Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Good Cop Bad Cop

My friend Olga is getting more and more frustrated with the pool where our girls have their weekly swim lesson.  Olga says that Teddy Stadium has cheaper lessons with nicer dressing rooms, and a Gymboree set up for the children as well.

Mika, Olga and Gregor's daughter, and Raphaela have been taking swimming lessons together since they were six months old.  I will admit that the women's dressing room scares me in its lack of space and cleanliness, but I don't spend too much time in there.  Our instructor is wonderful, however, and the place of instruction is right down the block from our apartment, and so I am willing to suffer a little.

Less so last night, when they did not have sufficient heating once we got out of the pool.  Raphaela was shuddering until I got her dressed, and so I went into the office there to complain. I pointed out, in a calm manner, that even though Israeli weather has not realized that it is in fact Winter, it gets cold at night and the pool and dressing rooms area are not heated to accomodate babies.

The man was listening to me, when Olga barged in, saying that they were going to lose their clients to Teddy unless they did something drastic to "come our way," and then she issued her list of demands.

I don't honestly know if her presentation made the general manager more or less willing to help, I am told that in order to get something done in Israel you have to shout and bully and run the other person over with a steam roller.

Perhaps I am still a naive American, 13 years after moving to Israel, but I would like to think that you can reason with another human being, if the request makes sense.

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