social courtesy, or obligation?

When the minimum wage paid employee at Meijer tells you “have a nice day!”, after bagging what must’ve been hundreds of groceries in only a couple hours, do you think they really mean it? Or when you, the customer, mumbles back “you too”... Will it be imperative to your ability to function throughout the day if the clerk does or does not have a “nice day”. It is safe to assume the answer is no. Do not let this be confused with an argument against altering the basic humane treatment of service employees, but a test to the meaning of words and their genuineness. Most socially aware people can understand that the employee does so because they have some sort of obligation to treat all customers with kindness, as anyone who has ever worked in a job revolving around customer service is aware of. It is simply a matter of unsaid yet enforced social courtesy and obligation.

Now let’s begin again at where we started. Except you are the employee this time, instead of the customer. Also, you have free will to say whatever you like until the limit that would get you punched in the face. Most scenarios would go either two ways: (1) Both the employee and the customer exchange nothing in conversation besides a couple grunts, and the unamused mumble of “credit or debit?”. This situation can be explained in one simple phrase: get your stuff and go. There is a mutual understanding between Meijer attendee and attendant that neither of them want to be there, but one of them wants to be there even less than the other. Or, (2) When prompted, the employee shares their true feelings with the customer. For example, the common “how are you?”, is followed with “tired, bored, hungry, and on the brink of being too pissed off to keep working”. Or maybe, “I need to pee so bad right now”.  

Based on everything that was just stated, it can be easily concluded that in the context of a customer service (or “non-essential but extremely essential during a pandemic in which all stores must stay open and dangerously overwork their employees”) environment, polite and common speech phrases hold no meaning besides a barrier between customer and employee. They only exist to keep the third wall in tact, and ensure that no paying customer gets too upset with any given establishment. While this is not to say that said employee is a cold hearted person who could care less about the well being of regular people, most customer-oriented phrases become a sort of automatic or second nature type of thing once clocked in and dressed in uniform. 

Regardless, be nice to people.

homemade meme for you: me trying to do literally anything Ever at my old job (which was also a smoothie shop) https://twitter.com/icarlyooc/status/1164207532216373250?s=21