Showing the Right Amount of Teeth: Staying Professional


It has come to my notice that a lot of people do not know what to do with their dentition when they find themselves in a professional setting. Maybe I am not the right person to give this kind of advice. To be honest, I have never had a 9 to 5 job and the fact that I am a student is no excuse. What happened to using the holidays? Well, who needs experience for this kind of talk? I will be speaking from the customer's point of view today, and I believe I am more than qualified to play this part. After all, the customer/client is always right, yes? Definitely.

Back to my point. Is it acceptable to smile in a professional setting? Of course. It is almost a requirement! Smiling has a way of working its magic and putting the customer at ease. Sometimes, it even assuages the anger of a furious individual; possibily one that has had to stand for hours. On the contrary, if one is unfortunate enough to meet a frowning or aggressive worker at the desk, he/she may feel self-conscious or even irritated.

...something like that
Occasionally, when a punter(client) feels trapped in such a scenario, he/she may drop unprecedented comments such as, 'na me send you work?' and truly, no matter how rude this might sound, one can see where the individual is coming from. Clients are only at your desk to be attended to. It does not matter how long you have been at your desk or how hungry you are or even how the fan/air conditioner decided to malfunction on that day. Always remember that you are paid to attend to EVERY customer. It is difficult; everybody knows that, but it is what you are paid for. (My apologies to people that are not duly paid to do their job, but still have to do it anyway. My heart goes out to you and on behalf of the costumers who do not know what you are going through, I humbly apologise.)


Now, this post can never be complete, if we do not mention the workers that smile 'too much' (especially those that are self-employed). Left to me, I will feel more comfortable with the irate worker than the overly excited one. Am I a sadist? No. It just happens that a bogus smile screams psycho or serial killer or desperate whether you believe it or not.

I once entered an eatery to have breakfast. I was in the middle of my exams and cooking was considered a waste of time then. Hence, I settled for eating out. When I walked into the small building, I noticed the newly painted walls and the multicoloured chairs and somehow I was not at ease. The fact that the place was empty, did not make me feel better. So I just sat there and waited to be attended to. I had no other choice. The menu was an oral one (just like in every small-scale eatery in the country). After placing my order, I tried to use my phone to distract myself. My food was served in record time and I would have devoured it peacefully, if the cook/owner did not arrive every five minutes to see how I was doing. His smile was not one of those attractive ones that could lure you into placing another order. It was downright spooky, stretching mercilessly from ear to ear. All I could hear in my head was PERVERT! PERVERT! PERVERT! When I noticed he was soaked in sweat, it became UNHYGIENIC PERVERT!

Imagine a combination of these two!
 I wanted to disappear, but my meal refused to cooperate and come to a quick end. Everytime the man disappeared to the back, all I had to do was blink, and he was there again. After listening to a litany of all he planned to cook for the next meal, I swore never to come back to the place. I could only imagine the buckets of sweat he would empty into his pot. He became my Typhoid Mary (or Joseph depending on how you looked at it).

I still went back, but believe me when I say it was a hunger emergency. I've not been back since the second time, and despite the fact that he cooked relatively well, I had no plans of  enjoying his 'unique dishes' (as he called them) ever again. Looking back, I realised that the man's real sin was not his sweating. That could have been sorted out. It was his ever-present nature and that creepy smile that constantly dared my stomach to return my meal to the table. It was enough to put me off and it must have put others off too. I truly felt sorry for him and even sadder that I could not educate him. I did not want to hurt his feelings. He was probably just a happy man that wanted to keep his customers loyal.

It therefore goes without saying that we can scare people away in the workplace by not smiling at all or even by smiling too much. Truly, it can be stressful to wear a smile for the whole day, especially with a high rate of nasty costumers. In that case, all we have to do is be pleasant to the people we meet. Transferred aggression can be very frustrating and it has done so much harm in the working environment. So has overenthusiastic smiling. Stay informed, beautiful people.


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