Friday, October 3, 2008

The problem with Israeli business culture

Thanks to Rosh Hashana, Oren had the morning off of work on Tuesday. We celebrated by having breakfast at a sea-side restaurant near Herzliya and then buying ourselves a beautiful red Kitchen Aid mixer as a Rosh Hashana gift (yes, I was and still am overcome with great joy and happiness). However, the latter part of our wonderful morning was easier said than done.

The Kitchen Aid store that we went to just opened a few weeks ago, so you would think they would be eager to do business. We got to the store around 1pm and noticed that the door was locked. The sign said that it was supposed to be open until 2pm, and all of the employees were still in the store, yet, the door was locked. We knocked on the door and asked if we could come in, and they shook their heads and yelled through the glass door that the store was closed. When we pointed out that they were closing an hour early, they shrugged and said it was because of Rosh Hashana. This did not make sense to us, so Oren told them, literally, "If you let us in, we will buy a Kitchen Aid mixer from you." While this may be of interest to sales people in other parts of the world, it did little to excite this group of people. After a few more minutes of negotiations, they finally opened the door saying that we could only look, but not buy anything. Seriously. We quickly decide that we want a red mixer (to match our other appliances, naturally) and we then had to beg them to sell it to us. Seriously. We had to beg them to let us spend money at their store on their product. This would never happen anywhere else, because in other places, people understand not only the concept of customer service, but merely the notion of good business. The exchange of money for goods and services. Finally, a clearly unhappy salesperson agreed to sell us the mixer and the rest is beautiful baking history.

The first thing I did when we got home is make up some more cupcakes and used the mixer to whip up some Swiss Meringue Marshmallow Frosting that was insanely good. I think I am going to make some more tonight to go on some carrot cake cupcakes :-)

Happy New Year!!



The new mixer making frosting


Delicious frosted cupcakes


The view from where we had breakfast