Shane Hegarty's encyclopaedia of modern Ireland.
LAVATORY ATTENDANTS: There's nothing like going to the toilet while someone stares at you from a stool, ready at any moment to come to your assistance with a wad of hand towels, a spray of Lynx Africa and a mint.
Since the arrival of the Celtic Tiger, we have realised there are many things we would rather have others do for us. That's why it's been a boom time for ironing services, cleaners and handymen. But some things we would still rather do ourselves. Going to the bathroom is pretty high on that list. For all our new-found riches, most of us are still quite able and willing to dry our own hands. Few Irish are so lazy that they expect someone else to turn on a tap for them. There can't be many who consider decent service to consist of being pressured into handing over a €2 tip just because someone saved you the bother of pressing the button on a soap dispenser.
Not according to the hospitality industry. Sometime towards the end of the 1990s, it decided that nothing would better top off a punter's night out in a pub or club than nipping to the loo and encountering immigrants earning a living through servitude beside a urinal. Somehow the horrible connotations offered by the scenario passed them by. As did the fact that none of us wants to feel guiltier when we go to the toilet than we would were we to buy our clothes direct from a sweatshop. And somehow you can't believe that the attendants' dream life in Ireland consists of making small talk with increasingly drunken locals while trying not to notice that they're dribbling on their shoes.
Yet it remains a buoyant industry. Bar owners continue to ignore the overtones. Attendants get to know customers in far more detail than they had ever planned. And punters feel too guilty not to tip someone for a service they didn't ask for and don't want. It's not as if people were previously discontent about going to the loo and not having a range of dental floss available should they require it. Or that they were unwilling to visit any toilet unless it had at least four types of hair wax.
Besides, how hygienic is it to offer baskets of free mints and lollipops? Just what you want to do when you go to a public toilet: eat. Why not spark up a barbecue in there while they're at it? Surely health-and-safety inspectors have something to say about free food being handed out in a toilet. Perhaps they could shut down the toilet-attendant operations because of it.