Do Californians count as Yankees?
Hey! I’m a goddamn delight.
I think it’s tourism. Places that have a focus on tourists are nicer than places where the overwhelming job source is something like manufacturing.
And nobody understands what Minnesota Nice really means. It does not mean friendly. It means I’ll talk to you on the street. I’ll wave to you in the store. You’re not fucking coming inside my house, though.
There’s also some serious passive-aggression going on too, especially at work if there’s too many native Minnesotans there. Sometimes getting an honest answer out of someone is like pulling teeth.
Our new VP is from Chicago, and is a lot more blunt. I love it, but it’s been off-putting to a few co-workers. 
Genuine politeness is something anyone, from any place, can have. A genuinely polite person will not continue to attempt to force their custom on others. A genuinely polite person will not take offense at another’s custom, either.
Sometimes, tho, it is difficult to discern a person’s genuineness.
Obviously, imho, so ymmv.
I’ve never noticed any difference in friendliness between southerners and northerners.
But I figure southerners have got to be friendlier, because they spend so much time reminding us that they are. 
Used to work telephone customer service. We had a pretty healthy mix of clients, with large swaths of customers in the south and in New York City. On the surface, the southerners definitely came off as more friendly. This isn’t to say that all of them were friendly, because they weren’t. They were just more likely to present themselves that way, while those from NYC, and to a lesser extent the rest of the north, were more likely to be to-the-point. Both of them made jokes, though. Everyone thinks they’re funny.
When push came to shove, though, both of them were about equally understanding and nice. The surface act meant next to nothing. Some were, some weren’t, and it didn’t really hold to any particular pattern. The only real difference is that, being from Chicago, the northern style of communication was a lot more agreeable to me. I mean, I was nice over the phone–all “thank you for calling” and “have a nice day”–but at the end of the day, I was there to provide information and/or services to clients and agents. I was always secretly grateful when someone called in and spoke at a mile a minute instead of, say, asking me how the weather was.
Many southerners are aggressive in their attention to manners. Not “speaking” is rude. Not using the appropriate titles is rude (especially if you are child). Not following any old-fashion convention you can name is rude. And/or trashy. It seems to me driven by some kind of class anxiety? Are class boundaries different in the South than they are in the North?
I like to think I’m above such pickiness, but I’m not. Remember when that bus monitor was bullied by those kids a couple of years back? I believe it was in NY. The kids kept referring to her by her first name, and this alone seemed totally disrespectful to me. I can’t imagine this being allowed in the South.
When I lived in NJ, it seemed to me that people weren’t so anal. They were just as friendly, but being polite all the time isn’t that big of a deal.
It doesn’t help that in some places, the rules are schizo. During the 3 years I lived there, Miami struck me as a place full of mean people. They don’t talk to you, they don’t smile at you, and they try to kill you. But when greeting mere acquaintances, it’s customary to hug and even kiss (opposite genders). I got so accustomed to doing this that I took it up with me when I moved to VA. For my first few months, I’m sure I came across as WAY more friendly than I really am. 
Good points, mons! Esp the differences from city to city in some areas.
For instance, I’m convinced that in Dallas, it’s merely a front for many if not most. Some of the nastiest, rudest, most selfish people I’ve ever met were from Dallas. Houston? Totally different. Maybe because Houston is so mixed.
Rural East Texas, and desert SE New Mexico had some of the most closed minded people I’ve ever met. Didn’t matter if it was about politics, religion, race, TV shows, or even food. In Henderson, TX, tho, they would wave or nod at you, say please and stuff. But they obviously hated us, evidenced by how they treated us beyond superficial social manners. In SE NM, they would rather throw rocks at you than even say excuse me as they bumped you out of the way in WalMart. It seemed they went out of their way to be impolite.
Yes, all confirmation bias, I know.
