Robotic

Moe (my lovely bride of 38 years) and I made a rare foray into the big city recently.  On one of our stops we did some shopping in a multinational retail chain store.  

Upon checking out, I was struck by the disconnect between what the cashier was saying versus my mental reading of his authenticity.  Per the script, he said things like, "How're you folks doing today?" and "Having a good day?" and "Did you find everything you were looking for?"  

Between these well-scripted exchanges meant to forge a positive relationship with us his eyes were wandering past us, in disinterested observation of other things going on.  I'm not sure he even heard our responses.  He even yawned at one point during the exchange.

Perfect, but not pitch perfect.  Right stuff, wrong way.

In effect, he was robotic.  I'm sure the management folks of that company are proud of the money, time, and effort they put into their training systems.  However, the critical link in meaningful human interactions is and always has been authentic engagement.  Some do it quite well naturally, some do it quite well by faking it, some don't even pretend to care, and the equally egregious kind (like the fellow mentioned above) do it robotically.  

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