In the end, we made it to our meal, reuniting with Jason and fiancee, Salina, at a great seafood restaurant in Scottsdale. The experience was memorable not just for the food and the friendship, but the service at Ocean 44, which was outstanding. It got me reflecting on service and what it means, how it’s delivered either side of the Pond. In a former life I was responsible for sending hospitality students to the US to get internship experience that I superficially thought would be second to none – superficially because initially I had only the word of others in the industry that this would be the case.
Then I started visiting students in hotels and resorts under brands like Marriott, Montage, and independent resorts like Sea Pines on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. I got a taste of that welcome and service experience both in the places I stayed or visited and as I travelled around the country to meet with employers. I started to realise just what hospitality means in the US, and how different it can be to the standard fare doled out in too many British establishments.
Things are improving, and of course the global brands often have much higher benchmarks, but I always felt that the best of my hospitality graduates were often not those with the highest grades, but those with genuine hospitality at their core, a genuine desire to make someone’s day, week or vacation. This is the reality I was discovering the longer I spent in the States.
Over previous weeks and months as a visitor of a different kind, I found myself more often than not on the receiving end of generous welcomes and enthusiastic yet empathetic service in hardware stores, restaurants, gas stations, supermarkets. It felt human not robotic, as too often the scripted service providers had previously appeared. This sort of hospitality is learned through experience, not in the classroom, and comes from a fundamental interest in people. Yes, college education can enhance it, through reflection and better understanding, but a kernel of that people-centredness (not just customer-focus) has to be there in the first place.
My first truly memorable experience of American hospitality was on what seemed a long drive from South Carolina through Georgia to visit students at a resort called Palmetto Bluff, itself somewhere I received outstanding service as a guest. But it wasn’t in this spectacular, polished resort, but in a little roadside diner – just what I had been looking for to break the journey. Looking only for food and drink I soon realised I’d struck gold, as my waitress gave me a guided tour of the menu, lessons in how to eat grits, sweet or savoury, what went into making biscuits and gravy, and just how proud everyone was that Dolly Parton had shared her own favourite recipes with them while dining there. I’m now confident that this was no outlier, but a sign of things to come.
A decade or so later I’d say a good eighty or ninety per-cent of the servers, service staff and professionals I’ve come into contact with have been truly excellent. Naturals. So much so that I’m starting to question my tendency to give praise where praise is due, because so many people are just SO good at their job. The positive side to this of course is that such praise occasionally makes the one on the receiving end cry. And that’s far from my intention.
Another side of service, and by extension part of my evolving American awareness, is the many ways people address each other, whether as neighbour, service giver or receiver, or just as another citizen. The word ‘sir’ comes to mind. I was sufficiently aware this had its place in American society on another of my internship tours around the US, specifically when I was dazed and confused by the Florida highway system as I drove in a hire car to my next appointment. I was sure that, if I stayed on this particular interstate, I could drive for miles before realising I was going the wrong way, at best doubling the time to the resort, at worst finding myself in a different state before I knew it. I decided to pull off and find somewhere to take stock, only to find that my sanctuary was already occupied by a state trooper in his car, complete with sheepskin collar, sidearm and any manner of ways to restrain or detain.
I immediately fell into ‘genuflection’ mode, where politeness seemed the best strategy: “Excuse me, sir, I’m visiting from the UK (‘no shit’ I’m sure he thought, from my accent and hesitation) and can’t work out which road I need to take.” Despite my first impressions, and ineptitude at navigation, the trooper couldn’t have been nicer, more relaxed and helpful. Tourist assistance training is maybe part of the Floridian Police Academy curriculum, but I suspect not – he put me at ease (sort of – the badge and sidearm were still weighing a little heavy on my subconscious) and put me back on the right track before turning to observe the passing traffic from his perch once more.
