
The dark side of “service with a smile” - kawera
https://www.knowablemagazine.org/article/mind/2018/baristas-burden
======
everly
I'm reminded of a passage about the "Professional Smile" from a David Foster
Wallace essay:

 _You know this smile, the strenuous contraction of circumoral fascia w /
incomplete zygomatic involvement –_ _the smile that doesn’t quite reach the
smiler’s eyes and that signifies nothing more than a calculated_ _attempt to
advance the smiler’s own interests by pretending to like the smilee….Am I the
only consumer in_ _whom high doses of such a smile produce despair?..._

 _And yet, the Professional Smile’s absence now also causes despair. Anybody
who’s ever bought a pack of gum_ _in a Mahattan cigar store, or asked for
something to be stamped FRAGILE at a Chicago post office or tried_ _to obtain
a glass of water from a South Boston waitress knows full well the soul-
crushing effect of a_ service _workers’ scowl, i.e. the humiliation and
resentment of being denied the Professional Smile. And the_ _Professional
Smile has by now skewed even my resentment at the dreaded Professional Scowl.
I walk away from_ _the Manhattan tobacconist resenting not the countermans’s
character or absence of goodwill but his lack of_ _professionalism in denying
me the Smile. What a fucking mess._

~~~
holografix
So eloquently described my own feelings! The professional smile is vastly more
common in the San Francisco than Sydney. Often I’ve felt like telling waiters
in Sydney: “You know I’m paying right? You’re not doing me a favour!” However
at the same time I’ve felt myself in SF thinking: “I’m not your friend, I
don’t want to tell you how my day was.”

------
oldcynic
When I'm on the receiving end of scripted checkout conversations or "American
style" extreme joy at my purchase of a £2 coffee I hate it. The restaurant
that too brightly upsells us is the restaurant we never revisit.

I'd like just normal interactions with a range of people and to be able to
leave thinking any conversation was real rather than an essential term of
their contract of employment. No surprise that the best conversations and
experiences are in small shops not chains with mandated policies.

When I first visited the US in the 90s the difference was quite marked, and it
was quite a relief to get home. Now we've imported the approach wholesale.
Course it's still perfectly possible for staff to smile, greet you in the
corporate mandated manner whilst keeping 99% of their attention elsewhere and
being diligently inefficient.

------
dahdum
Expecting anyone to be bubbly and chipper in a customer facing role, even part
of the time, is asking too much. I’ve seen and managed people where it comes
naturally and I’m always in awe of that level of energy.

That said, you can separate emotion from the equation and still provide an
outstanding level of service by focusing heavily on polite speech, manner, and
tone. Forget the individual and treat them as the prototypical customer.

Some businesses try forcing their employees into casual banter or engaging
emotionally (see Starbucks and the let’s talk about race). I’ve never seen
that garbage at high end hotels, restaurants, or other businesses where
service is critical to their success.

~~~
eropple
_> casual banter or engaging emotionally (see Starbucks and the let’s talk
about race)_

What you describe and what your parenthetical refers to are not the same
thing.

~~~
dahdum
Parenthetical is referring to engaging emotionally. It’s not the same as
talking about the weather, and invites passionate responses.

------
hmd_imputer
There has to be a golden middle - I neither like German-style poker-face,
almost angry looking baristas nor American-style fake-as-hell smiles when
being served at Starbucks. Korean style service is very close to the golden
middle - very kind and helpful service with a touch of a little smile.

~~~
expertentipp
German-style would be rude, actively hostile, malicious even. Funny how
American and German customer service cultures are at the two ends of the
spectrum, both unpleasant to deal with though.

~~~
jey
I wonder how a German person would describe it. Probably not like that, I'll
bet.

~~~
Grumbledour
You are right, as a German myself. I wouldn't. I guess if you are used to
American customer service and manners in general, German directness may seem
very rude and I wont deny, 'good' service can be hard to find in Germany. But
when Germans complain about that, most don't really mean Service with a smile,
but rather competent, to the point service without to much sales pitch or
grumbling. I would think fake smiles would be looked at very suspicious over
here.

I guess in the end its a matter of taste, if you prefer your bad service
personnel to be hiding between shelving to avoid customers or serving you a
fake smile while staring through you and wishing they were dead.

