“Thankyouhaveaniceday”
Bring back the pause.
If someone says, “Thank you. Have a nice day.” then you give them a toothy smile and move your arms like the robot from Lost In Space, they’ll probably think you’re weird. But if you couple your arm swing with a robotic voice and reply, “Thankyouhaveaniceday,” suddenly you’re an asshole.
I can’t help myself, and maybe it’s just me, but whenever someone says, “Thank you, have a nice day.” I often hear it as one word.
There’s this guy who works as a bagger at the grocery store down the street from my house. I’ll go out of my way to checkout through his line if I see him working. Not because he’s the best at bagging groceries; he’s mixed meats with toilet bowl cleaner, but I don’t care. His farewell is the best. Every time. Without fail.
He looks at me through his twisted glasses and gives the most definitive deadpan, “Thank you, have a nice day.” But when he says it, it is definitely, “thankyouhaveaniceday’. Then, I give him our secret handshake: I say, “thankyouhaveaniceday.” We both then look at one another without expression and go back to our lives.
It’s moments like these I live for.
Still, I don’t know what’s better; “thank you, have a nice day,” or “my pleasure.” Hard to tell.
The last time I had a hankering for a chicken sandwich with some waffle fries, I popped into a Chic-fil-A and placed my order. The full-time cheerleader at her part-time job punched a few keys and snatched my ten-dollar bill. I offered my usual “thank you,” to which the exuberant young cashier gave me that tired old “my pleasure.”
Then it happened. As if I were possessed by the spirit of everyone who swings by on Sunday, I said, “Ohhh, I hope it’s myyy pleasure.” in the most stoic tone I could muster.
(proving it’s possible to go from zero to asshole in four seconds)
This isn’t a referendum on manners, far from it. Though maybe it should be, in my case.
Saying thank you is polite, and it feels genuine. Saying thank you, and have a nice day, is also polite, but similar to Chik-Fil-A’s, my pleasure, it feels somewhat canned and therefore comes across as insincere, especially when you take out the pauses between words.
Like this:
Thankyouforreading-haveaniceday.
