Every day (and by that I mean five days a week, sometimes six) I go to work. A large part of my job is to sit behind the counter and say “Good morning” to people as they walk in our door. Sure, I have other job responsibilities – some that are all but required for me to do before we open, such as making coffee and turning on the lights … some that need to wait later in the day (like making phone calls).
The people who sign my paycheck want me to sit behind the counter and nobody needs assistance; they want me to smile and greet people as they come in. It’s not a hard job, and I love what I do … however …
Some (okay, fine, most) days I say “Good Morning” so much that I start to feel like Debby Reynolds. Now, why I seem to think of her and not Gene Kelly or Donald O’Connor who also performed that song in Singin’ in the Rain I have no idea.
I love my job. I love where I work and what I do. Yet, having to say “Good Morning” a thousand times per day, every day, without fail … it starts to get to you.
My brain wants to go in two directions at the same time. First, it wants to keep me from being a mindless drone, repeatedly saying the same thing over and over as if the words have lost their meaning. At the same time, my brain is also trying not to feel like I am such a dork that I can’t think of anything else to say.
When I start to think about it, and sometimes my brain forces me to go there, it gets worse. Yes, I am tired of saying “Good Morning!” a million times per day, but the people I say it to (and who hopefully say it back) don’t say it nearly as much as I do.
I also know for a fact that for some of them, coming into my workplace is the only social interaction they’re going to get – especially since the stores replaced cashiers with self-checkout machines and gas stations all but require you to pay at the pump. So, that means that I’m likely going to be the first human interaction some of these people are going to have, and I’m feeling bad that I must say “Good Morning!” a trillion times per day.
So now I am feeling stressed over the number of times I must say “Good Morning!” and I’m feeling guilty about it too?
UGH!
Is This A Thing?
I sometimes joke that I have this thing called CDO – what, you’ve never heard of CDO? Well, it’s kind of like OCD or Obsessive–compulsive disorder, but the letters are just in alphabetical order.
Whether or not I have OCD all depends on who I talk to. I do have some of the traits, although in my mind it’s about being organized. Yes, I keep my extensive movie collection on the shelf in alphabetical order, but that’s just so that I can find titles when I go looking for them. (Yes, I suppose I can admit that I’ve spent way too much time debating where to put box sets that have more than one movie in it, but that’s just logical, right?) Also, I like to arrange things so that they are all in a straight line, and it does bother me a little when light switches aren’t all in the up or down position.
So, it’s fair to say that some things do bother me – just not to the point of distraction.
When I mentioned to a friend of mine who happens to be a psychologist, she asked if this was just another symptom of my possible OCD?
I hadn’t thought of this because my possible OCD symptoms usually make me want to do things (like arrange my closet first by type, then by color). It’s never made me feel any ill ease when I have to do something. So, I kind of dismissed what she said. Unless maybe she was onto something.
Like many people with OCD, I’m shy and introverted and have a hard time maintaining some social interactions. I’m usually the easy one to spot at a party because I’ll be the one who isn’t there. Or, if I am there, I’m the one sitting in the dark corner doing the mental calculations on how long I need to stay before making my graceful exit.
This social anxiety does not manifest in times or locations when I am required to have social interactions, for example, at work when I have to say “Good Morning” to a quadrillion of people when they walk in our doors. The difference is that at work, there are certain standards, expectations, or guidelines. In other words, there are rules that govern what and when I can speak with others, and those rules give me the tools I need for a positive social interaction.
Recently I read an article in Psychology Today that discussed something the author (who appears to be a doctor of some sort) discussing something he called “Good Morning Fatigue Syndrome”.
This is, the article assured me, a very real thing caused by the stress of social pressure of constantly greeting people in a scripted or mandatory way. Sometimes, a Repetitive Behavior Loop (like this) causes us to act in an unconscious way, as if by habit, that can create a disconnect between our intentional behaviors and our subconscious actions. Or sometimes doing the same thing over and over, like saying “Good Morning!” a quintillion times per day, becomes inauthentic when you’re trying to be sincere. Perhaps your mind starts to think it’s cheesy, saying “Good Morning!” a sextillion times per day.
