OPINION:The unseasonal thaw in Dublin stores can only mean that something wicked this way comes, writes Ann Marie Hourihane.
THREE TIMES last week shop assistants asked me if there was anything they could do to help me. I know it was a busy weekend, what with Paul O'Connell being hit by someone bigger than him, and Leinster throwing it all away, and our Eoghan robbed of winning X Factor, but this development amongst shop assistants is really news.
Two of the shop assistants concerned were lovely young girls patrolling the fashion floor of a large department store. I hope it will not appear boastful when I say that they approached me. They approached me! These lovely young girls, who are usually chatting to each other as they take the customer's credit card, wrap her purchase and send her back to customer-land without one word of personal acknowledgement, approached me with a smile. It was extremely unsettling. But then they had a lot of time on their hands.
The third shop assistant was a middle-aged man who was helping me to find pudding rice at a very expensive food shop. On that occasion the total spend, as retailers say, was €5.25, so you can see how desperate shop assistants must be. And that's the problem with this late outbreak of civility: shop assistants in Dublin have been pretty chilly for the last 10 years. This unseasonal thaw, like icebergs melting, can only mean that something wicked this way comes.
Of course there are shop assistants who were helpful and pleasant through the good times. And of course being a shop assistant brings you into direct contact with the shopping public who are, to a woman, completely bonkers. Such exposure is bound to tell on a girl. However shopping in other countries - for example, Northern Ireland - does lead one to believe that some shop assistants can do this tiring and demanding job whilst remaining cheerful, outwardly at least.
There was a school of thought amongst us bruised shoppers that it was better to shop in smaller societies. That shop assistants in Northern Ireland operate in such tight communities that they've fallen into the habit of being nice to all their customers on the grounds that they are quite likely to run into quite a large proportion of them outside work hours, and that this habit has unthinkingly been extended to strangers. That is why there are stunned shoppers wafting around Donegal Square muttering "Everybody up here is so nice."
However, Dublin, despite the fact that it is the cultural capital of the world, is not a terribly big city. Courageous shoppers who fly - or used to fly, at any rate - to New York or to London to do their shopping came home talking about how friendly and pleasant shop assistants are in those cities which are even more anonymous than our own thriving metropolis. Meanwhile, back in Ireland, quite mild customers have stormed out of shops, leaving their purchases at the cash desk because they could not tolerate standing there like a fool as three members of staff ignored them. It is a horrible experience to pop into a shop to buy something and find oneself filled with murderous rage. Old people found this practice particularly hard to take.
In these circumstances it is no wonder that the Irish public went bonkers. I was going to write the Irish consumer went bonkers or that Irish shoppers went bonkers, but actually the problem is much wider than shopping or consuming. Irish managers - dread phrase - don't give a curse about the general public. In fact it is not even that Irish managers don't give a curse about us, they don't like us. Occasionally they fear us.
All systems catering to the general public in Ireland are designed for the people running them, not the people who use them. This is as true of the health service as it is of the clothing business. It is as true of the food safety authorities as it is of the pub owners.
This leads to defensive management, which cares as little for its staff as it does for its customers or its consumers or its patients. We know that good pork was removed from the shelves not to protect public health, but in order to protect the food authorities and the Government from public ire.
We know that the ridiculous law about not being able to buy alcohol in supermarkets before 10.30am is not to protect us from drinking ourselves into cirrhosis but in order to send us all back to the pubs, which are echoing now like cathedrals.
We know that those letters that arrived last week in the homes of women over 40, assuring us that we can get a cervical smear for free, arrived not because the Department of Health is worried about us, but so that they can wave this cynical mailshot in the Dáil the next time someone criticises them for their cheapskate decision not to vaccinate young girls.
It may take a little while to get used to shop assistants smiling at us , but we may - just - be prepared to try. Irish managers , on the other hand, are going to have to work a lot harder.