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Saying Hello To God

As I write this, one of my regular customers, Mark, has left my mother’s combo diner/ convenience store, which I refer to here and in my fiction as the Buddhist Truckstop (even though I’m the only fake Buddhist in the family).

Mark has just given me one of the best pieces of advice that I’ve had in a long time. Both of us deal with the public on a regular basis and often have to put up with stereotyped perceptions. I was saying as how customers often come in grouchy to the Buddhist Truckstop. I’ll say hi to them and they’ll act like I’m an invisible store clerk. But I persist, and after 7 or 8 visits, sometimes longer, I’ll get a hello out of them eventually. Some even end up conversing with me after while.

I had a similar but less positive experience when I worked as a minimum-wage coatcheck boy - coatcheck man just doesn’t sound right - only a few years ago. I often saw 200-300 people in a night. I always made it a point to say hello and thank you and generally be polite. I mean, why work in public, dealing with people, if you can’t be polite?

I took a similar approach when I worked in Atlanta, Georgia six summers ago. Growing up, I’d always heard that Atlantans were polite and cultured. For the most part, I found this to be true. I tested a theory I had that temperature makes a difference in behaviour amongst some people. My testing ground is completely unscientific, and only based on my observations of the 2 largest metropolitan areas in North America: Toronto, Canada and Atlanta, Georgia. You might think otherwise, but based on the definition of “metropolitan area”, they are two largest - approximately 3-5 million in population.

Toronto was once called Toronto the Good, which referred to the exceptionally clean streets. Now, there’s litter everywhere, and lots of angry, rude people. Scratch that. There were always angry, rude people in Toronto. In my mid-20s during the mid 1980s, I met lots of wonderful people that balanced out the rudeness I, and many others not from Toronto, often experienced. It’s especially noticeable if you move to the city from a small town or city.

Try as I might, however, smiling and saying hello to people in Toronto mostly got me stares. I abandoned the idea quickly. And this was when I was in my 20s and bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. In Atlanta, in the summer months of 2000, I said hello to everyone I encountered, especially those who seemed grumpiest. My general experience was that most of the people who were initially rude or unresponsive (mostly the latter) were actually not originally from the Altanta area. But my persistent ‘good morning’ or ‘hello’, along with a beaming smile, eventually got a positive response from everyone except one security guard at my place of work (The Weather Channel), who simple got more sour-faced every time I said good morning to him.

Now, granted, while in Atlanta, I had my “Elvis” hair and sideburns, and often got a positive response from people without my saying anything anyway. So as I’ve said, this isn’t exactly a scientific study. However, after I returned to Toronto to work later in the year, I got the same old rude Toronto behaviour, from my own colleagues no less. Compare this to small-town behaviour, which is typically far more friendly in Canada.

I can draw a lot of conclusions, and of course, all of them may be wrong. But overall, I think I understand now, after spending a few years, why so many people in jobs dealing with the public become so cranky. How would they not? In addition to being paid poor wages, they often have to stand on their feet all day, and have to put up with rude or dismissive behaviour day in and day out? I can live with the low wages and massage my aching feet at the end of the day, but it’s always tough being invisible.

Which brings me back to my wise customer Mark and his advice. He, too, deals with people on a daily basis, and is very much in the habit of being friendy, both because he is and because it’s a necessary part of his job as a stylist to wealthy clients. When he leaves work, his outgoing personality also goes with him. He told me that when he says hello and a person does not respond, he behaves internally as if he has simply been saying hello to God, so it doesn’t matter what the response is. Wise advice that I immediately implemented, with positive results.