When I was still in high school, a long, long time ago, and later when I was studying English, I was taught that English people have very good manners. They queue when they have to wait at a bus stop, they patiently wait their turn in shops and they are all extremely polite. Now apart from odd exceptions like lager louts on holiday in Ibiza and the occasional a***hole who tries to jump a queue and whom the other people in self-same queue start complaining about loudly once the culprit has disappeared, I found this all to be very true.
Today I had to do some grocery shopping and I thought it would be nice to treat myself to the Waitrose-experience. Of course everything there is vastly overpriced, but the shop is light and big, the aisles are wide and the assortment of goods you can get there is very extensive. I love the way the salespeople are dressed, not so much the ones at the tills, but especially the people at the fish, meat and bread counters. Whoever thought of making them wear those silly white hats? And the ladies as well?
I can understand that from a hygienic perspective people who handle food have to wear some kind of headgear, something that covers the hair completely, but silly hats like that? And especially the ladies have a way of wearing those silly things without covering their hair really. When a waist-long ponytail comes down from under the hat the purpose is totally defeated if you ask me.
After my little excursion through the shop I arrived at the till behind a little old lady who looked like the late Queen Mum. She was taking her time paying for her shopping while the cashier patiently waited until she had put her enormous handbag down, carefully opened the zipper, took out a little purse, discovered she didn’t have enough change, put the purse back in the handbag, found a bigger purse, produced a credit card, fiddled with card in the machine, forgot her pin code, found a little book in the handbag with the pin code written inside, entered the pin code three times (did it wrong the first two times), put away the credit card in the big purse and the purse in the handbag, nearly forgot the little book with the pin code, asked for a carrier bag, started putting the groceries in the bag one by one, found out she did it the wrong way and repacked everything at leisure.
Now I’m a teacher and as such you have to be of a very patient disposition, but this tested even me. The waiting itself was not so bad, but the problem was I needed to find a ladies’ room very badly. It is unfortunately very true that when you get to certain age you do really need to go more often. But I was in England and there was nothing for it but bite my lower lip, stiffen my upper lip and exercise my pelvic floor muscles until it was my turn and I was literally bursting. However, I managed to reach the ladies’ in time.
This little anecdote describes very well the British state of mind. It doesn’t matter who or what is waiting, when it’s your turn, it’s your turn and you can take your time.
How different it will be when I get back to The Netherlands. The last time I was at a supermarket there, I was nearly pushed away by the woman behind me. I’d just paid but my groceries were still on the belt as it is physically impossible to pay and at the same time pack your groceries. Of course the belt was not in operation, so I had to shove everything to the end of it, but while I was trying to do that as quickly as I could, the woman behind me was clearly getting impatient and started pushing her cart against the back of my legs. Giving her a deadly stare didn’t make any impression at all.
Maybe she was in a hurry; maybe someone needed her urgently; maybe she was a woman of a certain age as well and she needed to pee, but actually I don’t think it was any of that. I think she was just being Dutch. And being Dutch means speaking very loudly in company so everyone can hear how interesting and intelligent you are, push yourself to the head of the queue in the unlikely event of there being one at all and trying to run over every co-shopper while in a supermarket.
I’ll enjoy the British manners patiently for as long as my holidays last and next time I have to go to the supermarket I’ll just visit the ladies’ first.
Picture thanks to www.seafoodtraining.org
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