With the days getting colder, you’re probably wondering what to do at the weekend. If you exclude the outdoors and have no family to spend teatimes with, very few possibilities remain. ‘Let’s go to the shopping centre, then,’ you might say – but even that is impossible sometimes.
I remember Good Friday morning at St Stephen’s Green. Most of the shops were closed. A couple was wandering around, and after a while I heard one of them say: “I hate Easter.”
Are we no longer a family society? Or perhaps the question should be different: what have we done with our family life? A day out shopping on Sunday can’t be considered something normal – at least not for the people on the other side of the counter.
Unfortunately our culture is a demanding one. Under pressure from impatient shoppers who, for their own comfort, prefer to waste their days off wandering around the city, more and more shops are simply forced to open on Sundays, even for few hours. Very good, you think? Imagine if you work there – what would you say now?
But forget busy people relaxing in the shops after Saturday’s drinking sessions. More and more often I see groups of boys and girls, aged under 14, lurking around local supermarkets after school. They have better mobile phones than the one I’ve been working for months to afford. They have learned to get everything they want without any effort on their side, and I think this is a serious illness of every developed society – Polish as well.
Today’s parents are raising their children not at home, not at school, but at the shops, making consumers out of them far too early. Perhaps shopping should be for over-17s only…
– Anna Paluch
