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!