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Comment by olalonde | Hacker News Reader

I wonder how good it is at defecting fake smiles and attitudes. Because I'd rather interact with non-smiling staff than someone who is obviously faking it for the camera.

Reminds me the "Welcome to costco, I love you" scene from Idiocracy: https://youtu.be/ZIFCWpn4qQ4?si=nJpGjA33-sf5QE_Z

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There's a funny anecdote about Walmart trying to open stores here in Germany, and when the business eventually failed, apparently one of the reasons was that German customers were routinely freaked out by the completely fake smiling staff and the weird company motivational chants in the morning.

When you see the sort of pearly white stereotypical American diner smile almost everyone would associate it with insincerity and fakeness or gullibility.

Also as a side note, that may be a pretty good benchmark for how clever AIs are. How many systems can figure out how the "hide the pain Harold" type of image is actually perceived by people?

Worked for Lidl in Germany in spite of much fussing over it at the time of introduction. Over a decade ago, I think? The tacky fake smile and greeting at the cashiers, they didn't have to do the chanting. Though that have seemed to calmed down somehow, from my memories of my more recent trips to the REICH.

> Because I'd rather interact with non-smiling staff than someone who is obviously faking it for the camera.

I've been on the receiving end of both numerous times and I'm not sure which I prefer if I'm honest.

- Door greeting. I prefer a fake smile. I'm not going to interact with you.

- I have a problem. I'm agnostic as long as you can help me.

Having just thought about it - there's different levels of fake and the shallower the interaction the less I care about your fake smile. But if we're at odds over an issue then I definitely don't want you to smile. That's comes across as a sociopath to me.

Interesting discoveries I just learned about myself.

> Door greeting. I prefer a fake smile. I'm not going to interact with you.

What's even the point of a door greeter if nobody interacts with them?

Its a psychological thing. Cuta down on shoplifting, makes you more apt to buy something if you have to pass the same persone coming in and going out, etc. They would not hire them if it did not bolster the bottom line.

The first thing you see when you enter a store is a friendly and representative member of your community. You get a quick hit of that local, hometown vibe to suppress any feelings that you're stepping into a faceless, corporate machine that's swallowing up your local economy and sending it mostly to Walton's descendants.

Oh yeah, also got to check those receipts for objects too large to put in a bag.

> Door greeting. I prefer a fake smile. I'm not going to interact with you.

Is that actually still a thing? I remember hearing of it being a thing in the US, but I would kind of assumed it would have died out as the US economy approached full employment and wages rose. Never actually seen it when I've visited the US, but then I was only in large cities with very high labour costs.

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