Thank you, and have a nice day.

In My Humble Opinion
1

At my current job where I provide alarm system tech support I am supposed to end my calls by thanking the caller for calling us, and wish them a nice day.

I really don’t like it, because while sometimes the caller seems to appreciate it most of the time they’re hanging up while I’m thanking them, or they’ll give a, “OK, thanks,” in a way you can tell they mean, “Yeah yeah, whatever.”

And now when I get it, such as when I’m leaving a store and a teller says it to me, sometimes I’ll think, “Yeah right. You’re just saying it because you have to.”

While I don’t mind thanking callers, or being thanked for shopping/banking/whatever; I would love it it companies stopped requiring employees to wish people a nice day and people would only say it if they actually meant it.

What do you think?

2

I, for one, fucking hate it.

I never got what George Carlin was on about when he did his rant on “have a nice day” because up until then almost no one used the saying, that I was aware of.

Now everyone uses it, and it’s the most banal platitude ever.

Like you really give a fuck what kind of day I have.

3

When I was a teller there were days when “Thank you for banking with Chase” and my sweetest smile actually meant “go die in a fire, dickhead.”

Cynical me: They make the drones say thank you, for fear of what they might say otherwise.
Practical me: It is useful to have a script so that each party knows exactly how to end the transaction.

4

I have no issues with “thank you” but the “have a nice day” or “enjoy the rest of your day” is a setup for disaster. Like when we stopped for breakfast on the way to my dad’s funeral - there’s no way the server could have known it was not a nice day and if I’d been less stable, it could have made for an ugly scene.

Even on regular days, once the clerk/server/associate is out of earshot, my husband and I are likely to say, under our breath, “Don’t tell me how to live my life!!” No, we’re not serious. We know it’s a meaningless phrase that some corporate drone thinks matters. We’re just easily amused.

5

Wow, I’ve never been the Pollyanna of a thread before.

I’m NOT required to say “Have a Nice Day” but I often do anyway. OK, usually not those exact words, but “Have a Good Evening” or “Enjoy your Weekend” or some such variant after I’ve had a pleasant encounter with a pleasant person during my workday. When I say it, I’m sincerely wishing them a Nice Day. My job can be pretty challenging; why the heck shouldn’t I try to make it just the tiniest bit more pleasant by saying nice things to people?

6

I hate it too. In fact, I’m against most forms of habitualized social behaviors for the sake of manners. That’s not to say that I don’t say please and thank you, but I try to make it a conscious choice to do so, so that it actually carries meaning, rather than just a habit. If it’s just a habit, it’s meaningless other than “our conversation is over”, but since there’s other ways to do that, I don’t see a point in the euphemism. Of course, I do occassionally catch myself saying things out of reflex, like “have a nice day”, and when I do, I make an effort to correct it.

The worst part is, because I tend to actually mean those phrases when I say them, that I am no longer really able to express that I really am thankful or that I really do want them to have a good day without trying to pick out an unusualy way to say it, but even then, that often comes across as being contrarian or trying to be unique rather than expressing what I want to express.

And by the same token, I carry this over into my personal relationships as well. I don’t apologize unless I’m actually sorry; I won’t say it just to make someone feel better. Similarly, I won’t forgive until I actually have, though that’s seldom an issue since I usually have already forgiven someone that I felt wronged me in some way by the time they apologize. And, this last one gets me into trouble a lot, but I absolutely won’t tell someone I love them out of habit either, the “I love you, bye bye” thing is at least as bad as “have a nice day, bye bye”, except now you’re washing that phrase of any meaning and it’s difficult to find meaningful ways to express that.

I digress, but I think the whole “thank you for doing business with us” is almost always unnecessary. In most cases, we’re doing business because we’re mutually benefitting from it, so there’s no grace to be established in the relationship. If one of us is only doing it at a loss of some sort (bad experience or whatever), why should I thank YOU for something that is relatively benefitting YOU more? OTOH, I can see thanking someone in the reverse, where it might just be another normal interaction for you but it helps me a lot, I can see thanking being in order, but that’s usually on the side of the customer, not the business.

