Socialism vs. Capitalism? (German car wash examples)

[Torsten]

It's not very common for Germans to have their car washed and cleaned by someone else: German car owners usually wash, clean and sometimes even service their cars themselves. One of the reasons for this is that especially in East Germany the concepts of customer service and entrepreneuship are rather unknown. Let me give you an example. Last May I bought a new car and ever since I have washed it at 1.5 times a month at a local car wash. This means, I put the car through the automatic car wash and then vacuumcleaned it myself. Now mind you that most German car wash stations charge their customers extra for using the vacuum cleaner which I find very irritating since the vast majority of all car wash customers do vacuum clean their cars so why not just include it in the service?

Anyway, I've been a regular customer of Clean Star Leipzig since May 2007. Yesterday afternoon I drove up there at around 3 pm and the place looked absolutely deserted because it was raining heavily and everyone seemed already in holiday mood (today is a bank holiday in Saxony). So I went through the huge hall all way to the back where in a small office I found the employees watching TV and smoking. When I knocked at the door one guy looked up at with a face that seemed to be asking "What the hell do you want from us -- don't you see we are busy?" I attempted a smile and explained that I'd like to purchase their 'special service package' which includes a professional manual clean up of the car's entire enterior including the windows, etc, -- the works. He relunctantly followed me outside where my car was parked and examined it quickly. Without much hesitation he told me that they would charge me the full price which is EUR 135 'but', he pointed out, 'you have to call in advance next week to book a time. Then you must bring your car in here at 8 am and leave it until 5 pm since we're pretty booked.'

Mind you -- the place is on the outskirts of Leipzig and it would be very complicated to get my car there and leave it for a full day. So I politely thanked him for his great service, did a little googling and came up with this guy: Konstantin Nastjuk. Juding by his name he probably grew up in Ukraine and moved to Leipzig only a couple of years ago. Instead of sitting on dough money, he decided to set up a business. I bet he's got a university degree but couldn't find an academic job in Germany. Konstantin Nastjuk offers a range of 'mobile car cleaning services'. This means you can call him and he fetches your car, cleans it then you can either collect it yourself or he gets it back to you. He charges 45 EUR for the same service Clean Star offers. Only Clean Star charges EUR 135!

Bottom line: Germany is still a socialist country but especially emigrants are about to change this!
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[Fan Of Arabian Horses]

Hi Torsten,
can you please help me out with an explanation? I can´t see the connection between your story and socialism. Not that I´d intended to defend socialism here, to me it more seems the issue of sluggish and greedy for money a..h...s,though, doesn´t it?

Well, in the times of the former German Democratic Republic we´ve been reported that its habitants weren´t motivated to act on their own, were they? In Western Germany you quite often heard scary stories about their business and motivation. And I agree that there are many people stuck up caused by their state of being a German, I can´t disclaim I´m afraid, but how would you explain that banks are that powerful and mighty to have the whole nation on toast?

My humble opinion: Germany is everything but socialist!

[Yankee]

I wonder whether Clean Star will be changing their ways?
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Clean+Star+Leipzig&btnG=Search

Personally, I would never waste and have never wasted 135 dollars (much less euros) on cleaning my car. Twenty bucks is about my limit -- but only if the car is much dirtier than usual.
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