------
kylnew
I worked a total of 2 years at 2 different Starbucks locations and they were
continuously pushing us to be cheerful, chatty and even tried to get us to
suggest pastry pairings for people's orders, which rarely went over well
unless people actually wanted it. It's something I never bought in to and
found the hardest part of the job by far. I was never a jerk, and I always
cared authentically about the work I was doing but I'm just not naturally
social enough to make chit-chat about the weather and gas prices 100 times a
day without dying a little bit inside.

~~~
dazc
This is why I never lasted long in retail. The idea that every customer wants
to be approached with a 'can I help you' just goes against my natural
instincts. I always figured nobody really wanted that and a polite hello was
all that was needed to break the ice.

If customers walked out without buying it never worried me because I'd seen
enough come back later to know that 'not being pushy' was actually something
people actually seemed to like?

I always sold more than anyone else btw and had my regulars who would
sometimes just call in to say hello. My colleagues could never understand how
that happened, especially since I am not a naturally outgoing person.

------
dghughes
I like David Mitchell said it best on the BBC series QI. He said people who do
their job well shouldn't also have to be nice too it OK to "not give a shit".
He respects people who work terrible jobs and act miserable it's only right.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LiDTKEF1ek](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LiDTKEF1ek)

~~~
staticautomatic
A few months ago I was working on an employment lawsuit in silicon valley and
a prospective juror said about his employer, "I've been told I have a bad
attitude and I agree because they ask too much of you."

------
bsg75
I have not come to understand the mindset behind what seems to be a new trend:
Having multiple employees shout a greeting to every customer who walks in.

Does management really think this improves sales, service, or encourages
repeat customers? Fake sincerity has to be exhausting for the staff (for the
level repetition if no other reason), but I don’t expect most customers
believe it’s genuine.

 _Edit:_ I notice this mostly in food and coffee shops. Others its a loss
prevention approach in retail makes sense. But it seems uncommon to steal a
sandwich made to order.

~~~
jey
My theory: this has more to do with loss prevention. If they make you feel
seen, you are less likely to shoplift.

------
maire
This all boils down to your attitude toward your job. In my generation most
first jobs were in the service industry. Later we all migrated to jobs suited
to our talents.

I am an introvert - and interacting with strangers is painful for an
introvert. I got over it. Working with strangers helped me overcome my shyness
and later gave me tools to empathize with customers. When I ultimately became
a software engineer, this empathy helped. When I was a manager I noticed that
the best engineers initially worked with customers in some capacity.

~~~
rimliu
I don’t know, I think the introverts are better at empathy, and exactly that
makes interactions exhausting.

~~~
brokenmachine
Very insightful.

As an introvert, I agree completely.

The extroverts that I meet seem to have little insight into the feelings of
the people they are energetically talking in the direction of, and desire
little truthfulness in their conversations. It's all surface-level small talk.
I can do it for a short time but every one of those conversations kills me a
little inside.

------
carapace
To date, the best job I have ever had, not in terms of pay but in terms of
fulfillment and happiness in doing the work, was working as a barista in a
neighborhood (non-chain) coffee shop. I really enjoyed sizing up each
customer, trying to figure out what would brighten their morning and get them
in the mood to tackle their day, all while executing a non-trivial dance of
logistics to prepare the drinks properly and quickly, with a bit of finesse.

We were on a transit corridor so there was a big morning rush. You'd get to
know the regulars to the point where you could queue up their drinks to be
ready by the time they got to the register, get a good flow going. There's all
kinds of people: bubbly chatters, grumpy don't-talk-to-me-until-coffee folks,
etc. and it was really fun and rewarding to try to get each of them to leave
with a smile. You couldn't always do it, of course, but for me I hope to
retire to e.g. Shasta someday and open a little coffee shop and bookstore.

All that to say this: one of the reasons why I am excited about the automation
econo-pacalypse and the rise of what we're calling "Universal Basic Income" is
that it will relax the need for people to "earn a living" doing something they
don't genuinely enjoy. A general relaxation of the "profit motive" will permit
optimization along other, more congenial dimensions.

~~~
acjohnson55
I don't know that it's safe to assume unconditional basic income is
inevitable. There's not much precedent. But there's centuries of precedent for
caste systems and serfdom. Although, I do share your enthusiasm for the idea.

~~~
carapace
> I don't know that it's safe to assume unconditional basic income is
> inevitable.

Oh, I don't. I was reading Lovelock's "The Revenge of Gaia" this morning and
now the only thing I think is inevitable is climate shift to a hot house mode.
We'll be lucky if 0.1% of humanity threads that needle. It's not inevitable,
but I don't think we'll change course rapidly enough to make it.

------
dazc
Too many people are working in public facing jobs despite having no talent for
such work. I'm not surprised they find it stressful.

~~~
vostok
If you do have the talent, you'll make more money selling Oracle than selling
coffee.

------
phyzome
I wonder how this relates to the notion I've heard that faking a smile when
you're feeling down can actually make you feel better. Any thoughts?

~~~
brokenmachine
The problem is that they're not faking a smile to make themselves feel better,
they're being forced into faking a smile in an idiotic attempt to further line
the pockets of their employers.

Also I think that faking a smile thing only works every now and then, not
1000x a day, every time another consumer wanders into your store.

If they really want to make them smile, employers should try making the
conditions so good that the workers actually _want to smile_. Actually, no,
god forbid! That might cost more...

Also, as a consumer, I really hate the fake smile, "how's your day?" kind of
garbage. I just want to buy my items in peace, and if I need help, I'll ask
for it thank you very much. As an introvert it really deters me from going
into your stores.

------
artur_makly
Living as a US expat-in Argentina has painfully proven the other extreme,
where the staff does not work for tips, and where firing them for anything (
even stealing ) will get you the owner a heavy lawsuit where you will lose 99%
of the time ( due to corruption )

So they basically have ZERO incentive to do any work and therefore their
default face = "Cara de culo".

Intersestingly enough, as millions of new Venezuelans have immigrated, they
have now become the most sought after service-industry workers, simply because
they always smile, work hard, and very happy to have a job. Hopefully these
market forces will have some nice overall affects on the whole.

