In the grocery stores, I ask a person stocking shelves where paper plates are, and he says, "Aisle 3" and as I start to thank him and turn, he says, "I'll take you there." Take me there? Grocery stores aren't exactly mazes. He runs into me later as I'm about to check out, and he asks if I'd found everything, and was everything okay. Yeee-essssss . . . . I say hesitatingly. Is he being sarcastic? The third time someone in different stores does that to/for me, I realize it's just how it works here--people, I think, want to please. My roommate asked in another grocery store if we could get the sale prices though we don't have the special store card, and not only did the managers she asked say yes, they tracked us down in the store to bring us our personal courtesy cards.
So it's friendliness, I think. Then I'm looking for the restroom in a Starbucks-type place on campus and walk into a room where I think the restrooms might be located, and instead there are study tables where everyone is reading, working on computers, etc. I'm about to turn and ask the barista, when one young man looks up from his computer, mouths "Restroom?" at me, and as I nod, points me in the direction around the corner where I can find them.
Okay, ah, nice.
Then, I'm traveling to Concord and stop at a Dunkin' Donuts (the Starbucks of Seattle Washington--one on every corner and the only coffee one can sometimes find), and find the bathroom door locked. I turn and a customer who's been talking to a friend at a table across the room calls out from his table, "they have keys for the bathroom; they're usually over there"--and he waves toward the counter where I do find the key and where I mumble a semi-gracious "thanks." Yeah, I'm glad to be directed to so many bathrooms (and no, that's not the only reason I travel), but nice has started to seem a bit pushy, like the next time I look perplexed, someone will walk me to the bathroom whether I want to go or not.
Then, of course, I have the Oracle of Walden Pond experience. And I think I've explained to every sales person in every store I go into where I'm from, why I'm here, when I'm leaving, and no, it's not because I'm volunteering all of this. It gets pumped out of me, like water from a well.
It's very nice in some ways, but I thought we Midwesterners were supposed to be friendly. We're downright freezing cold by comparison. I think we are also a bit inclined to let people be, as though we want to help, but we don't want to intrude. Here, there's no question of intrusion. It includes the cross-lane intrusions by major speeders on major highways as noted before, as well as drivers ready to turn into an intersection who do so by intruding half their car into the intersection into which they want to turn so that, as my friend Maggy whose lived in NE for five years said, you finally let them in and they wave as if to say thank you while you're shrugging your shoulders and wondering what else you could have done if the alternative was to take out their front end.
I'm not saying I don't like this. I do think I'll appreciate walking into a McDonald's back home (my universal pit stop when no other public restrooms are available), and not having anyone assume I need to use the bathroom, even when I do. But a tiny part of me will be a bit pissy when I'm looking for something in a store and the person will tell me where I can find it and then go back to stocking shelves. I may just ask them a few questions, like where they're from, why they're working there, what they consider good customer service to be, what they think about when they stock shelves all day, and maybe even whether they can walk me to the nearest restroom.
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