Laden-Öffnungszeiten in der Schweiz: Closed

In den Jahren 2007 und 2008 hatte swissworld.org eine Rubrik "Blogs von Ausländern in der Schweiz". Da einem Franzosen in der Schweiz nicht das gleich auffällt wie einem Chinesen, waren das ganz interessante Artikel - zumindest diejenigen, die ich verstand.

Hier ist einer der Artikel zu den Laden-Öffnungszeiten in der Schweiz aus Sicht eines Amerikaners. Witzig und aufschlussreich zugleich!

Closed

Shopping in Switzerland is a miserable chore. To be fair, I don’t like shopping in general but in Switzerland it’s particularly painful. First off, as I said before, stuff is generally expensive. But that isn’t why the act of shopping is so horrible. It’s horrible because stores are never open. Then, because the stores are always closed, during those rare moments that they are open, they’re jam packed with armies of consumers. Ultimately, that’s my big gripe with Swiss stores – their opening hours.

Store opening hours here are regulated by the government. They do, however, vary a bit from town to town. Generally speaking, most stores are actually forbidden by law from staying open past 6 or 7pm in most cities on weekdays. On Saturdays, most have to close at 4pm. And Sundays? Forget it. The only doors in town that are open on Sundays hang belong to a church.

Here’s the paradox - If you want to buy something, you need money. To get money, you need a job. If you have a job, you probably work from 8:30 to 5:30, Monday through Friday. Now you have money, but you can’t buy anything because the only time the stores are open, you’re at work! Hmm, I think this might be why the Swiss are so rich.

Now, why? Why are the stores required to close and maintain these banker’s hours? Of course I’ve asked many of the locals this question and they almost always answer in the same way. First, they look at me with a strange combination of confusion and curiosity, as if to say, really? Is this a serious question? Isn’t the reason obvious? Then they abruptly explain that the people that work at the stores “have lives too” and “don’t want to work late and certainly not on Sunday...”

There are the two big exceptions. First exception: In most of the big cities they have one designated night each week where the stores stay open later, until 8 or 9pm. For example, in Bern, it’s on Thursdays. The Swiss consider this one option during the week of shopping late to be extremely gäbig (a completely impractical Swiss-German word for practical). “Yeah,” I snap back with a bit of rage when they tell me this, “and wouldn’t it be even more convenient if they’d stay open that late more often! Are you really so damn organized that you only run out of milk on Thursday evenings?”

Second exception: The train station. In the big cities, there are some stores at train stations that are exempt from the ‘close up shop’ rule. Going to one of these stores during the off hours, especially on Sunday, is one of the stupidest things a person can ever do. It’s a bit like running with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain. It’s extremely crowded and a bunch of people are running around like mad while the others stand around, completely in the way, and watch. And just like Pamplona, idiots like me always end up going.

Dass man mit längeren Öffnungszeiten auch ein positiveres Shopping-Erlebnis haben könnte, hatte ich mir vorher noch nie überlegt. Wenn man aber heute - einige Monate nach der Eröffnung - im Westside einkaufen geht, muss man doch anerkennen, dass es ohne Masse viel angenehmer ist, seine Einkäufe zu tätigen.

Natürlich hat sich die Lage auch ausserhalb der Städte in den letzten Jahren dank der Tankstellen-Shops etwas gebessert. Dennoch sehe ich langsam aber sicher, dass das ein Thema bleibt, das mich mein ganzes politisches Leben lang begleiten wird. Ich kann nach wie vor nicht verstehen, warum hier die Handels- und Gewerbe-Freiheit so wenig gewichtet wird.

Thanks Cory for this amazing article!