~~~
tzs
> firing them for anything ( even stealing ) will get you the owner a heavy
> lawsuit where you will lose 99% of the time ( due to corruption )

That seems weird. How does corruption end up favoring the fired workers?
Usually isn't it the business owners that have the resources to bribe or
provide favors for corrupt officials to get their way? What do the fired
workers have to offer to influence a corrupt official?

------
Spooks
I noticed this happening at several grocery stores and some big box stores.
With the grocery stores, 4 out of 5 times, the clerk will say something along
the lines of "Oh I was looking for something like this" or "Oh that looks
good, what are you using it for?"

One check out person, who seemed fairly new, ask me where I found a cleaning
sponge... this was just a regular green sponge with blue on the other side for
pots and pans. Ever since that time, their chit chat often seems forced.

------
local_yokel
Even more unnerving than the fake smile and general aggressiveness of retail
workers / waiters to chat you up is when the pizza delivery guy tries to get
personal by using your real name, as if we were at the pub sharing some jokes
over a pint.

------
RickJWagner
This is what's called "Being a Good Employee", and we all recognize it and
appreciate it when it's us doing the buying.

No dark side here, only discipline and the recognition of opportunity for
advancement to better things.

------
amriksohata
If they were trained with fish philosophy they would not see it as a chore but
part of their life and enjoy it far more

------
ryandrake
> Feigning feelings at work — what psychologists call “emotional labor” — can
> be as mentally and physically taxing as any other type of workplace stress,
> but few workers or employers recognize the threat

Tell that to a bricklayer. I've worked crappy service jobs and I've nailed
shingles to roofs in 100+F degree heat. I'll take the fake smile job any day
of the week.

> “I would come home from a day of barista-ing and my face would hurt. I
> thought I was just being whiny.”

One of those times when one should stick with one's initial thought.

~~~
cfadvan
_One of those times when one should stick with one 's initial thought._

Everyone should have to work a retail job to get a sense of what a broad
selection of the public is like. Everyone (who is physically able) should have
to work in manual labor to get a sense of what hard work is like. Say, 6
months of each. You’d probably get a lot less whining, and people might not be
such pricks to cashiers. Ideally a third period would be spent as a nurse or
EMT, but that would be prohibitive in terms of training and break too many
people.

~~~
ryandrake
Agree completely. Also, (relevant to HN) everyone who writes software or
designs computer products should spend some time doing tech customer support.
I'm sure we'd end up with better products.

~~~
techsupporter
> everyone who writes software or designs computer products should spend some
> time doing tech customer support.

As someone who's done both, oh yes please, come into "the trenches" and see
how customer-facing support, even at the enterprise level, is done and what
demands and limitations we face. I have a story on this.

I used to work support for a large technology company in the big company
software division. Our support tools were pretty limited. We could get logs,
we could try to make sense of them, we could ask our peers, and, In Case Of
Emergency Break Glass, we could send an inquiry to the developers. This one
developer for this one component kept getting upset with us about "how hard
could it be" and all that.

The problem was, the logs for that component were obtuse. They'd just say
"ERR852019" or something like that and we couldn't have access to the source
code or symbols to go look it up ourselves and our entreaties for a list of
ERR codes was met with "we'll do it when we get to it." Finally, that group
hired somebody new and a manager somewhere had the bright idea to send the new
guy down to us (support was in a different area, many states away, as these
things usually are) to see if the new guy could "straighten us out."

We unloaded on him. Poor sod. But, he went away with a vision. He realized the
staggering amount of time, effort, and, yes, money being spent on us sitting
around getting yelled at by the customers with no real way to help them other
than poking the program with a stick and seeing what happened.

He championed our cause to that development team and, later, as he moved
through the company, made support a priority, if not a focus. Logs stopped
just saying "[DATE] [TIME] ERR91" and included full error messages and file
paths and even abbreviated stack traces. Senior people on the support teams
got access to source code so we could find the error strings and figure out
what the program was doing. We even got mini tools we could use to tweak the
program to get better logging or maybe even fix the problem for the customer
instead of making the (overloaded) development team do it. And the big payoff?
We bothered the development people less with "this is making a funny noise"
and brought them quality bugs with, in some cases, proposed fixes that saved
them time.

Oh, and people from the development team started coming down to sit with us
"in the trenches" once a year or so.

