I must admit that I feel that the "how are you today sir?" stuff feels pretty phony when you're one of an endless stream of customers going through a supermarket checkout and you're pretty sure you've never seen the checkout person before. I know that they really don't care much, they just want to get rid of me with the minimum of hassle and move on to the next person, which is fine by me. What really bugs me are the customers who take it seriously and spend ten minutes telling the checkout person about their aches and pains or showing them baby photos when I'm in a hurry.
