Queues and More Queues

Poland's numbingly familiar queues were longer than usual last week as people tried to buy scarce delicacies for the year-end holidays. In every city, town and hamlet, citizens stood in line in hopes of getting a carp for the traditional Polish Christmas Eve dinner. When available, the fish cost $1.22 a pound. In downtown Warsaw, as a Dickensian gloom settled over the capital one evening, more than 70 people queued up before a seedy, barren-looking candy store in hopes of buying chocolates for their children. The shortages are worse than usual these days, because of hoarding inspired by Solidarity's strike threats last month. "People are buying three or four times what they need," complained a Warsaw housewife. The shortages, combined with panic buying, last week caused the government to introduce rationing of meat and butter. The endless lines, as always, are a source of a Polish staple--black humor. One recent joke: If the Russians invade, why will they send our economic planners to Siberia?

Answer: To cause a snow shortage there.

Krzysztof Karasiewicz, 45, and his wife Maria, 40, are resigned to the frustrations of Polish life. He is a lathe operator and

she is a machinist at the Ursus tractor factory, twelve miles outside Warsaw. Although both have joined Solidarity, they could not be regarded as dissidents or malcontents. Says Krzysztof: "One shouldn't complain too much. I enjoy my work." Maria points out that a decade ago they were far worse off, living in a single attic room that they had obtained only by agreeing to care for their elderly landlady. Since then, Maria has gone to work to supplement the family income, which now totals 15,000 zloty a month ($500). The factory helped them get a three-room apartment on Ursus' Keniga Street, a ten-minute bus ride from the factory; the flat is barely adequate for the couple and their 18-year-old daughter, but it costs only 382 zloty a month ($12.73).

The Karasiewiczes' overriding concern is food, which consumes 50% of their income and much of their time. The plant in Ursus helps out. It furnishes employees with a hearty breakfast each day (fruit juice, soup or goulash, sausage, bread, coffee, tea or milk), and gives them coupons redeemable at the factory for 3.2 lbs. of meat per worker each month for about two-thirds of what it costs, when available, at the butcher shops. But when Maria gets off work after an eight-hour day finishing steel tractor parts, she must stand in the interminable queues at the neighborhood supermarket. Half an hour alone is wasted waiting in line for the obligatory shopping basket she must use for purchases. Always poorly stocked, the supermarket has been virtually stripped bare during the holiday season; even eggs have become a rarity. Says Maria: "All we find now is tea and vinegar."

The Karasiewiczes' pleasures are necessarily simple. Because their work shifts start at 6 a.m., they go to bed early after watching TV; their favorite series are Rich Man, Poor Man and Washington Behind Closed Doors, with Polish voiceovers. Krzysztof, who has never traveled outside Poland, says: "If I had a choice of vacations I'd go to the U.S., but it's so expensive I don't even dream about it." Though the Ursus factory provides vacation centers for its workers along the Baltic Sea or in Poland's lake district, the Karasiewiczes prefer to spend their 3 1/2 weeks of vacation tending a 3,200-sq.-ft. plot of land, ten minutes away from their apartment, which they received free as factory workers. Says Krzysztof: "We can plant vegetables and flowers, and there is a small hut on the land where we can rest."

The Karasiewiczes' daughter Bozena speaks English and some Russian; she aspires to become a tourist guide after graduating from a business college that specializes in hotel management. Says Maria: "We hope our daughter will have a better life, because she's educated--not just a worker like us." Bozena, who has a steady boyfriend, may be in line for an apartment of her own. Her parents put her on the waiting list of the municipal housing authority when she was eleven, hoping that she would get an apartment when she turned 21.

When the Karasiewiczes were asked what they desired the most, Krzysztof replied: "I hope things will be better; we would like to live in peace, without lines at the stores, and with more free time." Said Maria: "I want butter, and meat --not a fur coat."

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