Learning to Love Ireland

by Althea Farren

  Afterwards, we wandered down to the Tourist Information office to collect a few brochures.

  ‘Is Arklow in County Wexford or in County Wicklow?’ I asked the friendly young lady. I knew it was close to the border.

  ‘Sure, it’s in Wicklow at the moment,’ she said.

  Before catching the bus back, we decided to get a closer look at the wind farm that stood 10 kilometres out to sea on the Arklow Sand Bank. The brochures informed us that ‘this was the world’s first project to deploy wind turbines in excess of 3 megawatts. Ireland’s first offshore wind power project... generates enough energy to serve the annual electricity needs of about 16,000 households...’

  HG Wells would have been fascinated by the massive, pristine structures. We stood on the quay looking out at the future. There were seven now, but eventually 200 turbines generating 520 MW of electricity would be erected. The wind farm would stretch over a distance of 25 kilometres and would generate enough energy to supply around 10% of Ireland’s total needs.

  Through the windows of the train the hills and fields gradually materialised, white and brittle under a thick covering of frost. It was a bitterly cold November morning.

  I’d decided to get in touch with recruitment agencies now that our ECDL course was over. I’d been to one in Bray, I was on the books of another in Wexford Town, and we were off to Dublin to visit a third. I’d hoped to find a job closer to Gorey but, as before, there were very few jobs on offer in the southeast.

  Each time we’d been to Dublin we’d encountered gale-force winds. It was no different on this occasion. We huddled together on a street corner to consult our sodden map, twisting it this way and that, while the wind taunted our umbrellas. After a couple of practice gusts, it flipped them inside out. We cursed, as we wrestled with their rigid ribs – now bent out of alignment – while trying to pull the hoods of our raincoats over our heads. Rain dripped down our glasses and they misted up. It was bloody well impossible to read the damn map...

  ‘We’d like you to do a little test for us first,’ the receptionist at the recruitment agency said, turning on the computer in the small Spartan room adjoining her plush office. ‘Just follow the instructions. Let me know when you’ve finished.’

  Determined not to panic, I finally got past the instructions and into the test itself. It wasn’t easy and I took ages. When I came to the final section on ‘mail merge’, I summoned Peter’s voice:

  ‘Right, lads, we’re going to have a quick look at mail merge. It won’t come up in your exam, but you need to know what it’s used for... It’s the process of combining a form letter (which holds the unchanging letter text) and a data source (which holds the names, addresses and other details that are different in every merged letter)...’

  It was a relief to be ushered into a room with a human presence afterwards. The charming young consultant was sure that she had the perfect job for me at a bank in the city...

  The following day, more wind and rain. Another suite of smart offices. Another efficient, rather remote receptionist. Gorgeous, slim young women striding up and down the corridors in high-heeled shoes. A panel of three formidable young men, all wearing dark suits in a state-of-the-art glass-walled interview room. Not an older person in sight. I would be required to work with spreadsheets, the three young men said, looking earnest. Did I think I could cope?

  No.

  We went to Dublin on a third occasion that week, this time to a writers’ workshop called ‘From Inspiration to Publication’ at the Dublin City Library. I had to admit to feeling envious of those dispensing the inspiration: most of them had actually been published.

  Lia Mills told us how she came to write In Your Face. She had recently recovered from cancer of the mouth. Although she was beautiful, I could see that one side of her face looked a little different from the other. She spoke of the value of ‘journaling’ and of how she used it as a foundation for other writing. She had written In Your Face based on the journals she’d kept throughout that harrowing period of her life. ‘Writing’ she said, ‘is how I make sense of life and of the world around me...’

  She told us that as the ‘drama of her diagnosis unfolded’ she recorded everything that happened and everything she ‘felt about events as they happened’.

  Karen Gillece believed that it was important to keep a diary. She said that a writer needed to ‘hoard her intimate thoughts and find her voice’. Through the private medium of her diary, she could express her strong, inner emotions freely and then later, mine this source for ideas.

