Other local products
Friday evening. I go into the corner fruit and vegetable shop. Every week we do a shop to complete the order that an organic farmer delivers to us (we order via WhatsApp and he brings the basket to our house. Yesterday he brought us a bunch of wild asparagus. It doesn't get any better). But we were in the shop. It's always quite busy at this time on Fridays. Because the produce is good, because the service is good, because it's a long-established shop you trust and that never lets you down. Fresh, local produce predominates, with an increasingly generous selection of organic products.
When we talk about local products, I basically think of that kind of business. But now, institutional campaigns are targeting other things, other… values? Rather than promoting ordinary, locally made products to fill the everyday pantries of those of us who live here, the promotion focuses on gourmet and artisanal products, limited editions of high-end delicacies, and sweets associated with luxury consumption. Nothing to do with everyday pantry needs. And there we go again: the target of this promotion is, as always, the tourist. Local products are conceived as just another element of the offerings of this country where we're desperate to please our visitors. Local product campaigns are now tourism promotions paid for by the trade or agriculture departments.
But that's not what I wanted to talk about; I wanted to talk about another kind of local product, also for everyday life. We go back to the shop where we were on Friday afternoon. While I wait to be served, a customer who's also in line is talking to a colleague. She's from a well-known telecommunications company that provides her phone and internet service. She's complaining that when you shout, they never explain anything. After spending ages talking to an automated system and pressing all the numbers they tell you to, with a bit of luck you'll finally be helped by someone who answers from a South American country and speaks in a way you can't understand, the shop customer says. It seems they billed her incorrectly, and she's very angry because she can't get it sorted out.
The conversation I'm overhearing takes me back to the pages of Capitalist realismMark Fisher's brilliant and caustic essay, *The Man Who Killed the Big Bang Theory*, speaks of the maddening labyrinth of call centers, where no one ever seems to know what to do. Who says the problem of bureaucracy is limited to public administrations? Any mega-corporation that ensnares us will become a Kafkaesque bureaucratic maze, and "the frustration of dealing with bureaucrats often stems from the fact that they themselves cannot make decisions: they are only allowed to defer decisions that have always been made by someone else." To the angry and frustrated woman in the checkout line, Fisher says: "Anger only serves as a release; it is an attack on the void, directed against someone who is also a victim of the system, but with whom it is impossible to empathize."
As I let my gaze wander over the lettuces, the red-eyed potatoes, the first broad beans of the season, the carrots, the peas—so tender, freshly picked—I think that we freed ourselves from the torture of the big telecommunications companies a long time ago. We trust a local Menorcan company. Do you know what a luxury it is when, upon calling, they answer with a "good morning" in Catalan, and you know the voice, the name, and the face of the person who answers? From then on, it's all advantages: if you have a problem, you don't have to go through fifty departments that will end up sending you a worker from a subcontracted company; instead, their technician, the one you always use, whom you also know well and trust, will call you back—just as you trust the person who will be speaking to you in a few moments. Local products, yes. And local service companies, too. Institutions don't run promotional campaigns for these, but in their simplicity and efficiency, they are a treasure.
Now I recall another conversation, in the staff room. A colleague was describing her problems with the bank that holds her mortgage. A bank that used to be a savings bank and still calls itself a savings bank, but isn't really one anymore—I won't mention its name for discretion's sake. Problems similar to those in Mark Fisher's switchboard: bureaucracy, being passed around, the anonymity of the decision-makers, frustration. For a few euros saved on your mortgage, you tie your fate to an institution that, if things go wrong, will show you little mercy. And, of course, you have no idea what it does with your money. How long have you been trapped? Don't you know yet that we also have a local alternative? A small, local, trustworthy, and ethical institution?
As the soap commercial said, shop around, compare, and if you find something better, buy it.