KZBlog

From time to time, I want to post about life here in the eyes of the American and share some anecdotes or strange situations that I run into. I am fully aware that I am the outsider here with my biases, and my intent isn’t to shame Kazakhstan or degrade Kazakhs. In fact, I would love to hear back from Kazakhstani about their reactions to this stupid American stumbling his way around. I would also love to hear from Kazakhstani who are/have been into the US, and give it back to me about our own crazy ways.

My recent post on competitiveness and the consumer economy got a few requests to expand on the cable company. To me, this is a scene that could simply never happen in the US. I don’t want to engage in amateur anthropology and analyze what it is about Kazakhstan that makes this sort of thing acceptable, but I assure you this is the zenith of a series of such experiences, as we have worked to furnish our humble apartment.

Up until the point where the workers were to arrive, everything was more or less normal. It would have been nice had there been a place to see the list of channels we would get, instead of having to ask over the phone—“Do we get CNN?” Or if we didn’t have to travel to the office to sign a contract on the workers coming. As opposed to later when we would have to go and sign a contract on the actual cable service.

We are told the cable guys will be there on Saturday from 10am – 1pm. At noon on Saturday, we call to ask if the guys are still coming, if they know when they will come so we aren’t stuck at home the whole time. Ah, says the cable company, the workers will be there at 1:30. 1:30 comes and goes. 2pm they show up.

They are 1) drunk, 2) standing in the middle of the stairwell, a good five feet from our door, 3) they have their hands on their hips.

We ask, “Why didn’t you come earlier?”
“What? What do you mean earlier? We can leave if we want to!”
“We were told you’d be here from 10am – 1pm.”
“Where on the contract does it say anything about time? Nowhere. If you don’t want us to be here, we’ll just leave. We work from 10am to 1pm!”
“It’s two! It’s fine, come in, get to work”
“So what? We can come at 3 if we want to.”
“Ok, ok, just come in, come in”
“We can leave, we don’t have to be here. Look here on the contract, the time is left blank. You have no grounds for complaint.”
“Look, we’ve been waiting all day for you to come, just come in and work.”
“No, we’re leaving, come on guys.”

And they leave.

My theory: they were at a café drinking with their buddies when they realized they had to work today, so they decided to be ornery and get out of it so they could keep drinking. This level of discourse isn’t usual. But I have noted, and many others besides, that in Kazakhstan, people are much more direct, brusque, upfront than in the West and it can be quite intimidating and give the impression that Kazakhs are rude, self-centered, even miserable.

Now the upside of this level of directness is that it works both ways. In America, one generally has to hide one’s irritation and qualify, try to give the other person’s point of view equal weight, point out your own flaws. Here one can be much more direct and aggressive: “Why didn’t you get your work done?” as opposed to, ‘Now, I know you had a lot of work this week, and maybe I didn’t go a great job supervising you, in fact you probably have other duties I don’t know about, and I don’t want to establish one of those boss-worker relationships with you, so I hate doing this, but I wanted you to know I had the expectation that this work would be done by now.”