|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| You vill SMILE....SMILE....BIG SMILE! |
|---|
| you still haf a fambly in Germany? |
|
This is Dark Cloud on Wednesday, September 09, 1998. Safeway, a supermarket nationally affiliated with Krogers, was the recipient of some dubious publicity last week. Apparently, some energetic marketing executive mandated that all employees were to smile at work, especially when experiencing free time with customers. Not, to the naive, a bad thought, for who can object to a lovely smile while its engineer over-rings your lettuce purchase? But there was a downside. Several women complained. Those customers thought the cashiers were coming on to them, and that there had been more than a few awkward – not to say dangerous – moments between customers and these employees. That, somehow, didn’t ring true, especially when there were no apparent cases of male customers taking swings at male cashiers for the same reason. Nevertheless, the whole tempest in a thimble reactivated my old paranoia and prejudices. It may take more musculature to frown than smile, but it doesn’t make it less natural. In short, people who smile – either as a professional accomplishment or as an emotionless trained response to anything – ought not to be trusted. Try it on yourself. What makes you smile when you’re alone and it is indeed just a response to a thought or a current situation. I choose not to consider what makes the likes of you smile. With me, I can think of only of few things. Children just about always make me smile. Good music. And animals. In short, what makes me smile are those individuals least likely to notice or care. I rarely smile at adults, and I heartily distrust them if they smile at me. The distrust comes because I have been in and on the fringes of showbiz for over thirty years and I know acting and bad acting when I see it. I hate on first sight the sparkling gums of salesmen or salesgirls. I don’t care what the beauty pageant officials say, a woman exposing both teeth and gums inspires thoughts of nothing so much as Beetlebomb before the big race after the cocaine has been applied, or after he’s lost the race has an uncomfortable number of potential buyers checking his gums to guess his age. Nothing makes an otherwise pleasant woman look more psychotic than the full, beauty pageant smile. It takes a lot to pull those lips back all the way, and hold them there. Of course, true smiles, we are told, come from the eyes, and it is generally more pleasant to see the crinkling of skin around the eye than the unsutured horrendoplasty which is now the mouth. But pain, like pleasure, is also most noted in the eyes, and with these prescribed smiles, pain and exhaustion are as likely to be reflected as pleasure. Worse, over time, the labor intensive smile becomes a response, the face is trained, and not even pain is reflected. The eyes, at this point, reflect nothing. Then, it’s fair to ask if such an expression does not reflect pleasure, what is the point of extending it? This is a difficult question, and an unpleasant one. When the local news shows replay for the umpteenth time those video shorts on Jon Bonet Ramsey, look the kid’s face. Then reflect on her mother’s. Then notice how seldom it is that the smiles surrounding us connote either pleasure or warmth or anything. It has become as facile as a yawn, as truthful as a sales pitch, as pleasant as a suppressed belch or a fart in the bathtub. I feel for those Safeway cashiers. When you give or receive a smile it ought to be graciously given and gratefully received, not as mandated as the exchanges in a confessional. If you want to make the public think your employees are happy, keep them happy. Don’t mandate a façade. And in any case, who falls for a constructed smile anymore? I mean, aside from Bill Clinton? |
| Post your views and reviews on The Boulder Lout Forum. |