“Of course, before Eastern Europe can really take off a generation of workers with the communist mentality will have to die off.” This is a cliche that has been kicking around these parts for at least the last fifteen years. In general, I’ve always been suspicious of it. It sounds a bit too much like the ritualistic public-servant bashing indulged in by consumers who expect clerks to be at their beck and call like a convenience shop. Also, it’s just a variation on the idiotic “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks” theme. Tell that to the sober fifty year old Polish welders keeping the west of Ireland�s economy afloat.

In particular cases, however, it is hard not to agree. Take cloakroom attendants, for instance. Often used to disguise unemployment in communist Poland, they still linger in some institutions, like libraries. Cloakroom attendants will often refuse to hang up your coat if it does not have a hook. You will see them grasping coats and jackets by the collar and searching furrow-browed for a little loop of fabric that will enable them to hang up the garment. To save these heroes of work the rigours of this fruitless search some cloakrooms even have signs sternly announcing that “coats without hooks will not be accepted.”

What do you say to an adult human being who tells you he cannot hang up your coat because it has no hook? Do you make a fool of yourself and patronise him by attempting to show how it is done? Teach an old dog old tricks? Do you make a scene? Waiters spit in the soup – what do cloakroom attendants do? Slash your pockets? Put discrete cigarette holes in your hood?

If you are thinking of going to Poland to search in archives go in summer or sew a loop of fabric onto your collar because otherwise the library will not let you in.