Personal Narrative: A Cultural Norm

I sat at the table, grumpy and confused. I look up to see a grinning face at me. Not a normal happy grin, but a big, goofy, “I know I’m being stupid” grin. The grin passed slowly around the table, my dad, mom, and two brothers stare at me intently, mouths wide, teeth showing. Finally I give in and let out a smile and a laugh. I will never remember exactly why I was so unhappy that day. Perhaps I had a rude customer at work or I got a bad grade on a test. It clearly was not important enough to remember later on. There was an idea from that evening, an idea that I wanted to test. I wanted to know if just smiling at someone, you could get them to genuinely smile back, maybe even make them a little happier inside. This is not, I learned, something I could test at home in the United States. I have found that it is a cultural norm to be pleasant, polite, and to smile to everyone in the United States. Even if you are strangers. So where could I go? Vienna.
Viennese people are not known for being very friendly, even many native Viennese say so.
You will find their personalities direct, unhappy, and most of the time without a smile. While there is nothing wrong with not smiling, I wanted to see if I could get some Viennese to smile back. The first test was rather minimal at Merkur. I collected everything I wanted to purchase and walked to the register. Once the woman started ringing up my order, she softly said her hello. I looked at her directly in the eye, gave a big grin and said hello back. She didn’t really look up long enough to realise or react to the smile, but I was not going give up so easily! Everything was rung up and I handed her money. When she handed me my change, I looked at her again, smiled big and said thank you. She saw my smile and instantly gave me a toothy grin. My first test
worked. My second test did not go quite as easily. I was in the city centre at an A1 store. I needed to buy a new sim card for my cell phone, thus requiring a little more interaction with the person helping me. I walked up to the man at the counter and explained my situation to him, smiling the entire time. He didn’t even flinch. His face remained serious, without any hint of a smile in his entire life. He asked me questions and we got everything sorted out. Still no smile. At the end of the interaction, we learned that my phone was locked on a network in the United States, which meant I couldn’t use my phone until it was unlocked. This frustrated him, considering he went through all the work for nothing. I looked at him, smiled, and said it was fine. I told him I would keep the sim card and figure it out on my own. Then he smiled and laughed a little. It may have been that I was leaving and he no longer had to help me or that I had actually broken him down and got him to smile, I will never know for sure. But what I do know is that he smiled in the end. So the next you are out in Vienna and you find that cold shouldered, unhappy person, give them the biggest and brightest smile you have. Sometimes it takes time, but do it long enough and they will smile back. They can’t help it. A smile is contagious.