The recent decision to end Sunday shopping hours – which thankfully was reversed back again to allow the continuation of Sunday shopping - left the majority of the island stunned and confused. The question asked was why would anyone want to say 'no' to an increase of jobs, greater convenience for the citizens of the island, and the encouragement of tourists?
I for one was gutted at the prospect of losing my Sunday supermarket shopping, despite it being easy for me to do it on any day as a freelancer, so I can't imagine how frustrated those who work a 9-to-5 during the week must have felt. It would basically amount to a loss of freedom, as well as income for the many who were hired to man those extra hours.
There was once-upon-a-time a belief that if you opened on Sunday you would be 1) be sinning and 2) kill the tradition of family Sunday meals. And I must admit that I always quite liked the fact that Cyprus made Sunday a forced day of rest. But that was my view 15 years ago, and as times have changed, so have my opinions!
Personally, I believe that if you are a good, God-fearing individual, then you show that in other, far more important ways than not buying a pint of milk on Sunday! And when it comes to family, I doubt any member of a loving, close family would decline a Sunday lunch invitation just so that they can go and buy a bunch of bananas or a new dress. In short, we are who we are and we do what we do, whether we have the luxury of extra hours in the week to get our shopping done or not. Shopping on Sunday will not corrupt us!
Small shop owners claimed that the Sunday shopping hours were killing them off, as they could not afford to open on Sunday and compete with those who could. With the action they then took, did they really expect to curry favour amongst consumers? Did they believe that a magic wand would be waved and customers would automatically start shopping with them just because they couldn't go to other shops on Sunday? If 'they' think that the equation is very simplistic – no Sunday shops, no competition - then 'they' are insulting our intelligence to believe that we cannot contain ourselves and will stray if they are not open on Sunday and someone else is. At the end of the day, if there is a small shop I like and it is not open on Sunday, I will just go another day – but of course it also depends on what the small shop offers over the larger one, which is not affected by which days of the week either open.
But whilst we are on the subject, there are other opening hours that sorely need revising… that of banks, government offices and post offices. I am amazed that they have yet to be altered and there cannot be many European countries where everyone has to scramble to get essential chores done in a timeframe that is not only small, but also takes place during most people's working hours and never after.
Is it not logical to think that if everyone has to visit the above mentioned services in just a few hours of the day (and not at any time during the weekend) that they will then be slow, saturated and overworked?
And yet, we still get annoyed when the rest of the world says that we are a backward country living in the dark ages!
First appeared in The Cyprus Weekly, 15/05/15
