Forced smiling can be bad for your health

So now we know where Germany's customer service culture comes from...

Spiegel Online: Don't Smile Too Much, German Shop Assistants Warned


Though I have to say, I had excellent customer service from Deutsche Poste at Munchener Freiheit last week. It made me nervous.

I got a better one: Constant work can be bad for your health if you are forced to do it as part of your job!

I am pretty sure there have been studies done, too, though, that show that if you are feeling down but put a smile on your face, it can make you feel better.

Is it April 1st again?

In German psychology, it is always April 1st! They change their trends like most people change their shorts.

I've heard that life kills 100 percent of it's victims.

Yeah, the eleven years I've lived here it's been seldom that I've received customer service with a smile or a good attitude from the salesperson.

When I do, I'm always in awe and very gracicous toward the person.

Now why would it be bad for your health? Well, I didn't take the time to read the article or comments on the thread yet, however, I would venture to speculate the more you smile the more open you appear and the customers will be more demanding. So if you smile more that translates to more of a workload. If you're treated gruff and brash by the salesperson, the customer is running out the door asap.

There's interesting psychology behind the whole German shopping experience and to this day I'm still trying to figure it all out as I'm bewildered by the customer service I receive here. My customer service experience in Germany is like no other I've ever experienced before.

After I run a few errands I will check out the article.

The article refers specifically to situations where the customer is ripping the salesperson a new one, and the salesperson has to grin and bear it: a situation which does, in fact, suck royally. Though that shouldn't take away from the irony in any way. Carry on.

Most german people? Hope it is more often than they wash their hair.

Does it really say that? I didn't get that from the article.


I took it to mean that efforts to "appear" friendly cause sufferers to become aggressive because it's a costly psychological and physical effort that drains them of their life blood. Ha!! On that basis the vast majority of service people I've run across here in Munich will live to a ripe and healthy old age.

Is forced frowning also bad?

Not if it is the default setting
Seems to be the case for a lot of people on the streets, although the cure is pretty simple and does not need a prescription ... Couple of "Mass" will do the job!

I have to be fair and mention that they seem to get better when the sun shines ... Too bad it can be cloudy for long time around here

I heard this, too. In a major study, it was found that living is the leading cause of death.

I heard it was heart failure.

I can well believe that smiling at people and being friendly and polite to them is detrimental to your health if you are required to do it as part of your job in Germany. In most other parts of the civilised world, if you serve people with a smile, you can expect some kind of positive feedback like a smile in return at least some of the time, whereas in Germany it just goes completely against the prevailing culture of rudeness and self-assertiveness. A lot of Germans seem to accept it as quite normal to have orders barked at them by shop assistants - I dunno, maybe it gives them a sense of security to know that there is an all-powerful figure of authority in control, telling them what to do. Give them a polite, smiling, service-oriented person pandering to their every whim, and once they've got over their initial disorientation they'll be like a pack of wolves, ripping the poor defenceless salesperson to shreds. The stress of keeping your cool and staying polite under those conditions must be soul-destroying.

Germany is trying to brush up its customer service image to bring itself into line with the rest of the world, but it will only work if the customers play along nicely.

I heard that dying was!

My husband (during a trip to Australia) said that he found it stressful to have to smile for people he didn't know, and would never meet again. He actually described the experience as physically exhausting. He also said (and I posted something about this a few months back) that being treated with a smile and too much chit chat from service staff made him feel uncomfortable and nervous. Since then I've talked with other German friends and most of them have agreed him. To be honest, I find this a little disturbing and hope to God that one day I won't have to explain to our kids that the person smiling at them in the toy store is not a freak, but just a person who is trying to be freindly. (It's ok darling, you don't have to be afraid of the smiling people.)

My husband and I read a book recently about German culture and I found really helpful in many ways, espeically to do this with him. (Germany, Unraveling an Enigma by Greg Nees, ISBN 10: 1 877864 75 7´ - the author compare German and American cultures) One of the things that was great about it was that the author didn't just say that Germans are like this and that; he looked back over history of Germany and it's links with langauge (its reflection of values, use and socialisation), education, politics, war,...so as to try and help the reader build a more informed understanding about why. One of the things I was able to understand a little better through discussing the book with my husband was that the problem doesn't seeem to be that Germans don't want to smile, it seems to be that this type of warmth and friendliness is reserved for private spaces, contexts and relationships. The private and the public areas of life seem to be kept very separate,...which differes in my opinion to the Australian culture,..for example. (not sure how accurate this is and don't want to make any generalisations,...we're still learning about this as an intercultural couple. So if you think this author was wrong about this, then I'd be really interested in your opinion)

But,... I couldn't help but laugh when on a recent holiday to Berlin I found myself on at least a dozen ocations being greated by warm and freindly service staff - and yes, they were smiling. When I spoke with service staff in German most of them wanted to know where I was from, asked how were liking Berlin, wanted to ask my husband about Munich, and wished us a happy holiday. (this would have happen in about one third of the shops and restaurants we went into) Some people even offered advise about cool places to go, and some dodgy areas to avoid. All of this was innitated by the service staff not us, ...so I was in heaven. My husband on the other hand seemed very disorientated and unsure of how to react at those times. It was kind of like the world, as he knew it, had just jumped up and slapped him in the face. It may have been a fluke that we had this experience in Berlin, it may have had something to do with the weather on that particular weekend,...who knows. But I thought it comical that this kind of happy, smiling and engaging service was being delivered somewhere in Germany. I've lived in Munich for nearly 3 years now and I think this has happened to me here about 3 times - total. (and with only half the warmth) Don't get me wrong,...we also received the standard shit service that we normally do,... it's just that no one seemed to be emotionally scarred or sentenced to a diseased death simply because they smiled. The actually seemed to enjoy it.

By the way,... is anyone able to recommend any good books written about Australian and Italian cultures? (Aussie with Italian parent / family) I think it would also be interesting and valuable to research my own cultures as well,... just as important I think.

exactly! I have to be nice all day and smile at people that are arrogant, but because I am in a sevice industry, smile and suck it up... it does take a toll on one! Believe me, it can leave one so mentally exhausted at the end of the day, because you swallow your pride for a paycheck.
Now, not all my patients are arrogant, but, I do have a high number of 'special' people.

Reminds me of the press article a year or two ago where police in Vienna, Austria, were warned against being too friendly. I just forget whether continued breaches entailed disciplinary proceedings...

I have worked for a major pet food store and was always as friendly and happy as i could be, infact we had a list of 'rules' there and one of them was to greet every customer with a smile,but the amout of times i have asked people could i help them and nearly had my head bitten off by the force of the 'nein' i have had is amazing, lots of times the staff sometimes just have enough of being treated like shit by customers and think why the hell should i be happy for these.