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February 14, 2006
Cloakroom Communism
“Of course, before Eastern Europe can really take off a generation of workers with the communist mentality will have to die off.” This is a cliché that has been kicking around these parts for at least the last fifteen years. In general, I’ve always been suspicious of it. It sounds a bit too much like the ritualistic public-servant bashing indulged in by consumers who expect clerks to be at their beck and call like a convenience shop. Also, it’s just a variation on the idiotic “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks” theme. Tell that to the sober fifty year old Polish welders keeping the west of Ireland’s economy afloat.
In particular cases, however, it is hard not to agree. Take cloakroom attendants, for instance. Often used to disguise unemployment in communist Poland, they still linger in some institutions, like libraries. Cloakroom attendants will often refuse to hang up your coat if it does not have a hook. You will see them grasping coats and jackets by the collar and searching furrow-browed for a little loop of fabric that will enable them to hang up the garment. To save these heroes of work the rigours of this fruitless search some cloakrooms even have signs sternly announcing that “coats without hooks will not be accepted.”
What do you say to an adult human being who tells you he cannot hang up your coat because it has no hook? Do you make a fool of yourself and patronise him by attempting to show how it is done? Teach an old dog old tricks? Do you make a scene? Waiters spit in the soup – what do cloakroom attendants do? Slash your pockets? Put discrete cigarette holes in your hood?
If you are thinking of going to Poland to search in archives go in summer or sew a loop of fabric onto your collar because otherwise the library will not let you in.
Posted by hgrodsk at February 14, 2006 11:09 AM
Comments
The problem with the 'let's kill off oldies to get better service' thesis is that it ignores all the young people who are equally unhelpful.
If they work in badly run shops, with no training, then they to will replicate the bahviour of butchers in commie times who had one sausage and 100 customers. In that situation, the supplier is king or queen, and the customer is always wrong. Good service doesn't come into it.
So if shops are still run by people who havn't realised that there are now more sausages than customers, and that they have to fight for custom, then everyone in the shop will replicate this point of view.
I see it where I work. The lazy lower manager who got promoted by default and will never get any higher, who doesn't even understand things like copywrite law or anything about modern journalism, runs the place like a bad butcher. And young people come in to work there and are soon picking up the old fool's habits.
But go to a place or shop that is run by a good manager (young or old) and you can see that they realise that you have to keep the customer satisfied, or they just don't come back (like they used to have to do cause there was nowhere else).
It's not about how old people are, it's about culture and the complicated way that it changes...or doesn't.
Posted by: beatroot at February 17, 2006 05:17 PM