  The speakers believed that ‘Morning Pages’ were a valuable tool. They must have read The Artist’s Way, too. Julia Cameron advocates a three-page stream of consciousness exercise first thing every morning. Since nobody else was going to read what you said, you could write what you liked and get the vitriol and self-pity out of your system. Her methods had helped me to cope with our disintegrating lives in Zimbabwe.

  Åine McCarthy said that Free Writing was the great unblocker. She went on to explore the seven steps in the writing process. Creative people respected the little images that came at different times with a ‘tug of energy’. Capture these, she urged us. Always take notes: reject nothing. Stay open. And read. If you didn’t read, you were on an ego trip.

  Paul Kilduff had switched genre from fiction to non-fiction. He told us his first non-fiction work, Ruinair, was to be published in the spring.

  After seven months in Ireland we knew that Ryanair and its outspoken CEO, Michael O’Leary, were living legends. During an interview with a journalist, he was reported to have said: ‘I’m probably just an obnoxious little bollocks. Who cares? The purpose is not to be loved. The purpose is to have the passengers on board.’

  Paul said that instead of writing a letter of complaint, he’d decided to write a book after Ryanair stranded him at Malaga for ten hours. This was his revenge, he said, grinning at us. It sounded hilarious. He advised us to be obsessed about what we wrote. He obviously was. He’d flown to all sorts of dismal places on Ryanair and other low-fares airlines to give his book authenticity. His publisher had selected a subtitle for Ruinair. It was How to be Treated Like Shite in 15 Different Countries... And Still Quite Like It.

  Of course, we’d all been waiting for the star turn. This was Patricia Deevy, the Editorial Director at Penguin Ireland. The lady all writers needed to impress.

  She was young.

  She was confident.

  She was powerful.

  She wrote loads of rejection letters.

  She was smiling.

  She appeared relaxed.

  She wasn’t an unpublished author.

  She was the female version of Moses at Mount Sinai.

  She told us that our cover letters should be crisp, clear, pleasant and businesslike. Don’t try to be funny, she said. Your sense of humour may not be my sense of humour. Avoid a ‘chippy’, pissed-off approach. Avoid a challenging tone. Try not to nag. And I don’t want a new best friend.

  Somewhat chastened, we listened to Eoin McHugh who told us how booksellers approached book-purchasing. Today’s bookshops were no different from other retail operations. Merchandising was very important: the positioning of books was crucial. Naturally, those books expected to be bestsellers were at the front of the shop and would be promoted aggressively. The level of personal engagement from an author was important, he told us, and he went on to suggest that it was ‘useful’ to cultivate a good relationship with booksellers.

  Just give us the chance, we all thought.

  When Caroline asked me to come and see her, I decided I’d better take my heavy ‘Job’ file along to prove that I really had been trying. She laughed and said she was impressed by its size and weight.

  ‘FÁS is running a Retail Sales Course at the Adult Education Centre,’ she told me. ‘It’s already begun, though. A nice man called George is in charge of the group. I suggest you go along and ask him if he’ll allow you to join the class. You could start on Monday.’

/>   On Mondays George pushed the classroom boat out gently into the water.

  ‘Well,’ he’d say, ‘what sort of a weekend did you all have? Did you do any shopping? Did you notice anything special about window displays? No? What about merchandising? How many of you went to a sale? And what about CUSTOMER SERVICE?’

  The class would still be in snooze mode.

  George would resort to a tried and tested strategy.

  ‘Cynthia, tell us what you got up to this weekend. Did you go up to Dublin?’

  My neighbour, Cynthia, would brush away biscuit crumbs, adjust her jaunty black hat and smile obligingly.

  ‘Yes, George, I spent the weekend with my sister again. On Saturday we went to the market to buy her duty-free cigarettes from Freddie. It’s as bad as buying bootleg whiskey. He checks to make sure nobody is watching and then they sneak into his van. I make myself scarce and look through the Christmas goodies while they’re haggling. She comes out with a couple of cartons and whispers that she’s got some for me. She’s always ready to make a fast buck. As usual, Freddie’s determined to sell me something, too. “So what’ll it be for you, Missus?” he says. “I’ve just the thing – beautiful Christmas roses. Red ones, white and yellow... Watch how they change colour...”

