INTERSPAR PRONTO - Am Hbf 1

It's there when you need it, outside of normal business hours. It can be extremely crowded and long wait times, though. Selection is poor but to be expected for this kind of shop. Almost no store-brand products, you'll have to pay for name brand if you need something.

Overcrowded and overpriced, but great opening hours for Vienna.

Warning! Indicated prices are wrong! Then we you will pay you will get a nice surprise (some people might not realize). Just happened to me. Discussing

Very unfriendly and unhelpful staff. Rudeness does not need to be the norm, but with this shop it is. Disappointing.

Avoid on Sundays at all cost. Incredibly rude manager and general chaos - it's not worth the chips and and yogurt you think you can't live without for one day.

This is very market but it got ever busier in the time of Covid19 because only certain number of people are allowed to enter. This comes very handy when you get late or you have yo buy something on Sunday.

Is open 06:00-23:00 even on Sundays. Convenience store, mini version of Spar, with all essentials and at the same normal prices as in Spar. At late evening, towards closing hours, some stuff might be missing. The shop is divided by some fences to alcohol and children friendly sections. Each section has its own point of sale checkout. So, prepare to stay in two lines :)

Run fast. Run far. Avoid like the plague. Where to begin? 1) Finding the shop: There’s a sign in the main railway station concourse advertising INTERSPAR with business hours Mon to Sun from 9am to 11pm. Regrettably, they failed to include an arrow showing the way. Even a floor no. would have helped in an 80+ shop centre on three floors. Do not bother looking for an "Information" stand — if there is one, you’d need an information stand to find "Information". 2) Think you found INTERSPAR? Think again. As it turns out, there are two INTERSPAR markets, and one of them is closed on Sundays, so after 10 minutes wandering the halls, I end up at the closed one. I should have read the fine print. The one open on Sundays is an INTERSPAR Pronto, but they made sure the "Pronto" is printed in smaller font, light gray on white, on all the signs. 3) The horror begins: It’s one shop … but there are two sets of entrances, two sets of cashiers, and metal gates running smack through every isle. I was kind of expecting a sign advertising "Shopping Macht Frei". Chances are, therefore, that you'll have to buy half your stuff in shop A and the rest in shop B, of course queueing twice at overfilled cashier lines. 4) Apropos cashier lines. One of the shop halves has two cashier lines, but despite over a dozen people queuing at one, the second cashier never opened, despite there being an employee there doing nothing specific, perhaps counting her 12 toes. 5) Employees: harried, unfriendly, uninformed and presumably untrained. The gentleman at the entrance, in his €80 off-the-rack black suit miming security, simply turned away when I addressed him. After waiting in line for 5 min. I asked the young cashier if they had any bourbon (they keep all alcoholic beverages locked away, presumably so their customers don't nick it), and he looked at me in some mixture of anger and confusion, as if I had asked him if I could have my way with his little sister. I did query him in German, having discovered that his English skills are exhausted with a "no understand". 6) Languages: Now, why would a shop catering to a mixed crowd of travellers at an international railway station want to employ people with a few language skills? One forgets that in Austria the term "customer service", if it even exists, is no more than an unwelcome desert stretching to infinity. 7) The rest of the staff, not that there are all that many, are busy restocking shelves, and yelling at each other across aisles, not coordinating the chaos, but complaining about each other, management and their lot in life — when they find the time between dropping crates of goods — inadvertently funny when it’s chips or coffee grounds, hilarious when it’s a palette of juice boxes. Big bang. Orange juice everywhere! The good old word "Schadenfreude" comes to mind. Last words: Google Maps rates this shop at about 3.5, which in the scheme of things is pretty much as low as one can fall. To paraphrase one of their employees: "no go there. bad place".