Have a nice day? I'm having lots of them across the pond (From Stroud News and Journal)

Have a nice day? I'm having lots of them across the pond

ALEX Nash, a business studies teacher at Stroud High School for 13 years, recently left the Stroud Valleys when her husband's job took them to Seattle in America.

This account of the service culture she has encountered so far is the first in an occasional series Alex will be contributing to the SNJ about her first impressions of life across the pond

Having newly relocated from Stroud to Seattle, USA, I felt I had to write about the helpful, "no problem" service experience that I have encountered here so far. N ot knowing a single person here (apart from the reason I came here in the first place - my husband - who is working while I am not currently allowed to), my first few weeks have consisted almost solely of contact with service-providers in shops, supermarkets, cafes etc.

What a delight that has proved to be.

In contrast to England, where one sometimes feels shop assistants (if you can find one) are doing you a favour if they bother to stop chatting to each other to serve you, here they can't do enough for you.

The bank personnel welcome me like an old friend, the shops can deliver appliances and furniture two days later and ask whether that's acceptable, assistants offer to bag my purchases (paper or plastic) and fight over themselves to push my trolley out to the car or carry heavy purchases for me, and all with a cheerful, friendly smile.

Despite the sceptical, rather cynical warnings from my friends back home about the superficiality and artificial "have a nice day" attitude of the Americans, what's not to like about a positive, "nothing is too much trouble" approach to life?

I am not looking for a permanent commitment from each server I meet, just good old-fashioned, friendly service.

The only negative so far? Even the helpful, friendly, "no problem" guy who installed cable so we could watch TV advised us to watch the Olympics on a Canadian channel if we wanted to see what was happening to any country other than the good old USA.