[jtreminio]

> music blasting

Far be it from me to say a driver can't listen to music while they are at work.

> the vans usually look like they haven't been washed in a month

Good. Washing work vehicles so that they are always sparkling seems like a waste of resources.

> Reminds me of fast food employee who simply hands your meal out the window, no greeting, no thank you, no smile

This is such a weird American fixation. Here, take my money and hand me my burger and receipt, there's no need for a conversation or a fake smile. You don't care how my day is going, I don't really care about yours. Let's keep this transaction professional and solely focused on this exchange of money for burger.

[dang]

Please keep nationalistic flamebait off this site. It leads to nationalistic flamewar, which we neither need nor want here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[BaseballPhysics]

> This is such a weird American fixation. Here, take my money and hand me my burger and receipt, there's no need for a conversation or a fake smile. You don't care how my day is going, I don't really care about yours. Let's keep this transaction professional and solely focused on this exchange of money for burger.

As a Canadian cousin over here, if you can't tell the difference between a smile/a polite "Hi, how can I help you?"/a "have a nice day", and an actual conversation involving smalltalk, then you clearly don't know about what you're criticising.

In our part of the world, is there a social/cultural difference in expectations of the interaction with people around us, including workers in the service industry?

Yes, absolutely.

Is there something "weird" about that? No, absolutely not, and you can put down the superiority complex.

[Zircom]

>As a Canadian cousin over here, if you can't tell the difference between a smile/a polite "Hi, how can I help you?"/a "have a nice day", and an actual conversation involving smalltalk, then you clearly don't know about what you're criticising.

That's literally his point, the whole friendly-service-with-a-smile thing is forced on them by their managers/corporate, it's not from a sincere desire to have an actual conversation with customers. And people will literally complain and get them in trouble if they don't do it.

Talk about irony, sitting here talking about a superiority complex while defending requiring that kind of stuff of "lowly" service industry workers.

[coldtea]

>Is there something "weird" about that? No, absolutely not, and you can put down the superiority complex.

There is something weird though. Getting service from those minimum wage workers is not enough: people also demand their fake pleasure to serve and sympathy.

[phpisthebest]

>>is there a social/cultural difference in expectations of the interaction with people around us

For me, that is why I am glad automation is decimating the service sector. for the first time in years I was traveling so i decided to go into a fast food place so I could stretch my legs. I walked in, Ordered my meal on a Automated Kiosk, no one even around to talk my order verbally. Then when my order was ready someone called out my number and sat a bag on the counter. I took the bag and that was it, No interaction at all

It was the BEST experience getting food... I almost want to go in more because it had even less interaction than the drive thru.

[sfcarrot]

The reality is no matter how genuinly your delivery driver ask "hi how can I help", he/she does not care about it. There is simply no time for him to care about it. Otherwise, you will see your delivery fee increase since.

[glimshe]

Gosh, whenever you find the world you want to live in, please let me know because I don't want to live there.

I'll keep the smile and the clean trucks, thank you. A lot of good manners are "fake" and simply a social convention that people follow even if feeling miserable inside - "Good Morning", "Excuse me", "Thank you" etc.

In a world filled with hostility, disease, death and danger, good manners and social conventions such as cleanliness help signal safety.

[coldtea]

>Gosh, whenever you find the world you want to live in, please let me know because I don't want to live there.

Yes. Yay for hypocrisy and forced smiles for the customer-king.

[somehnguy]

I don't think anyone has a problem with the workers listening to music while they drive around. But I can hear the Amazon truck's music from the opposite side of the block, which is a little excessive.

Honestly it doesn't bother me all that much, just saying there is a stark difference between them and FedEx/UPS/USPS when coming through my neighborhood.

[RHSeeger]

> > Reminds me of fast food employee who simply hands your meal out the window, no greeting, no thank you, no smile

> This is such a weird American fixation.

You appear to be confusing

> They are doing their job like they don't care about doing it well... like the fast food employee that doesn't try to make your experience enjoyable by saying "hi" and maybe "have a nice day"

and

> They didn't talk to me, I'm upset

As applied to the delivery person, it's things like putting the package to the side of the garage door instead of right in front of it (where you'll drive over it if you don't notice it)... and putting it under an obvious overhang if it's raining. The little things, that show you care about doing a good job; they matter.

[mcpackieh]

> Far be it from me to say a driver can't listen to music while they are at work.

If they're listening at a volume where it isn't noticed by / bothering other people, then there's no problem. Otherwise, it's noise pollution. Trucks are too loud as it is, we don't need even more noise thrown into the mix. Whether it's people playing music through their phone speakers on a city bus, or a guy reving his unmuffled motorcycle at 4:30 in the morning every day, or somebody blasting heavy bass music through their car or truck speakers when they slowly cruise through through your neighborhood, it's all assholish behavior.

