Customer Service, Belgian Style

I have done a number of posts in the past about Belgium's peculiar attitude towards the customer. And the stories just keep on coming.

Not only does customer service, as the Western World knows it, simply not exist here but I'd be surprised if Belgians were even aware of the concept.

What we have instead is some kind of proto-Soviet attitude that means the service provider is doing YOU a favour, rather than the other way round. This is partly because monopolies are still such a part of life here. Every commune is linked to a specific gas, electricity, or cable company so you either go through them, or go without.

As such, I find myself having to visit friends in a different commune to watch BBC 2 which is unavailable in Ixelles, but available over the road in Etterbeek. No one has yet taken me up on my offer to let them watch Rai 2, Italy's answer to the BBC, featuring semi-naked girls in cages and endless chat-shows.

Rather less surprisingly, this attitude is firmly engrained in the so-called public services. Now I cannot really argue with transport in this country. Trains run on time, there are eco-trams galore, and nothing is too expensive. However they are rather less than flexible.

Witness a recent train trip I took to Ypres with a friend to visit the World War One Battlefields. I arrived, somewhat late, at the platform and she had bought the ticket in advance. I say ticket because, despite asking for 'deux aller-retour' both our names were on the one piece of paper. No problem, I thought to myself, we'll sort this out later.

That evening, after our tour, we returned to the station. I would just like to point out that Ypres 's main income derives from the countless Brits, Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders, who come to see the trenches and cemeteries for themselves.

So when I approached the station attendant I was a little surprised to note that his English was rather patchy. I intimated the problem, accompanied by lots of ticket waving and pointing. Two people, one ticket, I mimed. I want to leave now (the train was about to pull up), she wants to leave three hours later, after the last post is played at the Menin gate.

"No problem", he said, "that will be 7 euros 90". I was taken aback. "But I've already paid for my ticket", I said. Thinking he hadn't understood the first time, I pointed out that we didn't want to travel together. "OK, then, he said, that'll be 7 euros 90". Frustrated, I raised my voice, at which point his English, rather conveniently, disappeared altogether.

I tried again in French. After all, the Flemish are always praised for their linguistic aptitude and it is an official language of Belgium, after all. He replied in Dutch. Language Politics - what a nightmare.

The train drew out of the station. I paid my seven euros and went to the bar.

Caffeine Shock

I was standing at the coffee bar today waiting for the waiter to turn his gaze in my direction. My Italian colleague seemed more nervous than usual but I put it down to lack of sleep (she'd taken a 5am flight that morning). She said hello to some snowy haired compatriot of hers, and his - numerous - assistants and then seemed to push me to one side. He noticed and said - no problem, les femmes et les enfants d'abord....a real gent.

Not knowing what was going on, and being exhausted, I moved to give him some space, despite his protestations, but didn't think much more of it. Then I ordered, got my coffee, looked around, and espied the milk jug on the other side of the Italians. So of course I asked if he could pass the milk. He seemed like a nice old guy after all. I noticed the look on my colleague's face when he gave it to me. T-O-T-A-L shock. I was puzzled. After all, this is a fairly standard mode of interaction.

I later discovered he is former Italian Prime Minister and President of the European Convention on the Constitution, Lamberto Dini - here for an interparliamentary meeting in advance of next month's summit. Also, it would seem, a very good bloke...

Who Said Belgian Bureaucracy Was Bad??

OK, I take back everything I ever said about Belgian inefficiency. When it comes to gold medals for inaction, the Indian Embassy in Brussels wins hands down. Which I admit is the worst aspects of Belgium and India combined.

I turned up - admittedly a little on the late side - to submit my visa application today. The office is open for two hours in the mornings and little sheltered old me, who's used to moving between European Countries without even presenting a passport, was not ready for the sheer LENGTH of the visa process. I have great sympathy with the Palestinian girl who was waiting with me this morning - and will probably still be camped out there now.

I arrived thinking I'll just give the forms to someone and take off. In fact, this IS the procedure - nothing more complicated - it's just that it requires standing in some very long queues until your number is called. 3 hours into my fast (I hadn't had breakfast, let alone a cup of coffee, but was unable to leave on pain of non re-admission when the door was firmly shut on applicants at 11.30) I entered the inner sanctum.
Here 9 embassy workers are engaged in drinking tea and nattering. One lady, in a fetching pink sari, is dealing with all the applicants in no particular order. One Indian national bangs on the window to complain about his long wait to the guy behind the 'Indian Passports Only' desk. The guy doesn't respond, only lowers the blind and continues to eat his sandwich and consult a newspaper. The plaintiff sits down again resignedly. This is clearly a cultural norm.

When I get to the desk I pre-empt disaster by telling the lady that I called the embassy in advance and brought all the documents they demanded. She looks through the (very large) bundle I provided her with and says 'You'll have to come back with your Belgian resident permit". At which point I had to tell her that it hadn't yet been processed (apparently it takes Belgian bureaucracy several months to make you legal) and these documents were attestations of my employment and residence here, as requested by the Indian embassy officials themselves.

This didn't go down well and the dossier was sent to the boss of bosses for approval. What I didn't know was that the boss of bosses was off for a long lunch in some undisclosed location. Several eons later I was called back to the desk. Permission, it seems, had been granted, but due to my unorthodox documentation there was a 'referral fee' for him casting his eye over it of an extra 32 euros. However I finally exited with the promise of a visa by next week. The whole episode was quite magnificently surreal.

Pimp Your 'Lifestyle'

Call me old fashioned but the following makes me quietly despair. It comes from a flyer for a 'new, exciting after work concept' I received when leaving work recently, aimed at yuppie bureaucrats and social climbers of all sorts.
"The 629 Club is:

• The ultimate choice for those wanting to socialise and network


• A fantastic place to have fun, discover lifestyle trends, and dance to international music


• A place where great deals are made and great deals are offered.


