I’ve seen several reports recently of studies showing that Italians have more vacation days than anyone else in the world, except maybe the French. Most regularly-employed Italians during a year enjoy some long weekends, even longer Christmas and Easter breaks, and several weeks’ vacation in the summer. However, I’d like to see a study of total HOURS worked in a year. A normal workday for many is 8 or 9 am to 8 or 9 pm, and the leisurely two-hour lunch is a thing of the past, at least in northern Italy. A senior manager in Milan to whom I was teaching English last year worked from 9 am to 8 pm, Monday through Friday, with only a half-hour break for lunch. When anti-smoking rules were enforced, it was a real problem for him to take a five-minute break every two hours to go out and have a cigarette. Plus, he worked every Saturday from 9 to 1. By the time he got away on vacation, he certainly needed and deserved it.
Category Archives: Italy
Service With(out) a Smile
I’ve bitched at length about Telecom Italia and Tiscali (my current and past Internet service providers), and the lack of customer service nous shown by both. Foreigners in Italy often complain that Italians generally don’t have a concept of customer service, and I’d have to say that’s a fair assessment, amply demonstrated in most chain stores, supermarkets, Ikea, etc.
If you want good customer service, go to the backbone of the Italian economy: the family-owned business. For 12 years in Milan I bought bread, meat, fruit & veg., cleaning supplies, school supplies, ice cream and coffee from our neighborhood shops. All of these were owned by individuals or families, though some had a few non-family employees, and some changed hands over time. We built up relationships with the shopowners. They saw us move into the neighborhood as a young couple. Some used to call us the sposini – newlyweds – because we shopped together, which they found terribly cute. They saw our daughter grow up. Every one had an onboard “database” of customer information, knew our tastes and preferences, and could therefore serve us faster and better.
I shopped at supermarkets only rarely, mostly for things I couldn’t get at the smaller shops. Supermarkets are often cheaper, but to me they were not worth the standing in line and the impersonality (some smaller supermarkets do manage to be friendlier).
I was afraid I’d feel lost when we moved to Lecco, having to re-establish my network of suppliers, but it hasn’t been a problem. I’ve become a regular at some shops, albeit a new regular, and the owners already know me, or at least they act as if they do. And, even if they don’t know me, they are courteous; as owners, they have a direct and compelling interest in my return.
What Italians have yet to develop is a sense of ownership in “mere” employees, especially of large and chain stores. I’ve had some terrible experiences at Ikea,Upim, and Coin (the latter two are chain department stores). American stores are almost all chains, but they have customer service down to a fine art: everyone smiles and greets you in every store you enter; in some grocery stores I’ve been positively spooked by the number of employees offering to help me (maybe I look lost). You could say that this is false friendliness designed to get more money out of you, but that’s what a store is all about, isn’t it?
update:Â Customer service at Ikea in Italy has vastly improved
Evolution: How It is Taught in Italian Schools
“A new Great Awakening is sweeping the country, with Americans increasingly telling pollsters that they believe in prayer and miracles, while only 28 percent say they believe in evolution.” Nicholas Kristof, NYT, Jan 7, 2003
This shouldn’t be surprising, given that, in some parts of America, public schools are required to teach evolution with disclaimers that it is “only a theory,” some giving equal time to creationism. Thankfully, the national curricula for Italy’s public schools are not so wilfully blind, and Italians believe more firmly in the separation of church and state than some Americans do. Rossella’s current history text covers it thus:
“Until the end of the 18th century, it was generally accepted that all existing species had been created by a divine mind, according to a plan which had conceived them already perfectly adapted to their environments. This idea, inspired by the Bible, was known as creationism. … [A] new theory, called evolution, [held that] living species in the course of time undergo very slow but continuous change to adapt to their environments… based on a mechanism of natural selection… Darwinism is a fundamental component of our culture [today]…”
If I were a conspiracy theorist, I would suspect that the American public school system is being made or allowed to become dumber and dumber, so that a nation of sheep will spend their lives on the sofa, happily absorbing entertainment and “news,” with an occasional foray to the mall to spend more money than they should on things the advertisers tell them they need. All this perpetrated, no doubt, by some shadowy elite who can afford to educate their own children at America’s fine private schools and colleges.
Evolution in Italian Schools
May 3, 2004
The recent, much-disputed Moratti Reform of the Italian school system included, among other things, some vague wording that seemed to imply the removal of teaching evolution from the middle-school curriculum. After other issues had been thoroughly dissected and protested, this one excited some heated discussion, and has resulted in a press release clarifying that: “It is absolutely not true that the Ministry has removed the teaching of evolutionary theory from primary and middle schools. The discussion of Darwinian theory, a foundation of modern biological science, is assured for students from 6 to 18 years, according to gradual didactic theories. I wish in this regard to restate that the main objective of the school Reform is to create free consciences, developing a critical sense in students from the first years of their schooling. We wish to assure our children, under the guidance of teachers, a plurality of sources and opinions, so that they can compare and form their own critical consciences. We wish to stimulate all students to think, from the smallest to the oldest, so that they can form a responsible personality based on principles, values, lifestyles, and behaviors [which are] conscious, founded on respect for others, and open to comparison.”