I wanted to vote equal, but that option wasn’t there. I find Midwestern Northerners to be at least as friendly, if not friendlier, than Southernerns. So I actually did vote “we’re friendlier.” But I’m not thinking of New England when I’m thinking of the North, as my perspective is very Illinois-Wisconsin-Iowa based.
Do kids call their friends’ parents Mr. and Ms. Lastname, like people do on TV? Because I’ve never done that and would think it was really weird if my daughter’s friends did.
Miss/Mister Firstname is more common, in my experience. Like “Miss Blackberry”.
My family moved to Wisconsin, and this was my experience as well – my classmates and my siblings’ classmates made it quite plain that we were “outsiders” and thus worthy of contempt. This was in Madison too, not an isolated little farm community or anything. I also remember my mother saying that she thought it was weird how people in Wisconsin didn’t even seem to know their neighbors, while every other place we’d ever lived (all in Texas and the South) people seemed a lot more sociable. “Maybe it’s the cold,” she said. “People just want to get inside and not stand around talking.”
We did when I was a kid. I remember my childhood best friend called my mother “Mrs. Lastname” even though my mother told her she was fine with being called by her first name. I don’t have kids so I’m not sure how common this is now.
I did discover when I moved back to the South as an adult that “Miss Firstname” is still a thing. This was considered kind of old-fashioned even when I was a kid, but there were a couple of women in the neighborhood who we called “Miss Firstname”. I’m a university librarian, and although in my experience most university librarians are fine with just being called by their first names it’s pretty common for students to address me as “Miss Lamia”. (The young daughter of my best friend calls me “Miss Lamia” as well.) I have a coworker from the Midwest who found this disconcerting, in part because she’s married, but I explained that “Miss Firstname” is used even for married women – it’s just a way to be more formal than using the woman’s unadorned first name but less formal than using her last name.
Well, I’ll toss in the infamous “Minnesota Nice” to throw a monkey wrench into your stereotypes…
But if we’re going to stereotype entire regions, let’s not forget that how friendly someone is could well depend on how gay/liberal/non-white/non-Christian/other minority/poor/etc. they think you are. Stereotypically things get much less friendly in the Southern US due to these.
My psycho ex is from Minneapolis and he says only the Norwegians/white people are like that.
That is a stereotype, though. I won’t say there’s no truth to it, but the South can be more accepting, and the North less accepting, than one might assume. There’s also plenty of variation within these regions – I’d rather be a minority in say Athens, GA than plenty of places in the North.
IME, I’ve never been able to get anybody out there to make a goddamn decision on even the simplest of things. “What do you want for dinner?” “Um, oh, you know, whatever.” Drives me nuts. This includes my own children (who live in WI/MN) who have sunk so far into the cheese that I hardly recognize them.
Northerner here.
I see it mainly in the women. Northern women rarely smile and always look depressed. Like life has dealt them a bad hand. Southern women tend to have a much happier demeanor, and they smile a lot.
I didn’t find a relevant option in the poll, largely because “southern” and “northern” are only words that make sense to someone who lives on the east coast. People in Montana and Arizona are much more similar than people in Idaho and Massachusetts.
In my experience, the least friendly people in the U.S. are probably from New York City (“northerners”), and the most friendly are probably from the Pacific Northwest (also “northerners”).
Word. I’ve been in the deep south enough to know that " bless her heart " is identical to " that **** **** " up North.
Don’t shove a syrupy smile at me while loathing my entire tribe.
I have found Northerners to be friendlier.
[quote=“Gary “Wombat” Robson, post:38, topic:662833”]
I didn’t find a relevant option in the poll, largely because “southern” and “northern” are only words that make sense to someone who lives on the east coast.
[/QUOTE]
I’m not even American and I dig the difference between someone from Dixie and a Yankee - I’m not asking who is the friendliest in the entire Union. So for you or me that’d be the “I’m neither…” option.
And stop moaning about no ‘equal’ option - one must be better than the other, this is the internet damn it!