Southern hospitality? Y'all do it right
I'd heard about this Southern hospitality long before I moved here. I pictured folks with wide smiles and thick drawls wishing me a nice day. (To get the proper drawl, hold on to the vowel for a lot longer, so it's niiiiiice day.) It didn't take long to find out being helpful isn't a chamber of commerce rumor.
My wife went to Chick-fil-A to get midday meals for all the movers hauling items for us when we arrived in South Carolina. That entailed handling a couple of large bags and a few large soft drinks. It was a difficult load to carry. She wasn't left to bear that burden alone. A teenager employed by the fast food palace stepped up and asked whether she needed help. He then carried much of the load, and finished with a nice "thank you" before hustling back inside. That isn't an isolated incident. My son posted a photo on Facebook recently that showed a Chick-fil-A employee with his head under the hood to help a patron who couldn't get his car started.
It isn't just a Chick-fil-A thing.
We received a robo call from our garbage haulers on the night before the Fourth of July, which would be our regular pick-up day. They said that despite it being a holiday, crews would be working on the Fourth. Our garbage cans were by the curb and picked up on schedule. We never got a call like that before while living in northern California, Oregon or Colorado. It was always a guessing game on whether our garbage service would pick up on a normal schedule. We'd put out our container on the normal day only to have it sit there all day. It's a minor irritation, but an irritation nonetheless. We had one instance in which the lack of a call turned out to be rather costly.
We lived on a hill in Eugene, Oregon, which rarely gets winter weather. A slight snowstorm and ice on the roads made it impossible for garbage trucks to get up that hill and service our housing area, which was on a semicircle atop the hill. Our home was the last home on that semicircle. It was about 6 a.m. on the fourth day of icy streets when I awoke to the sound of a garbage truck making its way around our semicircle. I threw off the covers and started running down the two stories to get to the level where our container was kept in a corner of the garage. To get that container out to the curb, I had to open the garage door, start up our vehicle, back it out, and wheel the container to the bottom of our driveway. By the time I was opening the door, the crew was leaving our next door neighbor's. I had to hurry. I started the vehicle and put it into reverse as the truck started to pass our home.
The problem was that this was a one-car garage, and my haste got our vehicle at an angle. It was such a sharp angle that my gunning of the engine put the rearview mirror on the passenger side in line with the frame of the garage door. My mirror was ripped off and left hanging. I slapped myself on the forehead as I watched the garbage crew keep on going, and we were left with a full garbage can for another week.
Yes, a robo call would have nice to receive before that early morning pick-up. I would have had the container at the curb the night before. I would have slept comfortably while the crew did its work. But that was the Pacific Northwest and not the South. Hospitality would have been most welcome.
My wife went to Chick-fil-A to get midday meals for all the movers hauling items for us when we arrived in South Carolina. That entailed handling a couple of large bags and a few large soft drinks. It was a difficult load to carry. She wasn't left to bear that burden alone. A teenager employed by the fast food palace stepped up and asked whether she needed help. He then carried much of the load, and finished with a nice "thank you" before hustling back inside. That isn't an isolated incident. My son posted a photo on Facebook recently that showed a Chick-fil-A employee with his head under the hood to help a patron who couldn't get his car started.
It isn't just a Chick-fil-A thing.
We received a robo call from our garbage haulers on the night before the Fourth of July, which would be our regular pick-up day. They said that despite it being a holiday, crews would be working on the Fourth. Our garbage cans were by the curb and picked up on schedule. We never got a call like that before while living in northern California, Oregon or Colorado. It was always a guessing game on whether our garbage service would pick up on a normal schedule. We'd put out our container on the normal day only to have it sit there all day. It's a minor irritation, but an irritation nonetheless. We had one instance in which the lack of a call turned out to be rather costly.
We lived on a hill in Eugene, Oregon, which rarely gets winter weather. A slight snowstorm and ice on the roads made it impossible for garbage trucks to get up that hill and service our housing area, which was on a semicircle atop the hill. Our home was the last home on that semicircle. It was about 6 a.m. on the fourth day of icy streets when I awoke to the sound of a garbage truck making its way around our semicircle. I threw off the covers and started running down the two stories to get to the level where our container was kept in a corner of the garage. To get that container out to the curb, I had to open the garage door, start up our vehicle, back it out, and wheel the container to the bottom of our driveway. By the time I was opening the door, the crew was leaving our next door neighbor's. I had to hurry. I started the vehicle and put it into reverse as the truck started to pass our home.
The problem was that this was a one-car garage, and my haste got our vehicle at an angle. It was such a sharp angle that my gunning of the engine put the rearview mirror on the passenger side in line with the frame of the garage door. My mirror was ripped off and left hanging. I slapped myself on the forehead as I watched the garbage crew keep on going, and we were left with a full garbage can for another week.
Yes, a robo call would have nice to receive before that early morning pick-up. I would have had the container at the curb the night before. I would have slept comfortably while the crew did its work. But that was the Pacific Northwest and not the South. Hospitality would have been most welcome.
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