Story (III of III): My One British Friend.

My one British friend was telling me that he knows he's doing something wrong in customer-service type situations in the U.S. since he pisses all the counterpeople off wherever he goes since they glare at him, but he can't figure out what it is...

As it turns out, in Britain, he said, you really don't talk with someone in that type of situation even to do chit-chat, since that would create some sort of friendship with a presumption of deeper meaning, so the expectation is that you just talk about what you want, since that's what you're there for.

So, he said, he went up to a hardware person in the aisle at the store and was like, "Pardon me, no one is at the key-making counter, could you ring someone up there so they could help me?"

"Damn," I was like, "That sounds passive-aggressive like you have some other shit going on and at a moment's notice you'll be taking it out on the poor person."

"No!", he was like, and he was really shocked, and so I told him that he should pretend that they're a friend that he has to ask a favor from, and to ask harmless questions about the weather etc. if he recognizes the face of someone at the pharmacy grocery store etc.