An Attack of Politeness

You can imagine my shock the other day when I went into my local petrol station to buy a loaf of bread on the way home. Instead of the usual indifference and stony silence from the staff, I was greeted, as soon as I had got through the door, with a friendly smile from the cashier and a "selamat datang sir!" ('welcome sir' in Malay).

More or less stunned into embarrassed silence by this sudden assault of unusual chattiness, I proceeded to pick up my loaf of bread, and was met with a warm smile from one of the girls who operates the pumps. As far as I can recall, this is the first time I had heard her voice. And all this corporate pallyness didn't end there! When I went to pay for my items, the cashiers, BOTH OF THEM, greeted me and thanked me in Malay like they were my long lost friends!

What's going on?, I thought to myself, climbing back into my Aston Martin and checking the perimeter for Quantum agents. Then it dawned on me. The staff have obviously been on a team building course! Or most likely they have been to a Customer Service training workshop, where they have been taught to smile and say nice things to people and make it look realistic.

These are the sort of courses where people are taught the right things to say to people to make them feel good and want to come back to the shop or hotel or whatever. Courses like this also teach staff how to produce that ubiquitous Stevie Wonder smile you see everywhere in hotels and bank advertisements - all teeth but no emotion in the eyes!

Not that I have anything against politeness, oh god no. A little more politeness in this world would make things a whole lot finer and dandier, in my humble opinion. But what freaks me out is this sort of manufactured obsequiousness that pops up like mushrooms whenever corporate entities feel the need to "focus on the customer".

It operates on so many levels, from the bland, emotionless canned discourse encountered in fast food outlets to the sometimes irritating chattiness of the staff in popular coffee outlets. I love going to my favourite airport coffee outlet but I can't help feeling that all those personal questions they keep asking you is part of a script learned by heart at the training school. You know, Step 1: ASK HOW THE CUSTOMER IS, Step 2: ASK ABOUT HIS DAY etc...

In the words of the song, you are left to ask yourself: "where is the love"? Do they actually mean all this politeness and is there anything behind it all apart from a cybernetic drive to squeeze extra profit out of you? The answer to both questions is of course NO. Yet we live with it, because they are after all 'only doing their jobs'.

And of course, an attack of insincere politeness is much more preferable to an attack of sincere impoliteness!

Home Alone

I'm experiencing the Home Alone syndrome at the moment. You see it's like this. My dear wife has gone back to see her mother - it's not what you think, honestly!! Everything is fine and dandy in the Madder household, so back, back my cuties!!

My dear wife had some business to deal with in her home state of Sabah, so she went back there for a week or so, leaving me to wallow at home like a kitten. The reason why I'm not following is simple - I've run out of annual holiday. So it's me, the house, my books and a stack of DVDs!!

I believe that every relationship needs to have a bit of breathing space from time to time. Especially when, like me, you are a TV widower. Yes, I actually don't get the chance to watch much TV when my wife is around because, bless her cotton socks, she likes to watch all these Indonesian TV dramas which I wrote about last year in these pages. Me, on the other hand, I like occasionally to watch movies and the BBC news, which I think is reasonable for an intellectual like me.

So, you can imagine, I have been busy filling my evenings with several movies that I either missed when they were out in the cinema, or missed because I couldn't watch them on TV! So, what have I been watching?

Last night I finally saw Scorcese's excellent The Departed, which is a kind of Godfather with Irish accents. Matt Damon and Leo Di Caprio are excellent, and were not too overshadowed by the veteran Jack Nicholson who was his usual menacing and witty self. If eyebrows were weapons, Nicholson would have an arms limitation treaty just for him!

I also caught up with some very well-done superhero movies namely The Incredible Hulk (latest version), Iron Man and Hancock. It's good to see cartoon characters translated to the screen in an intelligent, witty, story-driven way without overt moralising or skimping on the action. Very enjoyable. Looking out for sequels....

Tonight will be V for Vendetta, another movie based on a comic, and finally next week, I will watch Kubrick's 2001 a Space Odyssey, which I saw God knows how long ago, but I think it's one of those films you need to revisit several times in your life, you know, like re-reading Lord of the Rings (which I have read three times by the way).

So on top of doing the washing, going to work, cleaning the dishes, eating, and sleeping, I should think my home alone period will be over before I know it, and I will soon be re-united with my little sweetie.

And our household will once again boom to the sounds of Indonesian voices screaming and shouting at one another, and I will retreat to my home office where I will surf the BBC website on the internet instead!

Opposites attract, they say...