Have A Nice Day!

When did shop assistants and restaurant staff begin the custom of concluding transactions with the phrase, "Have a nice day"? The consensus appears to be that it began in earnest in the United States during the 1970's but variations on the theme go back as far as Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales from 1387. As the saying goes, there is nothing new under the sun.

"Have ye a nice day, my liege."

I remember watching the Michael Parkinson show, it must have been the best part of forty years ago now, and the actor and raconteur Peter Ustinov, whom Parkinson was interviewing, mentioned the practice and how it made him want to respond with, "I'm sorry, but I have other plans." On the one hand that might be regarded as a witty riposte that exposes the insincerity of "Have a nice day," but alternatively is a somewhat curmudgeonly response to what is in many ways simply a piece of verbal punctuation that indicates that the matter is concluded.

Having worked for many years in customer facing roles I know that after a while it becomes a matter of routine; it is difficult to serve a constant stream of customers and remain fresh and sincere. Inevitably one descends into habit and the repetition of stock phrases which inevitably which eventually sound hackneyed. As a bank cashier, in the days when cash dispensers were not so widely used, cashing cheques was a major part of the job and would habitually require one to enquire, "How would you like the money?" After uttering that for the umpteenth time it is difficult to inject any originality into it. Similarly when I worked as a foreign clerk a major proportion of my day during the summer months would involve selling foreign currency and travellers cheques to customers. After asking the customer to sign the travellers cheques, I would hand them their cash and cheques together with the record of the cheque numbers and utter the phrase, "And remember to keep the cheques separate from the receipt so that in the event that the cheques are lost you have a record for insurance." Once you have said that twenty times in a day it begins to lose all meaning. Same goes for "Have a nice day."

"How would madam like her money?"

Perhaps because "Have a nice day" has become so widespread and somewhat meaningless, it appears that many shop assistants have decide to up the ante, or perhaps simply decided to inject some variety. "Have a wonderful day" now appears to have found greater favour, or "Have a great rest of the day" if the hour is late. "Enjoy your day" (or "the rest of the day") are also gaining ground. Thinking about this recently I was at first somewhat condescending towards it, thinking it trite, meaningless, insincere, but the more I think about it, the more I wonder what else are the shop staff or waiters going to say? Even if the customer has been impolite or overly demanding they can scarcely say what they actually think, which may be altogether less kind. It is merely a social convention and one which should not really irk us (or more specifically, me) as much as perhaps it does.

The same goes for the "Sorry to keep you waiting" that one gets greeted with after standing in a queue for what seems an eternity. Are you really sorry? No, but the cashier or shop assistant has to say something to acknowledge that you've been standing there while they serve other people. The response one normally gives, "Oh, that's OK" is as insincere as the remark it responds to, but again it is convention.

What still annoys me, however is something that more usually comes within a conversation with a call centre. After the inevitable button pushing through a series of menus that become more and more labyrinthine, after answering the predictable security questions, after listening to the inevitable muzak while on hold, and having finally reached a human being, one asks one's question or makes one's request. Sometimes this ends well, sometimes not, however even when the person at the other end of the phone has not been able to assist in any way whatever, they then say "Is there anything else I can help you with today?" Anything else? Anything else? You didn't help me with my original query, how can you help me with anything else if you haven't helped me already?

Going back a bit, to the bit before the shop assistant or whoever, says "Have a nice day," there is the greeting. If one has queued up to be served at a bank counter then the likely greeting from the cashier is hopefully something like, "Good morning (or afternoon), how can I help you?" Again it is convention, it merely opens negotiations and it is the sort of thing that I uttered thousands of times in a past life. At a till in a shop the likelihood is that one merely wants to pay for something so the "how can I help you?" can be a bit superfluous, but it is nice to hear "good morning" or "good afternoon" not the "alright?" that appears to have become more and more common, particularly in the dimly lit, nightclub style stores that play music at deafening volume and seem to be organised more for the convenience of their employees than their customers.

Queuing is something which we British are supposed to be good at, which we endure come what may, but research shows that many people are now more likely to abandon transactions if they have to wait too long. Apparently six minutes is the tipping point; wait any longer than that and we are likely to ditch our purchase and walk out. Sometimes we don't have any choice if we have an urgent transaction in a bank or building society. I always used to find the Abbey National particularly annoying on that score. I would go in, join a queue of three or four people and find, what seemed an eternity later, that no one had moved, that all of the cashiers were engaged in lengthy and complex transactions, not taking in cheques or paying out money, but discussing mortgages, opening accounts or attempting to resolve a query on an ISA. Part of the problem is the removal of back office processes from banks and building societies; it saves time and money for the organisation to have the customer facing staff complete the whole of the transaction but boy does it frustrate the customer stuck in a queue who simply wants to pay in a cheque.

Perhaps I am being too critical. Serving customers is a repetitive, often mind numbing task that can sometimes be immensely unrewarding. For the customer the transaction is a one off, for the person the other side of the counter it is just one of hundreds in the day so it may be hard to remain fresh, cheerful and sincere and not descend into platitudes, cliché and banality. I suppose that a cheery "Have a nice day," however artificial, is probably preferable to unfeigned indifference.

Have a nice day!