So, what did the author say was the best solution? Well, the so-called “Doctor” advised that I should get a new job, as if that was any kind of solution. Their second piece of advise – set boundaries and tell your supervisor that you would prefer to greet people in other ways. (I’m not sure if the suits in the corporate office would appreciate that one.)
Otherwise, the only solution would be found in either cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) or exposure/response prevention (ERP).
I don’t see the need to visit a psychotherapist because I’m getting leery of saying “Good Morning” a septillion times per day.
Finding A Solution
Since none of the options that the author gave seemed like viable options, I took a deeper look at the article. He stated that a new job would not only separate the person from the source of their anxiety, but it would also (hopefully) put them in an environment where there were other options. So, I wondered … did I have other options?
Well, maybe I did.
One of the biggest job duties I had was to greet people when they came in. Technically, it didn’t say that I was forced to say “Good Morning!” to the octillion visitors we get every day. My first thought was to find something else I could say as well, or in addition to Good Morning. Saying “Bonjour” or “Buenos días” would be cool, maybe confuse people with “Guten Morgen” or “Dobroye utro” which might not be a good idea if I would have to explain why I am talking to someone in Russian these days.
So, I did spend a couple of days trying to come up with something new to say. “Welcome in,” wasn’t too bad, although most people didn’t respond to it and two hours later I was back to “Good Morning!”
Another day, I tried a bunch of sayings, from “Top of the morning” to “Joyous morning” although that felt too much like “Good Morning!” And several people asked if I was “Irish”. “G’day mate” is apparently a phrase that confuses a lot of people in small town Ohio so that one wasn’t repeated more than a few times.
Then, one morning, without even trying – I stumbled upon the answer that has, so far, worked.
I probably see anywhere from five to seven hundred individual people every week. Some of them I see every day, others I see two or three times per week. Some, I maybe only see every other week, once a month, or otherwise only on rare occasions.
I sometimes joke that I never forget names, nor can I forget faces. What I do forget is which face goes with which name.
When members come in, their name gets displayed on the little computer screen next to me, so I try and study their face, repeating their name in my head and then discovering at some point in the future (maybe an hour later, maybe the next day) that I have already forgotten which name goes with which face.
In my own defense, I do see a lot of people at work and that’s enough names and faces to learn that it will cause anyone’s eyes to rotate in opposite directions. It also doesn’t help that so many of them have the same first name – which is why when seven people named “Heather” come in over a ten-minute period, I start looking around or Wynona Ryder.
When I went from trying to come up with new ways to say, “Good Morning!”, and started to focus on trying to remember people’s names – somethign odd happened.
“Morning, Bob. How are you doing today?” I might ask to someone whose name was, hopefully, Bob. He’d stop, we’d have a brief conversation, then he’d head past my desk and do whatever he came in to do.
Then the next one would come in. “Howdy, Steve,” I might say. “It looks like a nice day out there?” So, Steve would stop; we’d say a few lines, and then he’d go his merry little way.
After a bit, I started to realize that I was starting to remember people’s names – as well as learning useless factoids about them. “Hi Janet. How’d your son’s team do in the Sportsball tournament?” I might ask.
Then I asked someone named Heather, who had told me that they watch “way too many movies” if they’d seen any good Wynona Rider movies lately, and got a blank stare. “Who?” She said, checking something on her phone. “The mother from Stranger Things? She’s made movies?”
It suddenly dawned on me that the movie I was referring to came out 14 years before Heather was born – so, I had to explain to her that movies like Beetlejuice, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula do exist – and she was also in this movie where all the mean girls who went to her school was named “Heather”… (She came back a week or so later and informed me that she saw the movie and “it was entertaining” – but I don’t know if that meant she liked it or not.”
Not only was it kind of fun getting to know the customers at work – it was also making my Good Morning Fatigue Syndrome symptoms go away since I hadn’t said “Good Morning!”, an Octillion times that week.
I’ve stayed at it since and have noticed that our customers have likewise taken an interest in me. I honestly had not felt like I belonged there, except to go in, do my job, then leave and hope my paycheck will keep me till I get the next one. I realize that a large part of that stems from my own insecurities and self-doubt – but for now, I’m enjoying it.
I do wish that I would have realized that I had found the cure for Good Morning Fatigue sooner – then I could have written the author of that article back. I’m sure he would have wanted to hear abotu it.
