The shop was a suburban Dublin mecca for stylish women with money to spare. The customer had the sheen of social polish.
“Have you got these in a size seven?” she enquired, taking a shoe from the shelf.
“I’ll just go and check,” answered the smiling assistant, returning a short while later with an apology. “I’m really sorry, but we don’t have any left in size seven.”
The customer leapt from the seat where she had been waiting. “Now you tell me, after I’ve taken off my shoes,” she blasted, flinging the display shoe still in her hand with such fury it went bouncing across the floor. She stormed out of the shop. The young assistant made a hasty retreat, too – into a back room where nobody would see her crying.
It was just another day in the life of Rude Ireland.
Retail and hospitality workers could fill the National Library with stories about customers’ bad manners. “They keep talking on their phones while they’re paying for something,” said one. “Sometimes, I have to wait three or four minutes before they finish the call so I can talk to them.”
Teachers tell of children as young as five and six grabbing, demanding, back- answering and never uttering a “please” or a “thank you”. Letter-writers to The Irish Times complain about public transport users bashing them with their backpacks, occupying adjoining seats with their bags and thus forcing other passengers to stand, and playing loud audio on their phones.
An entire symphony of letters recently complained about theatre-goers’ phones lighting up during performances in darkened auditoriums. Bad manners have become a contagion. Some argue it is Covid’s legacy, but I suspect it is the hallmark of the Celtic Tiger Mark II.
On last Monday’s Liveline on RTÉ Radio 1, Anne, 82 and unsteadied by the after-effects of a stroke, recounted boarding a packed bus in south Dublin last Saturday and being forced to stand, gripping two bars to stay upright. Nobody offered her a seat. She got kicked in the leg and hit on the shoulders in the scrum.
“My son said I should have said: ‘Hello, I’m 82 years of age and I’ve had a stroke, could somebody give me a seat?’ And shame them into it.” She said she might try that the next time. Anne, think again.
Last straw
On the same day Anne was on the bus, I walked to the grocery shop along a narrow footpath, only wide enough to accommodate two people and skirting a road of sprinting cars. A pair of women came towards me, walking two abreast. They never broke their stride, seeming not to register my existence. Had I not flattened myself against the wall, they may well have impelled me into the traffic.
I proceeded on my way, berating myself for having said nothing. On arriving at the entrance to the shop, I noticed a young woman wheeling a stroller towards the door, about to leave. I stepped back on to the footpath to let her pass. Now vigilant after the incident on the footpath, I watched her face as she exited. She looked everywhere but at me. Her lips did not move. It was the last straw.
“Excuse me,” I said, “did you see that I stepped back to let you out?”
“Yes,” she replied. “I said thanks.”
“I didn’t hear you.”
We went our separate ways. An everyday encounter that should have been a pleasant moment of human connection had soured the day. But there was more to come. Another customer was waiting for me inside the shop. “Did you see she’s a young mum?” she asked, accusingly. Instead of replying that, obviously I did, it was why I had withdrawn onto the footpath to let her pass, I said: “I’m sick of standing back for people and being ignored.”
“But she’s a young mum,” insisted the equally young woman, before walking away.
Having once been one myself, it was news to me that young mothers are exempt from the normal courtesies. Perhaps it explains some of the impoliteness in their children’s classrooms.
Manners matter. They have nothing to do with snobbishness, social class, etiquette, decorum or knowing whether or not to crook one’s little finger while holding a teacup. Manners are small acts of consideration and opportunities for human connectedness. They are threads of the social fabric, and when they start to unravel there are consequences for society. This is when the personal becomes political.
Rudeness is an expression of disrespect for others. Conducting loud phone calls in a train carriage, letting a shop door swing in a stranger’s face or not acknowledging a thoughtful gesture are microaggressions in an age of growing polarisation. The message they transmit is that my life matters more than yours.
At a recent wedding, two wealthy businessmen talked loudly to one another throughout the speeches, reducing the bride and groom to bit-players. Nobody asked them to be quiet.
Dehumanised terrain
We live in an increasingly impersonal world. You go to the bank, you deal with a machine. You go to the supermarket, you self-checkout at a machine. You go to an airport, you self-check-in at a machine. On buses and trains, in cafes and shops, the most common engagement is no longer with other human beings, but with phones.
In this dehumanised terrain, good manners are interludes for strengthening the bonds that tie us together. Bad manners do the opposite. They breed isolation, mé féinism, division, resentment, self-absorption, individualism and grievance.
I remember interviewing the wise and unostentatious John McGahern at his home in Leitrim while the first Celtic Tiger was on the rampage. He lamented the erosion of good manners, believing them to be the foundation of civil society. They were rooted in empathy, he said.
Ireland’s intimacy is one of its most appealing characteristics. That does not come solely from its small size, but from an innate appetite for finding connections with strangers. “Where are you from? Oh, do you know so-and-so?”
Establishing connections becomes more challenging as the country’s population grows – set to have doubled by 2057 since the mid-1980s. Is a simple “thank you” too high a price to pay to preserve our collective wellbeing?