Promised Kassa note

So the касса (kassa – cashier) system in Russia is a throw-back to the Soviet union. You go into a store, and all of the goods for sale are on shelves behind counters. You aren’t supposed to go behind the counter to fetch your goods, but rather you tell the person behind the counter what you want, and they write down its price on a slip of paper. You then take the slip of paper to the cashier. Sometimes there is a different cashier for every section of the store. The cashier takes your money, and then prints out a different receipt for you. You take that receipt to the employee who originally helped you, and that employee gives you what you bought.

Besides being not a little bit inefficient, the kassa system is extraordinarily mystifying and daunting for foreigners. For example, what you want to buy isn’t always visible. So when I went to buy my power adapter, for example, I went to the electronics store. There were a bunch of different counters, none of which had power adapters behind them. So I had to pick a counter that looked like it might maybe have something to do with power adapters sometimes. I then have to push my way through a crowd, and avoid having my “place in line” (yeah, right) be taken by somebody more forceful than I. After finally getting the employees attention, I have to actually ask him (not point, as I would so like to do) if he has a power adapter, and if it is a Soviet-sized adapter as my European-sized adapters don’t work in Alla Alexandrovna’s Soviet-era apartment, and then answer his questions etc. Then fight my way through the crowds to the disgruntled cashier, have another conversation in Russian regarding price, and then back to the keeper of my power adapter who hopefully hasn’t by this time forgotten me and either lost or sold to somebody else my much desired product.

This is why the successful purchase of goods is always something to write home about!