Formerly
the ship building capital of Ukraine this pretty tree-lined city of 500,000
people was closed to foreigners until 1991.
Hundreds of babushkas with brooms descend every morning at 6:00AM to
sweep the streets of debris and especially the autumn leaves to give the place a
distinct feel of cleanliness. The
old ladies are supposedly paid by the State although their pay, if it comes at
all, is months late. Still, like
many of the ship builders, they show up to do their jobs because there is
nothing else to do.
Today,
it’s Sunday afternoon and the old people are dancing in the town square to a
polka band. For the first time, we see people looking quite happy.
The women seem to like dancing more than the men and they team up
together. They are very intrigued by this foreigner who suggests that they
pose for a photograph. We promise to send them copies. There is a distinct feeling of community here.
We are in town to visit Diana, a Peace Corps volunteer and her husband Hugo. She is teaching women how to start a business as part of a USAID effort to jump start entrepreneurialism. Our assignment is to give a one-day course on marketing. We meet our class of 16 women, all university graduates, most of them unemployed, unmarried and some with children; and all thirsty for knowledge. They aspire to start everything from a flower shop to a beauty shop. From a tennis instructor to a language school, they all want to independently strike out alone. One woman is a famous ballerina who gives ballet lessons. Another wants to start a vegetarian restaurant.
We spend hours going through marketing tactics 101.
– e.g. what information to put on a business card, when to hand it out
etc. To us its second nature.
To them, it’s a revelation, so much so that some of the people are
quite resistant – “that might work in America but here we are different”.
When we talk about greeting a customer (one that is new to the store),
Diana suggests the sales person walk up to the customer and say something like,
"Hello, my name is Larissa. I will be glad to show you our clothes."
Or, Hello, my name is Larissa; how can I help you?" They resist this
idea. Why? if a person gives her name but doesn’t know the name of the
customer, the customer is "one up" on the person. That is, the
customer is "better" than the person. And here, no one can be better
than another. All are equal (Soviet thinking). Diana tries to explain that
things are different now; the customer has the money and makes their own choice of where to buy
clothes. Greeting customers and offering to help doesn’t mean that the
sales person is "inferior." That it is more like an honored guest
situation. We are met with skeptical looks. With our focus on profit we suspect that we must appear as enemies of the
state to a few of these people.