Smile! At least fake it…

During the past one and a half year I have spent around 4 weeks in Greece. I was there last week (during Greek easter) and my previous visit dates back on August. I spent most of my time in Athens meeting friends out either over coffee (quelle surprise? mmm Frape, mmm Freddo) on daytime or over a drink at night. I noticed that none of the waitresses that served me would smile, and I’m not exaggerating. That was not only against me and not only women, it was against everybody, At the end I thought it was against the world. Despite any polite request addressed with a smile or any joke going around (silly or not; I’m not the one to judge) no sign of smile. Finally, during the last I tried to indicate it in a very polite way (I’d like to believe it was polite) to one: “You know, you are such a pretty girl, would you smile a bit and you’d be even prettier” and she didn’t even bother smiling, not even out of politeness, simply she kept the same bitter/sour face. Amazing!

I thought we Greeks, enjoying the sunshine and all the rest that come along, claiming we are fun people, open hearted bla bla bla, the least thing we would do is smile a bit. Especially if the job requires interaction with the customer. I hope that I was the only one to have this unfortunate feeling but I doubt. Maybe I went to the wrong places, who knows? i wonder what happened and what will happen if we keep having this attitude, and I won’t go to business and tourism (that is rather obvious) but how does this affect our everyday lives. Smile people, smile it can heart you, it can only help you !