Comment by Jetrel

IME as a US resident, it's not fake, for most of your audience. It's fake for the natural slice of the audience that are on the selfish/narcissist spectrum - they're forced to parrot it as a broader cultural norm, but for everyone else who's even merely neutral on the empathy spectrum, it's a license to actually be nice and not get hammered with suspicion for it.

That said - it has to be noted that if you're interacting with "service workers" (any clerks at stores, hotels, restaurants, etc), there's a really horrible catch-22 ubiquitous in the corporate world. Those people are forced by corporate rules to be obsequiously friendly ... but are also so overworked that they generally have no time to actually help someone with anything that's not a direct job duty.

It really sucks because, traditionally, in the sense of i.e. a bartender/barista, that's actually supposed to be a large part of the "hospitality" job. They're supposed to be someone you can talk at length to, and traditionally have functioned like an entry-level therapist/counsellor in society. Unfortunately the fast-food mentality has trickled into a lot of institutions like that, and most of them are too busy fulfilling orders to do anything of the sort.