Thank You, Come Again

I have noticed that an increasing number of places (mainly food places that lie somewhere between fast food and restaurants) require all their employees to thank the customer as they exit.  It is a good customer service practice to thank the customer, but the way these places do it is completely misguided.  When I finish a transaction somewhere, I expect that the cashier or whoever is helping me says "thank you" or "have a nice day" but when it is forced, or at some places is required, I'd rather them just not say anything. 

One place that I've seen this for a long time is a pizza chain.  I do like their pizza and their service is generally very good, but they do have that problem of the forced thank-you.  When a customer leaves, the person at the counter says something like "pizzas going out" and everyone else in the place says "thank you," in a sort of monotonous unison.  Sure, it would be nice if a few people showed their appreciation of the customer's business, but when they are prompted to do it for every single person that comes in, it gets really impersonal and is pretty meaningless.  I would much rather have the one person waiting on me thank me or wish me a good day in a sincere way. 

I was at a place that did this on Saturday, too.  It was a sushi restaurant that offers both take-out and sit-down dining.  Every time the bell at the front door rang to indicate that someone was exiting, the whole staff said something all together.  Some of them spoke Japanese, some English, and they all said different things so the conglomeration of voices was usually quite unintelligible.  Again, a sincere "thank you" from the cashier would have meant a lot more than the disjointed (and probably management-mandated) remarks from the rest of the staff.  (These types of gestures remind me of when parents tell a kid to say "thank you" or "sorry"
 when they don't want to, and it is obvious that it is forced and not sincere.)  I'm not sure what they teach in retail management classes, but as a consumer, quality of sentiments is much more meaningful to me than quantity.

Thanksgiving weekend was a nice break from school.  I started the weekend without any plans, but as I heard from more and more people who were home from school for the holiday or who also didn't have plans, I ended up not having any free time.  It was nice to see everyone, some of whom I hadn't had the chance to talk to very much since the beginning of the quarter.  I also saw J. Edgar, the first movie I'd seen in a theater in well over a year.  It was a very good movie; good acting and directing, and showed a side to the FBI's history (and Hoover's personal life) that I hadn't known much about.  All-in-all, it was a busy but relaxing weekend, which makes going back to school for these last three weeks all that more dreadful.  But Christmas break will come soon enough…