Was just reading this post by Seth Godin and it reminded me of one of the big attitude problems you often find with businesses in Israel.

And that is that workers tend to treat their job as their job and nothing more. They don’t look to go the extra mile and they for sure are not interested in the “brand” they are working for. Of course their are exceptions to this rule as with every rule, but I the attitude is not just with businesses here in Israel, but with government offices as well.

If the store closes at 6:00pm, the worker has the lights off and is locking the door at 6:00pm. And if someone tries to come in they will here the excuse that the register is shut off. This even happened to me recently with a pharmacy when I needed medicine for my wife who was sick. The guy was sitting there and it would have taken him 2 minutes to get the medicine and take the money, but he refused because he was “closed”.

The problem is that the client is not as important to a worker here in Israel as he is to the boss. The boss/owner will almost always make exceptions ans try to take care of a client. This may be because it is good business practice, but then again it could be because of a Power Trip that comes with being the owner.

I think one of the underlining reasons for this stems from the boss/owner. It is his responsibility to create the culture and atmosphere that will make his workers feel like they are part of something special and that they are all building something together. Now I have not really ever worked for an Israeli boss, but somehow I get the feeling that the way the bosses in Israel treat their workers is similar to the way the workers treat their customers.