Another thing I miss about Indiana is just how damned friendly everyone is. In D.C., you’re lucky to find a cashier, waiter, attendant or salesperson who speaks English. Also, everyone who has a service job in D.C. would rather be doing something else. D.C. also straddles southern and North Atlantic culture. So there’s a hint of Boston/New York City bite, too. Consequently, you get awful service, rude service, curt service, and that’s if you get service at all.

In Indiana? It’s all about “what can I get you, sugar,” “that’ll be $12.99, hon,” and “did you get gas, too, darlin’?” Hell, I even got a “sweetie-pie” today.

I’m getting to this very sad story:

I went to a local chain chop shop this evening to get a haircut. I was hoping to hit the barber just on the edge of town — a throwback barbershop, complete with spinning candy stripe sign, hot lather, and striaght razor. Alas, he was closed. I was bummed. You just don’t find many hot lather/straight razor joints anymore.

Anyway, I reluctantly found myself a Great Clips (I have real short hair, so it’s hard to butcher it too badly), where I got my hair cut by a typically Hoosier, very sweet, just-short-of-obese woman who looked to be in her late twenties. As she was cutting my hair, she quickly accelerated our small talk into some load-unbearing — “If I’m not as friendly as I could be,” she said, about five minutes into the haircut, “it’s because my fiance dumped me three days ago.”

Hmm. A little more than the haircut I came in for, but what the hell. She went on. I listened. Asked questions. I felt kinda’ bad for her.

After the haircut, as I was paying, she ran into some problems with her computer. It was a touch-screen set-up, but no matter how hard she flicked the monitor with her (very long, very painted, very Indiana) fingernails, the computer wouldn’t cooperate.

“Dammit,” she said, almost in tears, “even the computer doesn’t want my touch anymore.”

Whoa. Now I was almost in tears.

I left her a nice tip.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 29th, 2002 at 7:35 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.