf stacking she was finally the main checkout person last weekend and she decided it was a bit of a culture shock!
Firstly, she knows it's Scandinavia, but still can't understand the multiple bags of salt liquorice bought by individual customers and she was in shock when one 80+ year old granny bought 38 bags of it and nothing else! They even ran out of liquorice-flavoured alcoholic shots last Saturday afternoon. How can that even be a thing?🤮
The Danish pastries are a cultural divider too. Anna's not a very sweet girl, preferring savoury offerings so hasn't fully learned the names of all the different Danish baked goods. She says people look at her as if she's landed from the moon when she doesn't know her hindbærsnitter from her spandauer. They cannot conceive that someone lives in Denmark, looks and sounds Danish but doesn't know such items. I guess it would be the equivalent of a teenager on the checkout in Govan with a very Glasgow accent asking the customer whether a tatty scone was in fact a tatty scone or haggis!
Contrary to my experience in Danish supermarkets when checkout staff and customers alike ignore each other as best they can, the checkout operator of course needs to tell them the sum owed, but that counts as a conversation here in this land of few words, Anna finds the customers positively chatty by Danish standards! The mere donning of a badge stating she's a trainee, or ny kollega, has the older ones addressing her as pigebarn, literary girl child but equivalent of sweetie or similar, and offering all sorts of encouragement, advice and anecdotes about how hard new jobs can be. It plays into my theory that Danes aren't actually as anti-social as they come across, they are simply much more in need for an in into a conversation than I am used to from back home. I'm tempted to stick a ny dansker badge on and walk up and down Odense main street to see if I can finally make a friend over here!
But as a Scottish person, the thing that has surprised Anna most about Danes is their honesty. Scots are an honest nation too for the most part but I think it is more in our psyche to be honest to individuals than corporations. If someone drops a tenner, of course we pick it up and alert them to the fact that they have done so, we'd usually hand in a lost phone or wallet, but if we notice we've been minimally undercharged on a receipt, we'd just take it to be the sign of a good day, justifying ourselves that we've certainly been overcharged on an equal number of occasions. That's my Glasgow experience anyway. But not here. If Anna accidentally puts through a baguette as white rather than brown, thus undercharging the customer by about 30p, they actually come back and ask to be debited for the full amount! She says this or the equivalent happened half a dozen times last weekend. Mind blown!
I'm sure her wee job will lead to further cultural observations in the future so watch this space!😀
