Problem Solving

Alcohol Test

During my time in Russia, the acceptable alcohol content in a driver’s blood was 0.00%. This is stricter than in many western countries, but sometimes this severity is compensated for by the rather unusual means for its measurement, to say nothing of the lax adherence to laws that is peculiar to Russians.*

One Saturday, early in the morning, I decided to drive to a French bakery to get some freshly baked bread for breakfast. The roads were all but empty of cars. At 6:30 I drive past the square that fronts Belorussky Train Station. It surely had to be boring to be standing at the traffic cop post at this time in the morning, so the officer decided to pull me over. He greeted me politely, but did not ask for my documents. Instead, he looked me straight in the eyes and asked:

“You been drinking?”

I looked meaningfully at my watch, smiled and said, “No, of course not.”

“Vodka?”

“No!”

“Maybe cognac?”

“No!”

“Whisky?”

“Not a chance.”

“How about wine?”

“No, I did not drink any wine.”

In all probability, the check was no joke, because the next question touched on something which is usually not considered alcohol here.

“And did you drink beer?”

Smiling, I shook my head no. The alcohol test ended. He signaled for me to drive off.

The Man in the Green Jacket

The problem of permits for the off-ramp to our store had become increasingly acute.* I was ready to grasp at any straw. Sometimes – actually, rather frequently – I had no idea what I was getting mixed up in and whom I was interacting with. For example, I had a long interaction with a man in a green jacket. He appeared completely unexpectedly and declared that he was willing to help IKEA.

We always met for lunch at a restaurant with a view of the Kremlin. I never knew his name, nor what sort of business he was in. On his own initiative, he described what was going on within Putin’s inner circle, but it did not follow from this that he could, through his contacts, somehow influence this or that decision. He was extremely well informed about our difficulties and delivered to me huge quantities of useful information. He proposed concrete means to resolve our transport problems, arriving with a set of professionally drawn blueprints, which he supplemented with very reasonable suggestions. Truthfully, I did not pin any particular hope on the fact that these meetings would bring about any real results.

The man in the green jacket disappeared just as unexpectedly as he appeared. He never requested payment for his services, but soon thereafter we suddenly received permission to build an off-ramp from the Ring Road. To this day I have no idea what role this mysterious person played in the resolution of our problem. It remains a mystery.

Moments of Pleasure

I found it most difficult to deal with that category of Russians who, for example, had no scruples about openly cutting to the front of a line. They didn’t give a damn for anyone. Yet I was even more upset by those who, insulted by such insolence, quietly submitted to this! Whenever I saw something like this happen, I started seething, and I told myself once again that Russia still had a very long path to travel before it would become a country of equal rights. I am of the opinion that one of the first expressions of a democratic society is its citizens’ openly reacting to any injustice.

When I found myself in a this sort of situation, I couldn’t not react, even though I understood that, in the best case, I would come across as naïve, and in the worse case I was putting myself into real danger. Sometimes my wife or daughter, seeing that things were taking a serious turn, would forcefully drag me away from the boor in question.

All that remained was to express my righteous anger when I was on my own turf. Right next to our store is a loading zone where parking is forbidden. Certain clients, arriving as a rule in a black Mercedes or a Jeep, with tinted windows, seemed to think that this was the perfect place for them. They would park their cars there and head in to the store, knowing full well that what they had done was wrong. As a result, traffic would pile up around the loading zone.

I would often approach such “important persons” just as they had locked their car. Summoning all the politeness which I was capable of, I explained that they had to move their car. Their reaction was almost always exactly the same: the important person didn’t give a damn about what I had just told them, and just kept walking. So I would call over the guard, who would explain that, until the car was moved, its owner would not be allowed into the store. Having got the point, the indignant offender drove off, his retinue close behind.

Yes, I acted like a child and experienced, as a result, great pleasure. Yet my true reward was the approving glances and even the occasional applause of our more modest clients. RL

* Mikhail Saltykov-shchedrin: "The severity of Russian law is always counter-balanced by the non-obligatory nature of its fulfillment."

*The offramp was to connect the Moscow Ring road, controlled by Moscow, with the store, which sits on Moscow region's land, resulting in a bureaucratic nightmare.