• You will have the opportunity to relax in our chill-out area


• order food and drinks from the 629 special menu


• have 'fun and games' in the social playground"

This is just wrong on so many levels. Fun and games in the social playground??? Is that some kind of sick euphemism? Or, rather, a tacit acknowledgement that networking just isn't, sorry, fun? Or that all socialising is networking on the eurocrat scene? That, therefore, the only way to deal with the banalities of repeating the same conversation 70 times over (Hi, darling, great to meet you. Where do you work? Ah, fascinating. Do you know so-and-so? And how is the report proceeding? Listen, I have a client who can give you a heads up on that if you want. Here's my card. Great, let's meet for coffee". Next victim) is to head straight for the special menu, which, if I read the small print correctly, is code for pasta and stale sandwiches. And. I guess, several crates of blanc de blanc.

But, ok, I can live with that part of the 'concept'. After all, networking is a fact of Brussels life and is how people can proceed to get a good job and stay ahead of the competition. BUT - and this is the big but - it is deeply worrying when networking supercedes real, mutually dependent, human relationships as our pattern for interaction.

By that I guess I mean Kant's dictum that people should be respected as ends in themselves and not as means to ends. Clearly, a culture based on networking, which blurs the boundaries between work and private life, is one in which people aren't treated as individuals. Rather, they are reduced to acting as the nodes, the cogs, in a self-referential and continuously expanding network.

I haven't read any myself, but I was discussing the work of Jean Baudrillard with a friend recently. His thesis is seemingly that the nature of social relations is determined by the forms of communication that a society employs. In the West, these relations are characterised by the simulacra of meaning, For example, you call someone you barely know darling, and feign interest in their work, for your own ends. This is what he has called 'hyper-reality', masking economic considerations with a veneer of human concern. Hence, Club 629 is primarily a place where 'great deals are made and great deals are offered' and 'lifestyle trends' are sold to cultural consumers.

That is what I object to so much about this way of living. Nothing we say or do can have its own essence, or authenticity, when we are constantly encouraged to buy into new marketing strategies that manage how we live and understand our own lives. It voids the world of humanity, of meaning, and of real choices.

However, as Baudrillard portentously noted, the expansion of liberal, parliamentary capitalism and its financial commodification unwittingly sows the seeds of reaction against it by its failure to understand the symbolic side of social existence. Indeed, he (controversially) argued that this is the best framework to understand the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against the economy of the United States and its military establishment.

Yet that reaction occurs primarily amongst those who are somehow marginalised - or have absented themselves from - these economic and social networks. Theirs is a reaction grounded in exclusion and rejection. But for those whose lives are generated by, and lived within, this set of symbolic references - even when they are critically aware of its nature, as many in Brussels are - finding an adequate response is difficult. Without destroying a system can we regain authentic human relations (if such a thing ever existed)? Or do we simply put up, shut up, and have another drink?

Thank You For (Not) Smoking

Another example of bureaucratic fatuity was brought to my attention yesterday. Returning from lunch with some colleagues we decided to have coffee. Now since coffee and cigarettes go so well together - and my vices are well-known - I was asked if I wanted to make my way into the gas-chamber the Parliament neatly constructed for such purposes last year. We also used to have a smoking section in the first floor cafe, and I naively asked what had become of it, being a much more salubrious spot.

Well, it turns out that the Parliament had banned smoking anywhere in the building, spelling doom for my favoured location. And theoretically, it seems, for the smoking room as well. Technically, smoking is forbidden in any part of the complex - and punishable with some astronomical fine. Yet, 100s of stressed-out smokers can regularly be seen puffing away on the premises. How so?

Well it seems that - faced with a 'Mutiny on the Bounty' situation from the fonctionnaires - the authorities, in their wisdom, decided that if they didn't provide ashtrays in the smoking room and placed large no-smoking signs on the walls, then it does not, technically, constitute a smoking room. Therefore smoking does not occur there so they can turn a blind eye. Impeccable logic, non?

Bureaucracy and Box Ticking

We British don't understand bureaucracy - with the notable exception of civil servants. And I live in Belgium. Welcome to Hell...

Today I went to get a parking permit for work. Pretty simple, I thought to myself, just bring the documentation and driver's licence and le voila!

As if. I go there and fill in the form, but after standing in a very long queue (while of course the numerous staff at the other - unoccupied counters - sat and watched us wait without lifting a finger: de rigeur in these parts) I discover that as I haven't photocopied said documents I will have to go and do that before the matter is taken any further.

I proceed to the photocopying room to discover that one is en panne and the other has a paper jam, so give up and break for coffee. Eventually I locate another machine in a different part of the building, and have the precious sheafs in my hand at the counter - once again - when I am informed that these are in fact the wrong documents. What they require is a certificat d'immatriculation.

Well, I try and explain that as far as the UK Government is concerned these are the ONLY relevant documents for my car. Whatever this certificat may be it doesn't exist in my possession. But, protests the hapless administrator, the documents you've brought are not the ones our form requires! What to do?

Here is where an element of hope seeps into the seemingly impossible bureaucratic Catch-22 I've got myself into. The guy suddenly gives up. Seeing I'm in for the long-haul (and clearly not in the least bit fussed by the regulations himself) he looks around furtively, sees no one is watching and says - OK, just give me what you've got.

So I am now the proud possessor or one parking vignette. Total time elapsed in its procurement - 2.5 hours. Not bad for Belgium. This thread is to be continued I fear. I'm on such fertile territory!