Wave Maker

How does it strike you when someone tells you to “have a nice day?”

Usually, it’s a supermarket checkout clerk or fast food drive-thru attendant. She has taken your money and given you change with a simultaneous “thankyouhaveaniceday” in an expressionless monotone. Does this salutation cause you to go forth and do your best to oblige?

Call me a cynic, but it has been my experience that people who do not know you don’t really care if you have a nice day. You could have a perfectly miserable day – a desperately foul day – and it would not affect their lives. What would they say if you gave them a report the next day? “Remember when you told me to have a nice day? Well I tried, but everything went wrong. I dropped the groceries in the parking lot, had an at-fault accident, got fired from my job and received an audit notice from the IRS.”

I think they’d call 911.

Do the people that care about you say “have a nice day?” Not likely, but this doesn’t concern me, because I know they wish me well without having to engage in maudlin sentiment. If my business partner ever told me to have a nice day, I’d suspect he was hatching an embezzlement plan.

I think that when I leave for work in the morning and my wife tells me to have a nice day, she means it. I am pleased that she so cares for my happiness. But then, she might only wish it so that I am not an unbearable grouch when I return.

What is “nice,” anyway? My sixth grade teacher instructed me to “avoid bland adjectives.” Nice is bland. It is also ambiguous. Did you ever “nice going” or “nice job” when you broke the lawn mower or got a D+ in algebra? Yes, I know, that’s sarcasm.

Sort of like what the traffic cops say after he has handed you a speeding ticket.

“Have a nice day.”

You too officer. I mean it.