They don't know how to do business here

This at least is the opinion of Fabrice, the hitchhiking Frenchman we met on the minibus to Tomsk. And he has a point here. Customer service is equal to zero. Their way of doing business mainly consists in trying to cheat tourists out of their money and with so much inflexibility that they even risk to lose their customers completely, see the example of the minibus in Novosibirsk trying to collect more passengers and in the process risking to lose the existing ones.
In restaurants it is not better. In Tomsk, we were trying to have dinner at Foodmaster, a hip place. When we arrived, there were no free tables, and instead of telling us to sit a moment and look for a table that was likely to be available soon, they looked at us as if saying “Why are you still standing around here? Can’t you see we’re full, leave already.” The very same happened to us at the Sushi place next door. And at “Mixer”, a fast food restaurant displaying a menu of hamburgers and cheeseburgers, they explained me that they didn’t have any hamburgers at all. No excuse me or obliging smiles either.
Another oddity of Russian transactions is the “pay now”. For many things, they expect payment before the service is performed (which might also reflect on the local payment morale). Hotels, room service, baggage room, etc.
The idea that accommodating the customer’s wishes would lead to better business opportunities somehow has not arrived here yet. Even if the service itself is performed impeccably, their way of dealing with the customers often strikes me as unfriendly. We were wondering whether the local business mentality is a remnant of the communist regime, but we’ve not yet found a good answer.

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