There is a particular bank office in my city, of a particular big Romanian bank that is driving crazy a business man that has to do work with them on a daily basis. Online banking is still not very popular in Romania, therefore most the the payments are still done in cash, both between companies and between companies and state. Usually I have to go to bank 1-2 times a week. My company’s bank, is in the top 3 Romanian Banks and I selected without a very thorough research mostly because they had an office which was closest to our office.
I had a lot of trouble with this bank, most of them related with poor service: unprepared employees, errors in communication, delays in service because of long lines etc. One interesting thing related to this bank was that until few days ago the still had different departments for local exchange and foreign exchage accounts. So, if you wanted to do operations both in local and foreign exchange you would have to go to 2 different offices (in the same building) and stay at 2 lines, speak with 2 people etc. Also, other interesting thing is that each company has assigned a particular person in the office, so if you go there and one desk has nobody in line but your assigned person has 4 people in line, you have to wait. I think they are organized this way since the communist era, some weird work management processes, because a logical distribution of work would distribute available human resources evenly, not the way they are doing. Since today I was amazed to see they made the first step: no more splitting between foreign and local exchange account managements, they are both handled by the same … stil custom assigned person and of course … in the same office.
Other interesting thing I found today: at every desk thay have an announcement: “Businesses have priority” (in regards with individual accounts). So, one more reason not to be their client if you are an individual and one more reason to be happy if you are a business. I found this announcement to be as hilarious as the commercial that they are currently running on TV in which they state: “we know what you need”. Indeed I need to have priority but there would not be a need for priority if they would just simply hire all the people they need and not overload their employees in order to cut costs. They are struggling so much to cut costs that they don’t even have security for private areas, not to speak that they don’t have the space they need, recently they opened one more near an entrance (a privat one). When I went today to their building, going straight to the foreign exchange office where I knew I found it the last time, I was surprised to enter the room and see nobody was there but a lot of files and papers exposed. And in order to get there, I also went through some other corridor that had a lot of files stocked on each side and of course nobody was there. I could have simply stuffed a pile and take it with me if I had a large bag. Well, I was not interested what those files contained, but the possibility that they had private data of businesses made me title this post “no privacy”.
Today’s discovery is only a minor “cann’t belive it” event that is taking place in Romanian banks every day, maybe some time I will comment more on some of these events, like for example how I got my company’s card account monthly report via a friend in some other company that I was luck to know him becuase some bank employee simply gave him the report for my company, probably by error.
As a businessman in Romania I have reasons to “go Canada” everyday. In interacting with people, laws, events and prospects, a Romanian businessman must be a Rambo not to get emotionally involved up to the level of madness. As far as I observed, every Romanian businessman will face (usually weekly) a large array of emotional events from “fuckit!” to “I will go to Canada!” or “I have to start-up that offshore asap!”. There are rare those weeks when you have no major reason to get in a major state of depression and even so, you know that the silence is only a sign of the storm that is about to come.
This might seem a pretty bleak perspective to you, but trust me: doing business in Romania is probably harder than doing business on the Moon. Of course, if you try to do it right, correct and waiting for benefits. Once you can drop any of these aspirations, life is easier. If you can do the job approximately, you will have reasons to believe at least you have some clue why things are not working as they should. If you accept not to do it correct, welcome to Romania, the country of every possibilities. If you are not awaiting tangible benefits you are also very wanted here. The state is just about to raise the taxes.
There are a lot of posts this blog could have had already accumulated since I am a businessman. I hope I will recall some and post them even if the action took place some time ago. But I am also sure that I will have a lot of things to write about as business in Romania is “welcome to the jungle”.
I will not mention names in this blog since I am not trying to judge, I am only trying to present how things work. I am also considering myself a part of the system and a reason for “system failure”. From the the start I confess that I am not considering myself a very good business man, since so far I have not foud the way to “push the envelope” and try to find an easier way in the maze. I to hope things will get better and this is the reason I am still a Romanian businessman and not a Canadian businessman.