Given that I’ve been in Austria for nearly four years, you would think I would have gotten used to all the little idiosyncrasies that come with living in a foreign country and have come to accept them by now. In most cases, you’d be correct. There’s only one that still bothers me and since I was in the United States recently, it’s a festering gripe that has returned to the surface, the itch that cannot be scratched.
In Austria, stores are only open until 7pm, sometimes even no later than 6pm. This includes pharmacies, electronics stores, clothes stores and grocery stores. Every store. They’re legally not allowed (so I’ve been told) to be open beyond 7pm except with special permission or something. IKEA is open until 9pm, so there is proof of hope for the rest of the country.
In the United States, everything is open until at least 8pm, though most stores don’t even entertain the thought of closing until at least 9pm. Hell, Best Buy is open until 10pm in many cases. Yes, if you’re sitting around and watching a movie and your TV dies, you can buy a replacement and have plenty of time to do so. Wal-Mart is open 24 hours a day, but everyone knows that. It’s a pretty cool experience to go shopping at Wal-Mart past midnight if you’ve never done it and you’re used to everything being closed at that time.
I don’t even get why stores don’t decide to band together and fight the law or whatever. Most people are in the stores right up until closing, especially in the major shopping districts. Why would they think of closing at 7pm if there are clearly people that want to shop beyond that time (at least in Vienna)? There’s no bloody reason to close the doors! I think the law was written in the protection of workers, but hell, there will always be people that are willing to work late and even on Sundays. People need to pay their bills and if they need those extra two hours, they’ll work those extra two hours.
Hopefully Austria will realize that they can make a lot of money if they keep those doors open a little later. Certainly there must be some CEO out there who doesn’t care about his workers’ social lives enough to fight this law and force his minions to work longer. I may even start protesting outside Parliament on this one. They’d rather have us busy consuming rather than caring about what they’re doing, so why not let us consume a little bit more each day?
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