7

That irritates me, but the worst is when companies (like Comcast, for instance) end their calls with “Is there anything else I can help you with today?”

The only reason I called you in the first place is because your service, which usually just sucks on a normal level, has begun sucking on such an extreme level that I have to call and seek justice. And typically, the CSR drones are too mindless and unaware of what to do about it that they’re able to do absolutely nothing about fixing the problem, so as a result I’m more pissed and frustrated with them and the company they work for than I was when I first called. Then they ask if there’s anything else they can help me with, as in, your original problem was too hard for me to understand or rectify but I’m going to imply that we took care of it to your satisfaction, because that’s what we do, we solve problems.

Grrrrrrrr…

8

Oh, man, don’t get me started on the corporate scripts handed down from incompetent middle management.

Well, okay. :slight_smile:

I used to work at [chain bookstore]. When answering the phones, we were not allowed to answer it with “Hello, purplehorseshoe, how can I help you?” Oh, no. That wasn’t good enough.

We had to say: “Hello, thank you for calling [chain bookstore] where we’re now featuring [best-seller du jour**] for 25% off, my name is purplehorseshoe. How can I assist you today?” Which usually came out:
“Hellothankyouforcalling[chain bookstore]wherewe’renowfeaturing[best-seller du jour]for 25%offmynameispurplehorseshoehowcanIassistyoutoday?” and STILL I’d usually get cut off with an impatient interruption.

Mind you, a lot of this was during the holiday rush when bookstore lines are out the fucking door. But noooo, we had to mouth this whole long piece of garbage.
** I remember it was a Tom Clancy’s “Rainbow Six” for a long time while I was there. I can barely remember what I had for dinner last night but I remember THAT. Ugh.

9

After helping somebody with a problem or answering their question I’ll sometimes ask this, not because I have to though.

This is my first time in this kind of job. And in the beginning after helping someone I’d start wrapping up the call only for the caller to say they had another problem or another question. So now I’m sometimes worried callers might think I’m trying to rush them off of the phone, so I’ll ask if there’s anything else I can help them with and let them be the ones to tell me that nope, that’s it.

10

For me, if you’re sincere then that’s great. I’m only complaining about having to say it whether you mean it or not.

11

It’s mundane and meaningless, but I see it as harmless social lubricant.

A friend of mine that is in his upper 60’s was really annoyed the first time he heard it, he thought “Why is it any of your business what sort of day I have?”

12

Yeah, back during the 60s, the hippies all said that. My grouchy boss used to snarl, “Don’t tell me what kind of a day to have!”

13

Where I work, I often get to tell people that they cannot be helped, legally, to do what they want to do, or have what they want to have, or get their money back unless they go to court and win a suit- and I have to end with, "Is there anything else I can help you with? and if no, then “Have a nice day!”
It seems positively sarcastic to say at the end of some phone calls, and often leads to supervisor escalations where they are infuriated, or they just curse at me and hang up…

14

I work in a call center and we have scripted goodbyes that I generally ignore completely. Usually I’ll say “Have a good one!” Or “I hope you have a fun weekend,” depending on what day it is. Something that’s personalized and sounds like the way I naturally speak.

“Have a nice day,” is the lamest phrase ever, and sounds robotic no matter how much life you inject into your voice. So I will say that in my cheeriest, fakest voice when a customer has thoroughly pissed me off (it’s my way of saying “fuck off, asshole!” without saying the words fuck, off, ass, or hole).

Try it sometime :slight_smile: It makes me feel really good to say, “Have a nice day!” just as I finish talking to a jerkbutt. Then I hang up and pour chucklesauce on my coworkers.

15

Be glad that all you have to say/hear is, “Have a nice day.” Where I am now, the FL panhandle, everybody says, “Have a blessed day.” I don’t hate God but I want to say, “…and may you dance with the Devil 'til your feet fall off.”