Walking
down Dominick Street, I’m carrying a Marks and Spencer's bag in one hand and a
Lidl bag in the other. Make of me what you will, oh casual observer. The Lidl
bag is enormous, so does that mean I do all my shopping there?
Who
cares? Maybe I have the money to shop at Marks and maybe I just want to be seen
to.
Unlikely, admittedly, that your colyoomist gives a toss about what others
think about where I shop, but there are people out there ... ‘Snobs’, they used
to be called.
As a
tiny lad back in the 1960s, your scribbler was given a fantastic definition of
snobbery. Coming from the upper echelons of the English middle classes, it was,
in itself, inherently snobbish. I was told that a snob is someone who looks
down their nose at someone else, when they have no right to look down upon that
person.
The
tacit inference therefore was that there were other people who did have a right
to look down on others.
Gradually
and thankfully, a snob became anybody who looked down on another, and rightly
so, because to do so is unjust.
Anyway,
if my shopping patterns are anything to go by, you should never judge a person
by their Bags For Life. I might be dead posh and do my entire weekly grocery
shop in Marks and Sparks, and equally I might fill my boots at Lidl, Dunnes or
SuperValu. So why this fixation with bagly brand recognition? Well, I worked in
retail for many happy years, but encountered in that industry such a level of
customer snobbery that I am still to this day outraged and perplexed.
Many
years ago I opened a charity shop in Galway City, and having grown up in a
family of shop workers, I knew that it was important to put our brand name out
there on the streets. So I ordered a batch of printed carrier bags, only to be
told by my Head Office that nobody would ever carry a charity bag onto the
streets of Galway.
Why
not? I just couldn’t understand. Rather than an embarrassment, I thought it
would earn the customer kudos, for having made a contribution to the charity.
A few
weeks into the job, I realised that I been wrong and Head Office right. In
fact, the situation was worse than I could ever imagine.
Several
regular customers bought a good deal of clothing and then carefully folded
their new belongings into Moons bags. My oh
my, how I had overestimated the social conscience of Ireland. Not only did they
not want to be seen to contribute to a charity shop, they needed to pretend
that they’d bought their clothes in a posh one.
Snobbery,
pure and simple. Sad but true. Yet these days, even though the phenomenon
thrives, the word ‘snobbery’ barely exists. The predictive texting on my Nokia
phone recognises the word ‘Lidl’, but not ‘snobbery.’ Yikes! The Frasier Crane
snob in me suddenly feels I must have the wrong phone!
Does
my blend of bags, this visual cocktail of budget and luxury retail brands, mean
I’m a societal mess? Well, I’m a supermarket whore. I go where the sun shines
brightly. I go where the parking is easy, the produce is fresh and the prices
dandy. Good little consumer, too. Signed up to all the loyaty schemes, so that
computers somewhere can whirr and crunch and try to work out what I’ll want to
buy next year, in return sending me coupons offering 25c off a metric tonne of
cheese strings or something else that I have no intention of buying.l
Armed
with our supermarket Bags For Life, we carry our consumer colours with us as we
walk the streets. In a fantastic period of social engineering, between 2002 and
2004, the Irish were used as Eurozone lab rats, tested for compliance in a
series of increasingly challenging ways..
Try
them out with the plastic bags, then hit them with the Euro, and if they show a
suitable willingness to be manipulated, smack ‘em up with a smoking ban too.
Politically,
Brussels treats Ireland similarly to the way the Tories have always dealt with
Scotland: contemptuously. Without any kind of electoral base there, they have
nothing to lose, so they scornfully use it as a testing ground for their least
popular policies, such as the Poll Tax.
The
dishonesty of the ‘Bags For Life’ moniker still irks me. When they were
introduced, we consumers were all told that the supermarkets (enjoying free
advertising from their names emblazoned upon the bags) would replace worn out
bags free of charge.
Me
hole.
Over
in the UK they’re contemplating switching to Bags For Life, so BBC News ran a
piece about the pros and cons of phasing out plastic bags. Their correspondent
spoke to two middle class people on a provincial English street, who didn’t
think it was a very good idea, because oh dear, well, you know, it’s just that
change, you know, change is never a good idea, is it dear? No, thin end of the
wedge, change is. Hrrrmph.
Next
the BBC consulted a nutritional hygienist who advised that if you repeatedly
used the same bags, there’d be an epidemic of food poisoning.
Meanwhile
I was wondering whether maybe, just maybe, somebody might have pointed out to
the BBC that Bags For Life are working fine on this island, their nearest
sovereign neighbour right next door. Charging a nominal fee for plastic bags at
the checkout transformed shopping here overnight. All of a sudden we’re rid of
an awful waste and an unsightly polluter. No more plastic bags caught up trees,
blocking drains and doing gordknowswhat fearful damage to wildlife.
We’ve
been using these bags for years, and nobody’s died. We’ve just got a much
cleaner environment. All you have to do is remember to bring the damn things
with you.
©Charlie
Adley
06.12.13.
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