  He demonstrates how you turn on the lights and immediately there is a glow that changes from orange to pink to purple to blue. I imagine the bowl of roses on my lace table cloth. “I’ll take one,” I say. “Done,” he says. “And since you’re one of my best customers, I’ll give you a special price – two for €20. They should be €15 each, so it’s a give-away, Missus.”

  When I get back to my sister’s, I think oh shit, what an idiot. I’m flying to Jo’burg for Christmas. And I’m sure as hell not going to take them with me. They’re actually quite tacky. So I give them to my sister and she sells me two packets of cigarettes for €12. I wonder what her mark-up is...’

  Just before teatime each day, Miriam and Abdul would stroll into the classroom, murmur a vague greeting and collapse heavily into their seats. They’d finally arrived in their large SUV, known as the Nigerian bus. George found them rather a challenge. Could he keep them awake until lunchtime?

  ‘Well, Barbara,’ George said one cold Monday morning, ‘did you go shopping this weekend? Anything interesting to report?’

  Barbara bristled with indignation. While wandering around the new shopping centre, she had come upon a young manager giving a member of staff a dressing-down. He was telling her loudly and offensively that she was incompetent. The middle-aged woman was trying not to cry.

  ‘Why didn’t you interrupt and tell the assistant that she was being victimised and that she should report him immediately?’ said Francis. ‘That’s what I’d have done. Feck that. She’s got rights.’

  ‘I wanted to,’ said Barbara. ‘It was so embarrassing. But I really didn’t know what to do.’

  ‘You did the right thing,’ said George. ‘It wasn’t your place to interfere. Most companies have a personnel department that will handle this sort of problem. Dignity in the workplace is a very important part of employer/employee relations. Nonetheless, being exposed to a scene of this nature must have been most unpleasant for you, Barbara, and for anyone else who witnessed it.’

  ‘I don’t enjoy shopping any more since I started this course,’ said Barbara. ‘I’m constantly noticing things I didn’t consider before. It’s got me worried. I keep thinking that I’d have displayed that handbag differently and that those scarves would have looked better draped more loosely over that rail... And I’m constantly watching shop assistants critically to see how they respond to their customers.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Orla. ‘Are they making eye contact when people come into the shop? Are they smiling each time they greet a customer? Are they well-groomed? Are they watching for the “messages” customers are sending while they are browsing – or “rooting” as Barbara calls it? And, above all, are the salespeople speaking clearly in well-modulated voices?’

  ‘Who the feck cares about “well-modulated voices”?’ Darren asked. ‘Product knowledge is much more important. And, of course, big tits.’

  ‘What about you, Miriam?’ said George. ‘How was shopping in Enniscorthy this weekend? Did you go anywhere? Do anything?’

  With difficulty, Miriam roused herself for a moment. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nothing,’ echoed George. ‘Nothing? Are you sure you did nothing, Miriam?’

  ‘That’s right, nothing,’ said Miriam. And she lapsed back into her slit-eyed, sprawled, semi-comatose droop at the end of the table.

  We admired George. He didn’t let things get him down.

  ‘And what about you, Abdul?’ chirped George. ‘Did you have a nice weekend? Did you go shopping? What did you do?’

  Abdul regarded George as though he were mentally defective. ‘I didn’t do anything,’ he said.

  ‘Oh,’ said George. ‘Nothing?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Abdul firmly, resuming his study of Ashley Cole’s autobiography.

  Since he had confided to several of the ladies that his ambition was not to manage Tesco’s one day, but to amass as many wives and father as many children as possible, the class had regarded Abdul with a mixture of awe and horror. Did he plan to return to Nigeria, we wondered, or was this to be a project funded by the Irish state?

