American Customer Service

On my recent trip to Boston, the rental car I was driving had a flat tire. (My first ever, not that exciting). We were just outside of Rochester, NY when it happened. After some confusion about who we were supposed to call to fix it, some guy with a tow-truck put the donut on and we drove to the nearest Sam’s Club to get it fixed.

I know we always complain about how rude Americans are and how they’re selfish and think they are the center of the universe and all that, so I was kinda expecting that when we got there. Quite the opposite. The folks at Sam’s Club were super nice, very friendly, trying to have small conversations with us, telling us about where their sons are going to college, etc. The guy who fixed the tires even gave me the address of the nearest Enterprise car rental place so we could take the car back and yell at them. My co-drivers were getting headaches, so while one waited, I ran across to the Walmart (love you Sam’s Club, but I am not buying a 1000 pack of Advil) to get some headache medicine. When I was done paying, the cashier wished me a good day and told me she hoped my headache would get better. Whoa. That to me was exceptional.

So, I made the trip out to the suburbs today to Sam’s Club, hoping maybe it was some sort of Sam’s Club policy to be polite to people. Nope. Even the samples people weren’t pushing their product on me. No hello’s or anything from the cashiers. I thought that maybe when we were in Henrietta (the town we ended up in NY) it was just small town niceness, and in Toronto, everyone is so mean to others because they are just too many people. (I personally hate just about everyone). But Sam’s Club was DEAD.

So, moral of the boring story, Americans aren’t as bad as they seem. I love you Henrietta Sam’s Club workers.