{"id":217957,"date":"2025-06-27T06:50:12","date_gmt":"2025-06-27T06:50:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/217957\/"},"modified":"2025-06-27T06:50:12","modified_gmt":"2025-06-27T06:50:12","slug":"i-wanted-to-slip-her-a-note-warning-against-saying-yes-to-his-marriage-proposal-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/217957\/","title":{"rendered":"I wanted to slip her a note, warning against saying \u2018yes\u2019 to his marriage proposal \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

As anyone who has ever worked in a shop<\/a> frequented by the general public will tell you, people hate using their brains. They will avoid using mental energy if they can help it in any way possible. For example, during my time as a shop assistant I was asked on more than one occasion where the socks were while standing in front of a wall of socks. Under a big sign hanging from the ceiling, which said \u201cSocks\u201d.<\/p>\n

Instead of the only socially acceptable response of laughing and going, \u201cWhat am I like, they would have bitten me … etc,\u201d one woman sighed impatiently and said, \u201cBut where are the size 5-7s?!\u201d As if I was the one slow on the uptake, when she was standing in front of a sign that read \u201cSizes 5-7\u201d in 72-point font. <\/p>\n

These people were not vision impaired. They did not need to harangue a teenage girl stressed with the Sisyphean task of trying to pair up a mound of identical black leather lace-up shoes during the Back-to-School sale. If they had taken five minutes to give even the most cursory glance around, I wouldn\u2019t have minded. At least they would have attempted to figure it out on their own. But no, they\u2019d march straight up to the nearest worker, even if they were 10 customers deep, to demand where to find something. No danger of using up any brain cells there.<\/p>\n

When I sold jewellery, more than one man asked me if they should buy their future spouse\u2019s engagement ring in gold or silver. As if I, the strange woman they had just met for the first time, would know more about the preferences of the woman they shared a bed with every night. The woman they were hoping to spend the rest of their life with. \u201cHow am I supposed to know that?\u201d one shrugged as if this type of esoteric knowledge was lost forever when the Library of Alexandria burned.<\/p>\n

Instead, because it was the early days of social media, I had to scour her grainy Facebook photos taken on a 1-megapixel camera to see if her chunky heart locket was a silver or a gold looking blur. If only there was a simpler way. Like checking her jewellery box or using his eyes before he left the house to buy the most important piece of metal he would ever give to someone. <\/p>\n

I remember wrapping up the white-gold ring and wondering if I should have slipped in a note, warning her against saying \u2018yes\u2019 to his proposal. I imagined her future: a lifetime of him bellowing that he could not find something in the cupboard and her having to stop what she was doing, pad into the kitchen and hiss, \u201cHere!\u201d while grabbing the item that was right in front of his face.<\/p>\n

Please don\u2019t misunderstand me. I am not anti-help. I like helping people. I\u2019ll always stop and bother to give a tourist decent directions. I\u2019ve gladly lifted the front of many a pushchair to help a mum carry it down busy train station stairs. I will never begrudge help where it is needed. It is those who refuse to use even the smallest bit of brain power to help themselves that annoy me.<\/p>\n

In the many Facebook groups I belong to, this is on full display. The wanton wasting of other people\u2019s time and attention by asking questions that should have been a private Google search<\/a>. For example, in a group for Irish people moving to Australia it would be fine to ask, \u201cWhich suburbs are great to live in with small children?\u201d and, \u201cCan I call the police to remove a spider from the kitchen … what if very big?\u201d<\/p>\n

Those are things you can only really know from experience. The village should be stepping up to help out with their collective knowledge. I would love to tell you when it\u2019s Irish week at Aldi here in Sydney, and cans of Club Orange are in the middle aisle.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Moving to Ireland helped me understand my mother, her peculiarities and weird secrecyOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

It is the anonymous members firing, \u201cDo I need a visa to work in Australia?\u201d into the group that really annoys me. There are entire websites funded by taxpayers to tell you this information. Just look it up. Use some critical thinking<\/a>, I beg you. \u201cDoes anyone know why they won\u2019t accept my Irish prescription at the pharmacy?\u201d Yes, I do. You\u2019ve answered your own question with the word \u201cIrish\u201d.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the only good thing about artificial intelligence<\/a> is that all the annoying people who refuse to think for themselves will start to bother it and not us with their questions. Maybe that\u2019s how we stop it from taking our jobs<\/a> and becoming our robot overlords. It will get tired of spitting out personal training plans and simple emails for head wrecks that they could have just as easily looked up themselves, and simply choose to self-destruct. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As anyone who has ever worked in a shop frequented by the general public will tell you, people…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":217958,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3163],"tags":[323,1942,86309,28728,867,18753,363,53,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-217957","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-brianna-parkins","11":"tag-for-you","12":"tag-google","13":"tag-magazine","14":"tag-retail","15":"tag-technology","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114754002767379212","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/217958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}