Michael Moynihan: There are places in Cork in which I will never do business again

He mentions an establishment in the heart of Cork: reasonably priced, perfect location. Everything right apart from one small problem.

“I’m not sure about that spot,” I began. “There might be an issue.”

Silence on the other end of the line, then:

“Is it subject to the Moycott?”

Allow me to explain.

Like all readers, over the years I have had good experiences and bad out and about in Cork city. Here an enjoyable afternoon, there a terrible purgatory. All part of life’s rich pageants.

When I say over the years, I mean it. To the consternation of my research assistants, I started wombling into town — unaccompanied by adults, but with schoolmates — around the age of eleven or so, and since those early days I have maintained an informal list of institutions whose door I promised never to darken, etc., after something went wrong.

I’m a reasonable person (. . . – ed). You go into a shop or coffee place or supermarket or car park and something goes wrong? That happens. We’ll move on. Homer nods. Responsibility goes both ways.

I have always been welcomed back to the restaurant where I once demolished a chair just by sitting on it, for instance. Yes, the jokes write themselves.

But then there are different experiences. Experiences which make the Moycott necessary.

Take the coffee place mentioned by my pal.

A couple of years back my research assistants, accompanied by their mother, went in to this joint for a snack. One of my research assistants doesn’t need to rely on the work of the late Daniel Kahneman to influence how others make decisions. She pointed out that there was one chocolate muffin left near the cash register and suggested this was the universe’s way of recommending it for immediate consumption.

Grand. The order?

One coffee, that last chocolate muffin, two Caprisuns.

Sit down, we’ll drop it over.

Couple of minutes later, coffee, two Caprisuns, one blueberry muffin dropped over.

Back at the cash register? Pal of the staff, just in the door, chatting to those behind the counter . . . and wolfing down a chocolate muffin.

What would you do in those circumstances?

Suffice to say that even now, several years later, my research assistants never pass this coffee shop without one whispering “Malocchio,” and the other growling “Vendetta!”

So proud.

Some readers may be a little surprised to hear that such grudges last so long. To this, I can only say you don’t know me or mine.

(I can add an illustrative example, that of a cousin of mine who spent many years in America and who had a disagreement with a work colleague there. “He thought I’d give in? He didn’t know who he was dealing with.”)

Other outlets are subject to the Moycott.

Take the retail outlet in the centre of Cork which decided to charge three times the price other shops were charging for a product which was much in demand during the pandemic.

Blackballing was made all the easier by the smirk of the shop assistant when announcing the price of the product at the register.

Not too far from that outlet is a restaurant which is now a dead zone to this household. That was the only way to react after an encounter with one of the staff recently enough.

To whom I can only say (in a hypothetical conversation, as I’ll never again visit the place): look, everyone makes mistakes with the menu. Just don’t emphatically deny something is an ingredient in a dish and then act the smartypants when you’re shown the menu. Which proves you wrong.

No one likes a smartypants.

These are other abstentions founded on serious issues but those need to be distinguished from the odd misstep.

Take a nearby coffee place which recently changed its brand of coffee from palatable to something with top notes of green diesel (the growing popularity of Castrol GTX-flavoured coffee may need a column of its own at some point, incidentally).

It’s a wrench to forego their scones — to plagiarise Virgil Solozzo, they may be the best in the city (the definitive Cork city scone league table is something else that may need a column of its own, if the editor would only fund it.). However, I can’t visit the place while they’re serving a brand of coffee strong enough to fuel a Boeing.

Still, no hard feelings. That’s a choice made by management. I respect it.

Compare that to another café under the Moycott, instigated after a stand-off over the bill.

In brief: yours truly approached the cash register to settle the bill and was told the card facility wasn’t working: cash only.

No cash on me, says I, but I’ll drop it in on the way back from the supermarket.

No, says the café person: write your cash card number, expiry date and so on down here on this piece of paper, and we’ll take it out when the machine comes back online.

My dislocated jaw eventually started working again. It was the emphatic ‘no’ that really stunned me, as if the staff were going to pin me to the ground in a half-nelson until I scrawled out my CVC number. 

I bade the staff farewell, went to the supermarket, and, as promised, duly dropped the cash in on the way back, less than an hour later.

(The bill came to €9.20, just in case you think I was waltzing out on a three-hour lunch.)

Given the tenor of the column, you won’t be surprised to hear I’ve never gone back.

Those outlets are no doubt keeping up a brave face without my custom, by which I mean they are blissfully ignorant of the sanctions they’re labouring under. It probably tells you something when I say all of them are flourishing, but I should point out that the boycott system is not something I publicise too much. I don’t parade up and down with a placard or anything: it’s a personal system, not something to spark mass movements.

I didn’t lick it up off the ground, of course. About thirty-five years ago my late father was paying for petrol in a service station on Cork’s northside when the cashier passed a comment about his place of work: Cork Fire Brigade.

The exact wording has been lost in the mists of time, but it didn’t find much favour with someone who, with his colleagues, spent much of his working day entering buildings which were on fire and trying to rescue people.

He paid, left, and never revisited said service station again, though it was located very conveniently for his purposes.

A couple of years back I was driving past it, noticed the fuel gauge getting low … and gambled on having enough reserves to get to the next service station.

The Moycott isn’t just for Christmas. The Moycott is forever.