Have a nice day. How are you? Customer over service.
Then the other cliche holds true of extreme over friendliness. The whole ‘have a nice day’ syndrome. I was shopping in Sports Chalet (Makro type sports store), when the attendant asked if she could help.
‘No thanks, I’m just looking,’ I told her.
‘That’s awesome’ she replied.
I had to pinch myself. She just told me it was awesome that I was just looking. I wanted to hi five her and tell her that it was jusn’t awesome, it was absolutely totally fucking awesome dude.
Another time I was walking out of Starbucks with my grande Cafe Frauppucino Light when one of the baristas told me how ‘that’s a great coffee man’. Such unbridled enthusiasm! Who in England, let alone a Starbucks emplyee, would look you in the eye and tell you how great the product was as you walked out the door. Freakin hell, what is going on here?
Every shop, petrol station, fastfood joint they always ask ‘how are you?’ before any transaction. Do they really mean it? Is it just as fake as the one out of four pair of tits I see here? It was also very shocking moving here from Barcelona where customer service is a dirty word and a smile unpopular currency.
Then I thought, perhaps its just the years of European history and neurosis weighing down on my shoulders. What’s wrong with a bit of positivity and – even if they don’t mean it – friendliness? It’s that sense of anything is possible out here and I guess with my English cynicism I shouldn’t knock it, but at the very least I can still crack some sarcastic jokes about it.
martinworster
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