Casual
Caldwell, Christopher
Casual A SORRY STATE The woman at the hotel front desk, who bore a name tag reading Jessica Doodle, must have got high marks in Service with a Smile class at hotel management school. She beamed at...
...Well, here they are, right here...
...In almost no time I was stomping across the hotel lobby in the direction of Jessica Doodle...
...They waddled off sullenly, as if they'd heard a rumor that McDonald's was about to run out of Big Macs...
...It turned out to be not that kind of place...
...Hello, Jessica," I said...
...And...
...Forget love—it's being an American service employee that means never having to say you're sorry...
...Yo u did...
...Maybe taking orders from a computer all day renders a person so passive and fatalistic that he winds up not believing himself responsible for anything...
...I also learned that, in a kind of sick joke, these were called "Freedom Passes...
...It was dinnertime when we got to the front...
...He looked down at the receipt and said, "Yeah, it should be $18.64...
...Hey," I said, "that can't be right...
...You can pick up your tour passes, sir, down the hill at the Visitors Center...
...she said...
...she beamed...
...The total came to $118.64...
...Such reassurance, ultimately, is all an apology is...
...This happens to me all the time lately: not getting an apology in a situation where any person with a milligram of courtesy would offer one...
...Or maybe all the Marxist warnings about technological alienation are finally being borne out...
...My family planned on spending this afternoon at Colonial Williamsburg, but instead we spent it standing in line in a place that looks like an airplane hangar...
...she repeated...
...But instead of giving them to us, you sent us on a wild-goose chase...
...What I want is an apology...
...I guess so, sir, unless there's something else I can do to help you...
...What fun for you...
...They did...
...Well, duh...
...So I sent my family back to the hotel...
...And here they are, right here...
...Big mistake...
...And when I got to the front of the line, they told me you had my passes...
...So we got into another enormous line, which crawled like the ones at airport security checkpoints...
...Maybe we should blame the American tendency to solve everything through lawsuits...
...Yes, I did...
...We had advance reservations, but the people manning that desk were knocking off early...
...You are such a wonderful, fascinating man...
...They're just situations in which one is left with the impression that the world is indifferent or hostile until one is reassured otherwise...
...She tapped at her computer...
...She gave me a broad smile, as if to say: It's that wonderful man again...
...Em...
...The atmosphere was about as relaxed as the embassy roof during the evacuation of Saigon...
...Her eyes were twinkling with sincerity...
...Her joy was undiminished...
...As she tapped my information into her computer, she looked like she was about to explode into tears of joy...
...Hello, Sir...
...Those crazy cut-ups...
...From her tone, I got the impression this "Visitors Center" she was talking about was a 95-room château overlooking the Mediterranean...
...These are not confrontations, and I never seek to turn them into fights...
...Hmm," the agent said, "This is not where you pick up your passes...
...What I'm saying, Jessica, is that when we arrived, you had our tickets...
...Is that all you have to say...
...Maybe the hard-and-fast rule of the courtroom— Never Confess to Anything—has seeped out into the public at large...
...CHRISTOPHER CALDWELL...
...She beamed at me as if I were every present under the Christmas tree, and said, "Welcome, sir, to Colonial Williamsburg...
...As a result, we spent the whole afternoon standing in line unnecessarily...
...When I emerged from the front of the line an hour later, I was told that each individual had to be photographed for his own pass...
...but she implied it...
...Your passes are waiting for you at the hotel front desk...
...It might as well have been because he mis-keyed my purchase...
...She didn't say Thank God you're finally here...
...By the time I'd reassembled the family in the Visitors Center, the line was twice as long...
...I was not going to yell at Jessica, but I was not going to leave without an apology either...
...So I left without an apology...
...No, sir...
...It was full of shoving parents and complaining children, the former keeping the latter in line by means of the occasional slap...
...I said...
...she beamed...
...I assume you'll revise the amount...
...A few weeks ago, I bought a couple of cheap paperbacks in Borders from a clerk who had a big nose ring bored through his septum, as if the bookstore job were only a sidelight and his real calling were as a draft animal...
...Whatever the cause, it seems likely we're approaching the End of Manners...
...Why should I? These people are uniformly "nice...
...Wow...
...It's not...
Vol. 7 • April 2002 • No. 30
