OK, America, things are looking up. Maybe not with the airlines. Or housing. Or Wall Street. But on Main Street things are better than they seem.
How do I know this? I’ve taken an unscientific poll of one.
But her opinion counts for a lot and here’s why: She’s from Europe and she’s worked at a coffee bar (think Starbucks) in both her home country and here in the U.S.A.
What she noticed about Americans should make all of us stand tall (no matter what the media headlines say): “Americans are kind.”
And she meant that in a Grateful Traveler sort of way.
What led her to this conclusion? “My friend and I landed in San Francisco with no idea how to get around. We had the world’s tiniest map and great big huge backpacks and every time we stopped to look at the map and get our bearings, someone stopped to help us. We didn’t ask. They just stopped. Every time.”
Once she was settled in and got her job (don’t worry INS, though raised abroad, she was born in this country and can work here legally), her first-hand encounters with the locals left her with these impressions.
“Working in a coffee bar is like working at a tourist office. Everyone, from everywhere in the world, seems to walk through the door.” Even the staff represented the proverbial melting pot. There were workers from New Zealand, Mexico and Ireland, plus multiple states in the union—Kansas, Texas, New Mexico, Minnesota, Alaska, and all different parts of California.
Working in such a cultural hot spot, here’s why she gave Americans an A-plus. “At home, you might interact with people in service industries for years and never know so much as their name. Here, American tourists treated us with respect and regulars treated us like friends.”
There was the regular who would read a book, then bring it in to share so everyone could enjoy it. Another steady customer passed out half-off coupons to some of the best restaurants in town, making it possible for those on meager incomes to sample some of the better local fare. The staff from San Francisco Museum of Modern Art regularly gave them free passes—even going to the trouble of finding out what time people were finishing their shifts in order to get the tickets correctly timed.
And then there were the foreigners, i.e., the same kinds of people she had served at home. “In Europe, people rarely try to use your language so you don’t hear a lot of ‘please’ and ‘thank you.”
But in America, even the foreigners acted differently. “It was weird. People who in Europe might have treated coffee bar workers with contempt or indifference were suddenly really nice.”
Her conclusion as to why this would happen? “I think the natural kindness of Americans was rubbing off on them.”
So pat yourselves on the back, America.
Forget red states, blue states, stories about road rage and people not getting along. Take it from a foreigner. Most Americans, even when pressed for time, will remember to be polite, go out of their way to help and treat even the “lowly coffee-bar worker” kindly.
But she does have one warning for Americans—get too picky with your order, which apparently we have a tendency to do, and no matter what kind of coffee you ask for, you are going to end up with decaf.
By Jamie Simons for PeterGreenberg.com.
Read more entries from the Grateful Traveler series:
Or read the post that started it all: An “Eskimo” Showed Me the Way.
