Most of the neighbours were churchgoers and walked past the dying man on their way to church.
It's possible that they thought he was drunk if he was known for drinking.
so we led the reception/accounts staff to call the fire brigade. They refused, saying that it wasn't their business.
Yeah, I'm somehow not terribly surprised... Appalled, but not surprised...
Btw, a few years ago there was a social experiment conducted in Poland (and filmed) showing a small kid without a jumper and a hat sitting on a bench in winter pretending to be trembling with cold. The people who reacted were in a minority. More people reacted in the same experiment in Norway (where the experiment was first conducted). This is the video from Poland (posted 7 years ago):
People in comments pointed out that it was mainly the young people who reacted. I'm not surprised by that either. There was even a middle-aged (or older) woman who said to the boy as she was walking by: "Isn't it too hot for you?" The boy answered that it's cold, but she just kept walking o_O
The same experiment was repeated recently in Warsaw by TVN in the "City Jungle" cycle and was aired, ironically, only a week before the death of the girl from Andrychów. 800 people passed by the boy and only 10 of them reacted (7 women and 3 men):
dziendobry.tvn.pl/gorace-tematy/eksperyment-dzien-dobry-tvn-sprawdzilismy-ile-osob-pomoze-zmarznietemu-dziecku-st7447265
Very simple explanation - people who walked past the site had no idea it was a person lying in the snow.
I thought that's probably what happened too when I read that fragment. I thought that maybe that banner was far away from the store in some big, open, empty area and so it was too far away for people to see. But then I saw a photo of how close that banner was to the store. I checked the Google Street View of that location and the banner was really close not only to the store and parking lot, but also to the pavement and a pretty busy street with a pedestrian crossing and traffic lights. I've watched an interview with a driver who said he saw the girl when she was still squatting next to some pole. Him and his wife stopped at the traffic lights and that's when they saw her and they wondered what is up with her. But they didn't stop to check, because they were in a hurry. Also, the guy you quoted (the father's friend who was looking for her) found her after a few hours and durimg that time the snow was falling apparently. So, at the end it's possible she was covered with snow. But what about earlier? According to unofficial info tens of people are seen passing by her on the CCTV footage from the store cameras. I wish they published that footage...
This is the Aldi store with the banner (the banner where the girl was lying is on the right side of the photo on the grass) and the street next to the store with traffic lights:
