When I am out shopping or dining, I am always courteous to those serving me (i.e. when finishing up a sale, I say “Thank you” to the cashier). Generally, they respond with “Thank you” in return.
However, I have recently heard a few responses of “Your welcome.” For some reason, this really pisses me off. It seems impolite.
Has anybody else encountered this phenomenon and/or am I the only one who is bothered by it? I must admit that I seem to hear it most often from people in minimum wage jobs (i.e. not much experience in the business world).
Always ready to deflect the discussion, even if it hasn’t started! –
I lived in New Zealand for a while and the clerk would say thank you when I handed him/her the money. My experience in America was that they said thank you at the end of the transaction. Until I got used to it I thought they weren’t going to give me any change!
“non sunt multiplicanda entia praeter necessitatem”
I am not a clerk, but I do have this exact exchange a thousand times a week. Usually it goes like this:
I say, ‘Thank you’
Customer says, ‘Thank you’
That only leaves me, ‘Your Welcome’.
Think back and see if this isn’t what’s happening.
When people say, ‘You’re Welcome’ to me I don’t thinks it’s rude at all. Don’t let such a tiny thing piss you off, life is too short and you’re a long time dead.
Not that it’s the same thing, but I workat a golf course and when people thank me, I always say “You’re welcome.” This is because I have provided them a service (namely carrying a heavy golf bag for 4+ hours). Perhaps these clerks feel that they are allowing you to purchase their materiel and therefore are doing you a favor.
And the only reasonable reply I can think of is to repeat “Thanks”. To say “You’re welcome” is like saying “I’ve gone out of my way to favor you with my presence in your establishment”–slightly patronizing to say the least.
In Germany, store clerks usually say “Bitte schoen” or “Bitte sehr” which means “You’re welcome” when the transaction is completed, before the customer says anything.
Which leads me to the conclusion that all such expressions,
when used between salespeople and customers, are really just
polite acknowledgements and not formal expressions of gratitude or welcomeness in the everyday sense.
When I worked as a clerk, I ALWAYS said thank you first. But sometimes I was a lil slow on the draw, and they said “thank you” to me first. After years of following that with “your welcome”, it’s the first thing that came to my mind. If you don’t want to hear “Your welcome”, don’t say “thank you” first.
And what is the proper response to “thank you”? I must be missing something. Should those in the service industry throw their bodies in your path for you to step on in reponse to your condescending to thank them for providing said service?
Everyone knows that the only time it’s appropriate to answer a “thank you” with another is if you’re one of those chipmunks from the Warner Bros. cartoons (“Thank you!”…“Oh, no, thank you!”)…
…er. I don’t get what’s rude about “You’re welcome” in response to “Thank you.” “Uh-huh” is rude, to me. So’s “No problem.” Darn right, it’s no problem to do your job. But I don’t get the OP. Anyone wanna 'splain me?
My understand is that the cashier thanks the customer for their patronage, and the customer thanks the cashier for their good service. If the customer says “Thank you” first and only gets a “You’re welcome” in response without the corresponding “Thank you,” then I can see how they can consider that rude.
So, you express your gratitude to someone, they express that the service was freely granted, and that’s rude? How so? What’s rude about letting someone know that they are freely entitled to the thing they are grateful for receiving? That seems rather generous to me.
The only context in which I can imagine the reply being rude is if you didn’t really mean to thank them, but are instead trying to get a “thank you” out of them. Now, that strikes me as disingenuous and rather rude. If you didn’t want for them to reply with a commonly accepted courteous reply, why did you bother to address them in the first place?
It used to be that there were greeting formulas and everyone knew what to say and knew it was just a formula. Then in the 70s we got people saying formulas were not sincere and they started new formulas like the “have a nice day” thing and expecting an answer to “how are you today?”
When a clerk asks me "How are you today? " I feel like saying “None of your business?” or maybe… “pull up a chair and let me tell you… my lumbago has been acting up lately and my neigbor said…”
OTOH, when I get to the cash register and I am asked “How are you today?” I get the chance to tell her: “Pretty irritated because I’ve been waiting in line for 20 minutes and it seemed the line was hardly moving and I was thinking you really need to move faster or open more lines and I hope you’ll tell the maneger what I just told you because it happens fairly often here…” (After that they don’t expect any more pleasant exchanges).
But returning to the OP. I feel than you is always appropriate even if the clerk says it more than once. But if he does not want to be repetitive he could try something like “pleased to serve you”, “call again” or something along those lines.
Around here the clerk usually says “Thank you, have a nice day” to which I am programmed to reply “you too”. It is such a habit by now, that I start to say it without even registering what they actually said. I have always wondered if they think I am rude by replying to “your reciept is in the bag” with “you too!” I always kind of hoped they understood how it was intended, rather than thinking I am too self-absorbed to listen to anyone else.
It strikes me that it is less and less common to hear the phrase “You’re welcome.” More often than not, when I say “Thank you,” the reply is “Thank you.”
It is to the point now that the phrase “You’re welcome” almost seems condescending and rude. Anyone else sensing this shift?
How on earth can anyone consider “you’re welcome” a rude response to “thank you”? What do you expect the person to say in response? Just “thank you” back again?
You: thank you
Cashier: thank you
You: no, thank YOU
Cashier: no, thank YOU
I’ve worked in the service industry enough to know that a customer who is first with the “thank you” is the customer who doesn’t get his burger spit in, gets his check fast, and maybe isn’t charged for his fries. If they say “you’re welcome” rather than “thank you” in reply, who cares? Their job is thankless enough as it is.
You can make the argument that you just handed over 2.99 for you Big Mac meal, and, as a paying customer, you damn well be treated like a king. Too bad the register jockey who’s been on her feet for the past six hours doesm’t really give a rats ass what you think.
My impression, from everyday usage, is that “You’re welcome” is falling out of favor, for whatever reason.
(Hey, did you hear that? Sounded like Miss Manners’ head exploding.)
Speaking for myself, I just dodge the whole “thank you” / “thank you” / “no, thank YOU” thing. When someone says “thank you” to me, I usually respond with some variant of “happy to help.” Maybe not formally approved by the etiquette guide, but it avoids the pitfalls rather nicely.
I hate when I do that. Clerk: “Come back again!” Me: “You too!”
Duh.
As far as “You’re welcome,” if I hear it from someone I’ve paid and just thanked, I assume it’s an automatic, polite response on their part. I’m not offended.
I don’t find “You’re welcome” to be rude when said to me. Hell, with the state of retail these days, any eye contact and conversation above the “thirty six twenty seven” (or whatever your stuff costs) is a plus.
When I was in retail, I went out of my way to do the “No, thank YOU!” bit. I said it by accenting every word in a glib manner with a goofy smile on my face. It got people to laugh, that’s for sure. I still do it sometimes in the custmer role.
Yer pal,
Satan
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