SHOPPING ON SATURDAY

. . .If you've ever lived in Germany, you'll know that the Germans have pretty strict laws about when stores can be open. Stores used to have to close at 4:00 p.m. on Saturdays, but in the early 1990s an exception was made for the first Saturday of the month ("long Saturday"), when they could stay open until 6:00 p.m. The rest of the week, stores had to close at 8:00 p.m. as well. There were a few wrinkles in the rules but not many (stores could stay open on some Sundays, but would then have to close at 2:00 p.m. on the previous Saturday). All of this was a bit of a pain if you're used to running out for a fresh grapefruit and a six-pack (or something) for a midnight snack three times a week. Plus, the shops were always crowded on Saturdays; it seemed to me that Germans were typically more grumpy while shopping than folks in the U.S., and their clerks were definitely not trained to put on a saccharine smile and "put the customer first." On the other hand, planning my shopping trips became just another aspect of life in Germany, which already seemed regulated and scheduled in a way that was, to be sure, foreign to my life as a college student in the U.S.

But now the German government is screwing it all up and allowing states to keep their shops open on Saturday until 8:00 p.m. if they want to. Read the article in FAZ here (reg. required). The new law also includes a provision allowing employees to request one free Saturday a month.

The new law is only a marginal change from the old law, and states are going to have to option to refuse to allow their stores to open late on Saturday. My attraction to the old way of doing things is not simply nostalgia, however: when the shops are not open, there is no pressure or temptation to go shopping. This means that more space is carved out, by law, for non-commercial pursuits, which, for me, meant playing cards, chatting with my friends, talking walks -- when the weather wasn't crappy--and hanging out in pubs. One can certainly argue that no one is preventing me from doing all those things in the U.S. Of course. But law also has an expressive function. Laws that indicate that there is more to life than shopping are, as far as I'm concerned, a good thing. We also have laws that make the same statement (e.g., we also block certain kinds of exchanges, such as, in many states, exchanging money for sex). At a deep level, I am in favor of these kinds of laws because they indicate the desirability of a life beyond commerce, and I think that Germany should resist the temptation to move in the direction of the U.S.'s preference for shopping all of the time. I suppose that the internet will make these laws irrelevant anyway, however; I'm not sure how developed e-commerce is in Germany, but I wouldn't be surprised if the pressure of internet shopping contributed to calls for changes in the law.