Dutch Professional Scope

With the usual preface about generalizations not applying to everybody, Dutch professionals consistently surprise me with their narrow scope of support. I've never seen anything like it anywhere else, where one out of every two answers is essentially "that's not my job."

I'm organizing this event for the Province of Utrecht and its partners (university, science park, businesses, municipality, etc). I was in the library and saw these wooden tripod stands that can hold nice posters. "Hmm," I thought, "These could be perfect if some participants dont have their own stands."

"Hello," I said to the library staff. "Do you know who is responsible for these? Who manages stuff here? Who can I talk to."

Blank stares.

I gave clarification, and the guy just told me to come back next week.

"Does this person have an email address?" This guy looked at me as if I was being an asshole. Wide-eyes told me telepathically: Come back next week. I haven't the slightest clue, and there's no way I'm going to spend 5 seconds figuring it out.

But I don't give up so easily.

"We have 3. That's all we have," the guy said. I saw his younger female co-worker in the background smiling at me. She was my in to getting any kind of useful information! I knew it.

"Yes, I see that. But they had to come from somewhere, no? Who knows where they came from?"

Wide-eyes.

"Do you have any email address you can give me."

"Come back next week." This time verbalized explicitly.

The younger woman came to find me with a slip of paper with an email address. "Don't tell anyone I gave you this." As if in the Netherlands you can get in trouble for giving someone useful information.