A few weeks ago I was in a drugstore and the lady clerk promptly barked at me when I asked for soap. Customer service in Europe is not exactly winning gold, especially in Germany, where people’s skills and willingness to help – let alone enthusiasm – are pretty much foreign concepts. Whether you are on the phone with your internet provider or addressing an employee in the supermarket, you may be treated like an inconvenient nuisance, rather than the reason why they have a job. On the other hand, the startling over-friendliness found in customer service in the United States can be a bit daunting to outsiders. What if we met somewhere in the middle?
Linguist Gone Foreign 