Wh431

i was used to live in Earley close to A329M. Nice area indeed. Good luck with your search.

Wh431

i see what you are saying and may be with time i will get more used to it. I ve only been living here 1.5 years but ve been regularly visiting 20 years before that..

Having said that many times i get the feeling that friendliness and approachability is just fake and i am not sure if I myself will ever convert into an extrovert (too old for that type of change)….

I don’t agree with your other comment about the general attitude here in US vs back in the UK. In my observation nobody here wants to think beyond their role and generally have no clue abt anything other than what their task is. Also many in public sector jobs have a horrendous attitude (my wife was shocked after dealing with DMV staff here in Chicago). I realise that these folks probably get paid quite less but so is the case in the UK. I find the people there generally more polite and genuinely interested in helping you out.

Steerpike

This might also be 'regional'. New York is famous for having 'abrupt' people, and California is famous for people being 'laid back'. Chicago is, I believe, spiritually closer to NY. While the 'hippy' culture is long gone, there's still a sense of it in the air in California.

spouse of scouse

I don't know about all of New York, but certainly in NYC every single person we spoke with was lovely - from the law student working nights as bar security, who I'd had a lovely couple of chats with, who then refused to accept a tip from me because 'I don't take tips from friends' - to the woman in the subway ticket booth who, after hearing me moan that my feet were sore after walking all day, cheerfully yelled out to my husband 'you buy that girl a new pair of shoes!'.

Even the huge guy who loomed up out of the shadows when we were wandering around at night and asked for money was polite enough to wait until we were well past him before very loudly advising us that we were 'going straight to hell'

I know that being somewhere as a tourist is very different to living there but I was struck by how genuinely friendly everyone was. It's one of the reasons that NYC is one of the best places we've ever visited.

Wh431

There definitely is a big difference between living somewhere and just visiting it. Once you start living here and have to deal with people on ordinary day to day things, you realise how disjointed and non-functioning things are. For example, i booked an eye test at a chain optician here called lenscrafters (similar to UK’s specsavers) when i turned up for my appointment i was told that their comp system isn’t working and they (a) cant do all required measurements for glasses and (b) can’t sell anything on Card payment. Hence i will need to come back again to get it completed. I stood their in surprise thinking why couldn’t they just call and inform me. This never happened to me in the UK for many years using specsavers.

The other day I happened to take a bus and asked the bus driver basic question abt which direction that particular bus is heading to and will it stop at my stop, he answered very disinterestedly as if i am bothering him and told me vaguely. I wanted to take a spanish course at a local community college and was just sent from pillar to post and no one there seemed to know where do Adult learners need to go for registration. In the end I got fed up and didn’t do the course.And this kind of frustrating experience is in many things from Dentists to stores and so on…

People may sound friendly but it doesn’t mean that they are very competent in what they are doing or will be willing to take 1 extra step to help you out.

Pulaski

That just sounds like a freak occurrence that could happen anywhere. It reminds me of the last time I ever paid with a credit card and had to sign a paper receipt using the old rollerskate device to make a multi-part copy of my card; it was at an Exxon gas station near Toronto.
I have had some very strange experiences riding the buses in Charlotte, NC - specifically having to give the driver directions because they either didn't know the route or took a wrong turn and got lost ... and I'm not talking about once, it has happened to me at least four times, maybe five!

I always prefer the seat directly next to the front door, facing sideways so I have the extra leg room and can see the road ahead, so I am well positioned to give the driver directions. But I have had a driver miss an interstate exit, miss a "road closed" sign and end up in a residential area, a driver take a detour because of an accident and get lost, and one on their first day who genuinely just didn't know the route.

Separately another bus facing a tree down blocking the road was directed by the police down a road with cones across the road (police said to move the cones, which were there to stop cars taking that shortcut) and I volunteered to get out to move and replace the cones for the driver so he didn't have to get in and out of the bus twice.

Wh431

You might as well start driving the bus yourself…!

Rete

You went to a chain store for an eye exam and glasses where I would expect much to happen as had to you. I go to an optometrist for for a yearly eye exam and buy my glasses there. And, no, my healthcare does not pay for it.

There are normally bus route information and stops shown on the bus stop pole.

Didn't the website for the Community College tell what office you should go to for enrollment or questions?

Since when does friendly need to equate to competent? You stop a stranger and ask a question of them. It doesn't mean that the strange knows the answer to your question.

When I worked in Manhattan before retirement visitors were always stopping me asking directions to places like SAKS, Bloomingdale's, Rockefeller Center, were the street numbers higher going north or south, etc. Thankfully, I knew 9 answers out of 10 so smilingly I would give them the directions.

Pulaski

Well I could do a better job than a number of their drivers!

Wh431

The answers to all of your questions are obvious. Read the post again.

You can decide to go to an optometrist but not sure how is that relevant here? The chain stores are there to provide a certain level of service and act in a professional manner, not to waste others time.

Pulaski

I think Rete's point is that they do "provide a certain level of service", which is why I, like Rete, go annually to an optometrist and buy my glasses there, though unlike Rete, my vision plan covers almost all the costs, and a pair of new glasses (frame and lens) every two years, though I pay out of pocket for some add-ons such as lens coatings.

Wh431

I was drawing a comparison between Specsavers and Lenscrafters, both in the same league and same business but my experience with both ve been different. Hence the point abt ‘general level of service standards’ and competence of staff being lower in the US. Atleast in my observation so far.

Btw: my employer has a good eye insurance plan and I did visit a few independent optometrist but the variety of frames was smaller than the chain stores. Hence i tried my luck with Lenscrafters.

Nutmegger

Actually, I'd just like the opportunity to visit Wh431's UK, where the 'net never goes down, the IT is always spot-on, the shop assistants are always cheerful and keen to help, the civil servants have all the answers to the public's dumb questions, day in day out -- plus, presumably, the whole country won't go into a meltdown next week if the heat wave continues (or there are more than two inches of snow this winter).

Steerpike

These discussions have occurred on BE for decades. I have to wonder if the biggest factor is confirmation bias. I came here in '79 on vacation and loved it, then unexpectedly found myself working here in '83; first in Illinois, then California. That's almost 40 years ago. To me, the people are still friendly, competent, helpful and I feel my life is enhanced by being here. But others seem to have the opposite experience. I know I approach every stranger, every store-clerk, every restaurant worker, every tradesman, with a smile and a kind word when i can, and maybe that has a 'bounce-back' effect. In the UK, everyone seems fixated on being somewhere else - clock-watching perhaps. In fairness, I think things have improved since the 70s and 80s, when the country was in the grip of 3-day weeks, routine power outages, and such.

Wh431

you can choose to be defensive, if you wish to. I never used the superlatives like ‘Always’, just sharing my observation of actually living here. You ofcourse don’t ve to agree with me.

Surely there are many factors to everything in life and my experience may be different in a different part of the country in different demographics perhaps. I still think though that the “general, basic standard” of things is comparatively lower in the US.