I’d become a little used to being called ‘sir’ by European students, who also had a habit of calling me ‘professor’, but people on the street called me ‘sir’, travelers on tour called me ‘sir’, and of course anyone in a hotel, restaurant, supermarket did the same. It slipped so easily into the conversation as a form of address, I quickly started using it myself once I was coming back to the US so often. I’m naturally a respectful, deferential at times, and rather self-deprecating individual, so this way of referring to someone came quite easily, partly because my school days (like those of my two sons) were spattered liberally with ‘sir’ when speaking, or referring, to teachers. It’s quite a British thing, as much perhaps as in the American school system, though at university (at least the ones I studied or worked at) the ‘sir’ is lost and unless they’re actually a professor, it’s Mr, Mrs, Ms or even first name terms. I didn’t realise how familiar it had become, after a month outside the UK, until a sales person in a shoe shop back in Perth addressed me with ‘Can I help you mister?’
Then there is the greeting ritual, the dance of enquiry into each other’s wellbeing: Hello, sir, how are you? Good, thanks, how are you? Oh, just fine, now how can I help you? … And it’s genuine, or at least appears so. If you deviate from the tradition, revealing something amiss, people are sorry to hear that, and maye even ask if there’s anything they can do? This is people you’ve never met, and may never do so again, and it’s not been wholly isolated events. Occasionally the sales assistant or server will deviate from the script too, and this can be entertaining. In a hardware store I frequented in Philipsburg, they got to see me as a regular, surprising though this clearly was to them. “Still here then? People don’t usually stay around. How can I help?” Maybe this was concern over my sanity, but it felt somehow welcoming and refreshing that I was being noticed, even if it caused a degree of confusion. Neighbours greeted me with a variety of routines, each their own. A howdy! or a hi there! from some, a wave from others – adults and children alike. A wave of a bag of steaming poop from dog owners before they self-consciously lowered their hand – a dog-walker’s tradition familiar wherever the poop scoop has been successfully introduced. There’s a tendency to wait until you introduce yourself (and/or your dog) before people go beyond the wave to warm, firm handshake (poop-free hand, hopefully) and then on to enquiry, observation and ultimately oversharing. It can be a rapid evolution. So if ever there’s some good free advice, it’s to take the initiative if you want to get to know your neighbours. Many of them will jump right in with you, if you only throw off your armbands and go for sink or swim. Metaphorically of course.
So we returned from Phoenix to Philipsburg on a ridiculously early flight to Chicago, calling reception to order our golf buggy (‘only in America’) at 4am to meet the cab that was to take us to the airport. It still took most of the day to get back to Centre County – yes, I only recently realised it’s spelled the good old British way. Apparently it’s because Mr Webster and friends hadn’t standardised American English spelling when the county was established in the 1800s, much like St Andrews having no apostrophe because that little bit of grammar hadn’t been invented yet in the 1100s. The next day, a quick turnaround to head back to Chicago and on to Edinburgh, then the bus to Perth (cheapskate that I am, with my bus pass).
The whole journey took some twelve hours, and took its toll, crossing the Atlantic so soon after crossing the country. But I was back in time for some last minute preparations for the final tour of the season. At least, now, I could empathise with my new arrivals – as long as I didn’t nod off on the bus mid-commentary in the first few days. Time, too, to get some much-needed fresh air with a riverside walk where I’d been accustomed to taking Jackson before his departure. That took me by surprise, soundly and sadly missing him as I wandered along the banks, amongst the trees that were once so familiar to him and me both. Now they lacked something vital. It reminded me how different a life we were having in a neighbourhood outside a town in rural America. An island life of sorts, without a car, so I resolved to make better use of opportunities to get around town and out into the undoubtedly spectacular countryside, once I was back in the autumn – A fall I was looking forward to. Every journey does indeed begin with a single step. We’d both taken a few significant paces over the past five or six weeks, and I knew he was loving his new environment, new pack, new family, but Jackson did deserve an adventure, a proper adventure, and that was surely still to come.
In the meantime I had a flat to buy, a different change of address and in order to do that, there was a house to be sold, belongings to move, and bureaucracy to deal with at every stage.
International-Eyes.org 