  ‘Right,’ said George. ‘I think it’s teatime. After tea, now that everyone’s here, we’ll discuss how to conduct a sale. Then I think we’ll do some role-plays...’

  After tea and a cigarette and another cup of tea and another cigarette, most members of the class were strong enough to face Monday again.

  George spent the tea break humming good-humouredly, while looking through his notes. His weekend had been brilliant, he said. He’d played golf, gone dancing and avoided shopping. He practised dance steps while he chatted to us about customer relations, the Small Claims Court and consumer law. He reminded me of Gerald Durrell’s first tutor in My Family and Other Animals. And, coincidentally, Gerald’s teacher’s name was also George.

  Gerald Durrell describes how George would sway jerkily around the dimly-lit dining room accompanying his dancing sequences ‘with a deep and tuneless humming like a hive of distraught bees’. Then, suddenly, he’d stop humming, ‘a steely look would creep into his eyes, and he would throw himself into an attitude of defence, pointing an imaginary foil at an imaginary enemy...’ Gerald can almost see the ‘gleam of steel’. He is unable to solve his maths problems until George has driven the point of his foil ‘right through the adversary’s heart’.

  Having divided us into four groups, George explained that our objective was to make sure that our customer left the shop happy. We should employ the strategies he had taught us. And we must provide a solution or solutions to the customer’s needs.

  Darren offered to explain the difference between shopping in Dublin and shopping in Gorey, so that we could appreciate what we had to contend with.

  ‘In Dublin, the customer is king, which is the way it should be. In Gorey, the attitude is “Oh no, not another fecking customer”.’

  He told us that he had recently gone into a supermarket just before closing time. There was one chicken left at the deli counter.

  ‘I’ll have that chicken,’ he said.

  The deli assistant looked as though he was going to burst into tears. “That’s the last chicken,” he said indignantly. “I was going to have it for my supper.”

  ‘And that’s how you provide for your customers’ needs in Gorey...’

  George laughed and said that unfortunately there wasn’t enough time for another smoke-break before we took to the stage. He settled down to a little putting practice. After a series of successful putts, he moved on to execute a few discreet tango steps.

  We reminded one another that the way to make customers happy was to assist them to realise their expectations. They would return, George had promised, if these expectations had been
exceeded.

  Cynthia, Val and I were in a group together: Cynthia was to be the customer, I was the salesperson and Val was the manager of the shop.

  ‘We’ll go first,’ said Cynthia, ‘and get it over with. I’m dying for a fag.’

  She minced across the room towards me. I greeted her in the requisite friendly fashion, making eye-contact and smiling in a sincere, helpful and courteous manner.

  ‘I’m looking for a crocodile-skin handbag,’ she said curtly. ‘I’ve been to every shop in this town and I haven’t been able to find one.’

  Trust Cynthia to come up with something difficult.

  ‘I’m terribly sorry, madam,’ I responded. ‘We don’t have any in stock at the moment. We are expecting a consignment from South Africa next week, though. May I take your name and telephone number? I’ll phone you as soon as they arrive.’

  ‘This is absolutely disgraceful!’ shouted Cynthia. ‘This is the third time you’ve asked me for my details. What’s wrong with you people? You told me last month they’d be arriving in a few days. You’re obviously totally inefficient. I’m going to write to the Gorey Guardian about this.’

  I wasn’t getting much opportunity to respond to buying signals or to show off my knowledge of the product. It didn’t look as though I’d be explaining the benefits and features either. We seemed to have gone straight on to handling customer complaints, which wasn’t part of the brief.

  While I was wondering how to make this woman happy by providing a solution to her needs, Val strode over to me.

  ‘How dare you treat a valued customer in this way,’ she snarled. ‘This isn’t the first time I’ve had a complaint about you. You’ve been told over and over again why customers complain. They’re dissatisfied with the product, or with the premises, or with the personnel. Since there’s no crocodile-skin handbag in the shop (your fault – you put the order in late and Africa’s running out of crocodiles) and since my shop is always spotless, it’s obvious where the problem lies, isn’t it?’