Comment by deanCommie
7 months ago
You will never convince Europeans of this. They simply seem to be unable to grasp that (1) cultural norms about introversion/extroversion and friendliness are not universal, and so the default baseline IS more outgoing, social, friendly, and extraverted in North America, and (2) because of the other differences in service industry culture [not necessarily themselves all positives but nevertheless relevant], the service industry in America optimizes for extraverted and friendly people.
So yeah, when the super friendly waitress comes over and asks the table "how is your day going", they're not forcing a smile for a tip. It helps, but they're most likely naturally outgoing and friendly and genuinely curious.
When you grow up with this environment, moving to Europe is adaptable (have done so), but whenever you go back home it is a breath of fresh air.
That's because the reference point of most Europeans is not the actual lived experience of people in the US but the picture painted by the media.
When I visited the US the smiles seemed sincere‚ no doubt about it. The interactions also felt strangely shallow, which was of course to be expected and even sensible in the cultural context (why go into depth with someone you barely know and will never see again), but that is the real reason it felt jarring compared to what I was used to, and often made it confusing to make sense of whether the politeness was sincere or not.
This was in California, and I have to add that I was 17 at the time so "making sense of other people" wasn't a highly developed skill yet to begin with.