Minister Moratti goes on to say that, given the debate in recent days, a commission has been formed to study the question of evolution and give precise pointers to create a basis for all curricula. This commission is headed by Rita Levi Montalcini (senator for life and Nobel prize winner in medicine), and includes Carlo Rubbia, Nobel for physics, Roberto Colombo, professor of neurobiology and genetics at the Università Cattolica Sacro Cuore di Milano, and Vittorio Sgaramella, professor of molecular biology at the University of Calabria.
Hmm. Minister Moratti is reputed to be of the religious right, though that is a far less heavy affiliation than it would be in the US. Her statement leaves some wiggle room for the introduction of “competing” theories on how life came about, but hopefully a panel of Nobel winners, no matter what their personal theology, will not embarrass themselves and the country by imitating, say, the US state of Georgia.
The press release
Sandokan – an Italian Children’s Classic
We saw Pirates of the Caribbean in Italian, though I felt it lost something in translation. But it was fun, pretty much what you’d expect from a movie developed from an amusement park ride. And it reminded me that I’ve been meaning to write about Sandokan.
Sandokan, a character created in 1883 by an imaginative but completely untravelled Italian named Emilio Salgari, is a Malaysian prince, deposed by the British and Dutch colonialists who have taken over his country. Unable to reclaim his throne, “the Tiger of Malaysia” takes to piracy, harassing the colonialists, along with his fearless band of seamen and his Portugese sidekick, Yanez.
I find very amusing the reversal on typical colonial literature of the period: here the baddies are the white men, such as the real historical character, James Brooke, the “White Rajah of Borneo.”
Salgari wrote over 80 novels, stories of adventure set in exotic lands from Malaysia to India to the Caribbean. His work enjoyed periods of great popularity in many languages and countries, but has only very recently begun to be translated into English. For those who read Italian, some works are available for download.
Sandokan was made into several TV miniseries in Italy in the 1970s, starring Kabir Bedi, a half-Indian half-Italian actor. Rather too tall for a Malaysian, but awfully handsome, so who’s complaining? Besides, the Englishman James Brooke was played by an Italian (who also once or twice played James’ Bond’s nemesis Blomfeld), and Yanez the Portugese by a Frenchman, and since the series was apparently shot in India, all the “Malaysians” must be Indian. Oh, well. Inaccuracies notwithstanding,the series is fun, and is available on DVD.
Pictures etc. from the TV series
Salgari was never high literature, and even in the original Italian the writing is a bit clumsy (how many times in one paragraph can you use the word cupo – dark?). You read these for the grand adventure tales they are, so, if that’s what floats your boat, I do recommend them – and now two of them are available in English:
Nov 24, 2007
The kind people at ROH Press wrote to let me know:
“ROH Press has just released a new modern translation of The Tigers of Mompracem. You can read sample chapters on our website.
Next year marks Sandokan’s 125th anniversary so we’ve also issued The Pirates of Malaysia  and The Two Tigers.”
Waiting for Viggo
Everyone in the world can see The Return of the King now, except us Italians; the film has had a simultaneous worldwide release, except in Italy. According to the New York Times, this is because “in Italy moviegoing is not an ingrained holiday habit.” Wrong! Italian cinemas are more packed at Christmas than any other time of year, although the focus is generally on family movies: Finding Nemo has only recently been released, and the annual Disney film is usually shown at Christmas, even if it was a summer release in the US.
Another holiday movie tradition is the stupid Italian comedy, in recent years dominated by comedians (to use the term loosely) Massimo Boldi and Christian de Sica (the sadly degenerate son of director Vittorio de Sica). These films usually exploit the previous summer’s pop music hits, so an Indian theme this time around was predictable – Panjabi MC hit the Italian airwaves earlier this year. Mr. MC even did a tour of Italian TV shows, being interviewed by dim hosts and hostesses who pretended he spoke Italian (they didn’t bother to provide a translator – maybe they didn’t realize he speaks English?), and ended up looking far stupider than he did even when he had no clue what they were talking about.
Fortuitously for Boldi and de Sica, a recently-popular Italian comic troupe is called “I Fichi d’India.” Neither they nor their name have anything to do with India; “Indian Figs” is the Italian name for the fruit of the prickly-pear cactus, which is popular in Italy, though maybe unknown in India. But any excuse will do to enlarge the cast and add to the stock of fatuous jokes. No doubt there are plenty of scantily-clad women in this one as well, though in the trailer they’re mostly shown dancing. Why any of these women would want to have even movie sex with Massimo Boldi is beyond me.
My husband’s theory is that “The Return of the King” is being delayed in Italy because the Italian distributors know very well that Italians love to go to the cinema at Christmas, and any good film would wipe the floor with this rubbish. So here we are, waiting for Viggo (and Orlando, of course) until January 22nd. Boldi and De Sica are no substitute.
