If you happened to be at Racławicka this evening at 21.31 you might have found it strange to see a small little man (that would be me) staring intently at a cleaner, an old man dressed in striking purple courdroy trousers, sweeping the steps to the Metro entrance and exit. I watched him for exactly 3 and a half minutes.
The old man was confirming something that I've been mulling over recently: Polish people are very, very industrious. He had a really efficient system and after sweeping one step from length to length he would bound back to begin on the next. A boring, menial and low paid job done efficiently and quickly and not a machine in sight.
Whether it's the cleaner I saw this evening, the building workers on SW. Bonifacego building new flats at a rate of knots and in all weathers, or indeed my new colleagues at the commercial team in the British Embassy (the majority of whom are Polish), everywhere I go at the moment I see people quietly going about their work without complaint, not lolling around or faffing or shirking but getting stuck in.
If it strikes you as unusual that I find it surprising to see people doing their jobs properly, then you're no less bemused than I am. But it's there I tells ya, it's something quite tangible.
It's not an affected, Anglo-Saxon work-hard-play-hard culture but nor is it done with a Teutonic meticulousness. Indeed I find it hard to square it with the circle of bureaucracy and the 'nie ma/sod you' attitude in customer service positions that you also regularly encounter.
Is this quality quintessentially Polish? I don't know enough about Poland's Eastern neighbours to say either way, but one thing is for sure, the reputation the Poles have in the UK for being hard working is in my opinion well deserved and in evidence everywhere I go. In fact as I watched the Purple Courdroyed Cleaner at Raclawicka grimly going to it this evening, I felt slightly in awe of it.
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