[passwordoops]

Weird how a conversation that should be about the richest corporations shirking their responsibilities to employees is hijacked by someone complaining about fake smiles instead

[datavirtue]

Exactly...how is this thread taking up half the post?

[marcus0x62]

> Far be it from me to say a driver can't listen to music while they are at work.

I have no problem with anyone listening to music while they work.

I just don’t want to be forced to listen to their music while they are parked across the street from my house that I’m inside.

[bena]

I'm like 50/50 here.

Listen to music, but not so loud as to be unaware of your surroundings.

Washing a vehicle is about more than aesthetics. Dirt, salt, asphalt, etc, can damage the vehicle itself. Delivery vans also get a lot of miles on them. It doesn't need to "sparkle", but if you've got a month's worth of dirt and grime on the truck, it's not great either.

I don't need a whole song and dance with transactions either. But silence doesn't work either. Enough words to conduct the transaction and acknowledge it is over.

[jedberg]

> Good. Washing work vehicles so that they are always sparkling seems like a waste of resources.

The point of the clean truck is that it shows the delivery company it willing to lose money to maintain their equipment. It means they are probably also willing to lose money to care for your package better.

It's the same reason Lexus requires their mechanics to wear white lab coats. To show you that they are willing to spend money to take care of your stuff.

[ska]

> Washing work vehicles so that they are always sparkling seems like a waste of resources.

Washing them is a "canary in the coal mine". You don't need them sparkling obviously, but they need regular maintenance. And with a fleet under heavy use, that's often measured in weeks, not months.

[KronisLV]

> This is such a weird American fixation. Here, take my money and hand me my burger and receipt, there's no need for a conversation or a fake smile. You don't care how my day is going, I don't really care about yours. Let's keep this transaction professional and solely focused on this exchange of money for burger.

Here's something anecdotal: as someone from Eastern Europe, I was looking at reviews on Google for a few local dental clinics, to better decide where to sign up for my vaguely-twice-a-year dental hygiene appointment. What I noticed was that most of the places across the board in the center of the capital had around 3 star ratings. I looked into it and while there were generally good reviews of the service quality, almost all of the negative feedback had to deal with the attitude of the reception staff.

People complained about the receptionists not being too interested in small talk, just telling them where to go, urging them to move on, or being terse and presumably uncaring in their responses. Same for cloak room staff. Now there were also complaints which could impact the service itself (professionals not wanting to walk the client through the steps needed for a checkup or whatever, for other procedures), but in general I got the vibe that people expected to be pampered/encouraged more.

And then I noticed that a sizeable amount of the negative feedback came from foreign folks, who might not necessarily be used to some of the cultural and "to the point" interactions that you sometimes get over here. I found that interesting, though it's not like the people here are not nice at all, it's just that you might not always be that way to complete strangers and just be reasonably polite instead. Or maybe most of the staff just didn't care, I can't read minds of course.

So yeah, cultures differ, sometimes quite a bit! I remember going on vacation to a country with a higher population density and getting used to people standing in what I'd assume is my "personal space" without batting an eye took some getting used to, hah.

[barbazoo]

It's not fun buying garbage one doesn't need from a horrible company unless everyone along the chain suffers. Are they really suffering unless they drive in silence?! /s

[gopher_space]

I care how your day is going and it sounds rough. Coffee is on the house.

It’s definitely a regional thing. You’re an asshole if you don’t engage with people in Seattle, for example.

Always weird to hear people calling it “fake” friendliness because nobody here feels that way.

[datavirtue]

I've witnessed the music blasting. It is a nuisance and easily a violation of any towns' ordinance. If their exhaust was that loud the vehicle would be down until it is repaired. Both are equally embarrassing to the company.

[imacomputertoo]

It might be an American thing, but I'm fine with that. Keeping it professional means having a professional attitude - smiling and being courteous. At least it does in America.

[aaomidi]

I can not stand people who love setting weird standards on others.

Music? They didn’t say hello to you when giving you your delivery?

Why on earth do you care.

[Moomoomoo309]

Playing music is fine. Blasting music is the problem. I don't like it when anyone blasts music in their car, not just mail carriers.

[redwall_hp]

Because they culturally see anyone "beneath them" as NPCs that exist to serve them, and anything other than perfect servility is seen as a personal insult.

American customer service mentality is supremely fucked up. I actively avoid businesses that more actively force employees to interact with customers in certain artificial ways, because some are even worse than the norm.