To be honest, I want to punch smiley-faced, duplicitous sales staff in the kisser all the time. It’s a personal fantasy of mine. I think pregnant women would be a little more likely to turn such fantasies into reality, though. Hence the danger pay.
NEW VOTING INCENTIVE
It’s August, and that means a new voting incentive for Puck!
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This voting incentive is no longer available by voting, but you can purchase the pic in the STORE! It’s only one buck for five incentive pics! YAY!
Meh… I know the corporate smiles and chipper attitude are fake, but they sure beat corporate surly. I’ll give them a fake satisfied customer smile back and we’ll all pretend to care if everybody has a nice day.
See, that’s one thing that’s a little different in Canada. Canadians tend to have a strong aversion to the corporate smile. When Walmart expanded into Canada, they noticed that Canadians were actively trying to avoid contact with the ‘friendly’ Walmart greeters. They then made it so that the greeters don’t talk. They just sort of stand there.
I’d always rather have blunt and honest than cheery and fake. As long as the blunt honesty doesn’t cross over into rudeness, which I guess it often does.
I am a Canadian. I lived in the U.S.A. for about 20 months. IME, Usonians can be rather brash at times, but are also more genuinely courteous. Sometimes, it feels as if many Canadians are not rude, not because they are polite, but because it is too much trouble to bother (being rude).
I, too, prefer the blunt-honest-not-rude over the fake-cheery. It really is not that difficult to do blunt and honest without rude, but many appear not to have learned.
Canadians are legitimately a less nice people than Americans. It’s the culture. People are viewed as a minor nuisance to be avoided, and conflicts (including any meaningful contact that might possibly escalate into conflict) is to be avoided. I have to admit that I’m Canadian through and through.
As a librarian, I have to interact with people all day. I’ve never felt the need to be fake-happy, but I can’t count the number of times I’ve been really blunt on one hand. Usually, just being generally polite is enough.
Polite is what I want. Neutral, professional, calm is fine. Fake happy? That’s one of the reasons I dislike big American box stores right there.
Dude, they aint fake happy, they are ecstatic to have that $2/hr job.
Well see? That’s just sad. Now I feel sad. And as a Canadian, I like to avoid sad. I’ll keep walking around them.
Maybe, it should be a requirement that women working in maternity wear stores be pregnant or have had a child. Flower might be just a bit less perky/arrogant then.
Yeah, but women who have been pregnant or have kids get super preachy and boastful in such environments. More on that later…
Not just Canadians that think that way. Australians are very similar – US corporate ethics and US customer service style just does not work at all with a honest and self depreciating culture like that of Australia. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that kind of service is fake or forced either, it’s culturally learned behaviour.
The thing is, I don’t think most* Americans really have a concept of how their behaviour makes us feel, or why their franchises fail here.
Yet, funnily we’re considered “friendly”** over there, yet would never give the level of customer service at anything below a top restaurant that the average greasy spoon waitress will do stateside. For a mate, however, nothing is too much drama.
*Except Bostonians, probably.
** We’re also considered loud, boorish***, obnoxious and alcoholics.
*** We’d say bogan. But the other stuff is all true.
Same here. Canadians are considered friendly and ‘nice’ by Americans, despite the fact that we’re in general a more reserved and socially cold society.
I’ve worked sales before, and what infuriated my supervisors at times was that I was honest and straightforward with the customers. I even talked one out of buying the best item in the store because he wasn’t going to be satisfied with it and it would have resulted in a quick turnaround. What changed their tune…was the amount of repeat and profitable business I brought in simply with a bit of honesty and trying to give the customers what they wanted.
Yeah, I worked sales, and I was like you. I also wasn’t paid commission, so it was easier for me to be relaxed, but I really didn’t want to sell people something they didn’t want.
Puck is very down-to-earth. I bet her ancestors lived underground.(You know, where the beets and potatoes grow.) 😉
Man! Another failure.
Try try again.