Immigrants on the Move

Walking through a shopping centre yesterday I spotted a sign which read ‘Please do not be rude or abusive towards our staff’. This isn’t the first sign of this nature I’ve encountered since being back in the UK, I’ve overheard conversations where staff members are putting customers back in their place and I’ve seen refusal to serve signs if clients choose to get aggressive. This did not exist ten years ago when I lived in the UK, and it’s not something I’ve experienced in Spain.

This is not to say there haven’t been rude customers. Wherever I have worked, and wherever I have lived, I have seen, experienced first-hand, and intervened with irate and unreasonable clients. But for something to happen regularly enough that a sign needs to be put in three out of five shop windows, something serious is going on. It got me thinking about the differences in the UK with personal responsibility, health and safety, and societal etiquette.

When we first arrived in France and finally found our little house to live in, I remember being shocked by the electricity plug in the bathroom. In the UK you have a shaving plug, but health and safety restrictions prevent a normal electricity plug being installed in the bathrooms. One could argue that if you were determined enough to throw a toaster in the bath with you, surely you would just run an extension cable. Equally, I don’t recall any news stories in France or Spain where people accidentally died through electrocuting themselves in the bathroom. One of my happy places is a hot bath full of bubbles, a glass of wine and a movie on my laptop, generally plugged in to preserve the battery. Since arriving back in the UK every time I run myself a bath, I think about plugging in my laptop, and have to remember there are no electricity plugs in the bathroom.

Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around. Leo Buscaglia

Many might argue that European countries don’t care about health and safety, and that they’re unsafe to work and live in. According to the World Bank website for statistics, in 2019 the UK had 4% of its deaths caused by injury, while the EU as a total had 5%. Spain was on a par with the UK at 4% and France was bucking the average at 6%. From the limited research I did, there was no way to clarify what injury nor specify it to workplace accidents. The point though remains, Spain and the UK differ greatly in their approach to health and safety, yet their injury statistics remain similar. This led me to question what is the effect of so much control on the general public?

Even ten years ago when I lived in the UK, I felt there were too many ridiculous restrictions that took away people’s responsibility for their own well-being. The Americanisation of our country, where a packet of peanuts has to have a notice saying ‘May contain nuts’, along with a lean towards the culture of suing each other for every mishap or accident, has led us to this point. If there is no responsibility for your own well-being, then it follows suit there is no responsibility for your behaviour. Is this the reason why so many shops now have to remind their clientele that staff will not tolerate rude or disrespectful behaviour?

The answer is; I don’t know. We may never know why the world has got so aggressive and angry. It may have nothing do with health and safety and electricity plugs in the bathrooms. It does exist everywhere, and as a customer service worker I have had to calm down my share of extremely irate and volatile customers, as much in Europe as I did in the UK. Personally I will always lean towards favouring a society that promotes personal responsibility, ownership, and tolerance, but the only way I can truly make an impact is to be kind to those harried service workers I meet along my path.