Dear Abby: Please tell "Jennifer in Rocklin, Calif.," the woman who was annoyed with clerks who say, "Here you go" instead of "Thank you": My bank teller does the same thing, and it really bugs me.
Abby, "Here you go" is what you say to a child as you hand him his lunch and send him off to school.Managers would do well to instruct their clerks to say, "Thank you." It's more businesslike.
- Donna in Eugene, Ore.
Dear Donna: I can't believe the number of letters I received complaining about my response. Mea culpa; make that a "maxima mea culpa." Read on:
Dear Abby: Shame on you! Your response to "Jennifer" was rude and insensitive. I have always looked to your column as a place where ordinary people can express their opinions. Your response was correct, but your tone was belittling. Please reconsider.
- Jim Brock, Amherst, Mass.
Dear Abby: Like "Jennifer in Rocklin, Calif.," I, too, am writing my first Dear Abby letter - and about the same subject as hers, i.e., cashiers who merely say, "Here you go" instead of "Thank you."
Abby, you were totally wrong to side with the cashiers. There is no substitute for "Thank you," and cashiers should realize that it is part of their job to thank the customers who make their jobs possible in the first place.
When a cashier fails to thank me for my patronage, I most certainly notice it and am angered by it, and my husband thinks I am justified.
It's sad that some cashiers don't have the good manners on their own to say, "Thank you" - even if they've had a hard day. And it's worse when the managers value their customers so little that they do not make saying "Thank you" an essential part of their training.
Finally, "Have a nice day" can never replace a simple, sincerely delivered "Thank you!"
- Susan Anderson,
North Fort Myers, Fla.
Dear Abby: As a New York psychologist widely considered to be the founder of behavior therapy, I remember sitting in a restaurant with a colleague who was in the process of converting from psychoanalysis to behavior therapy and suggesting to him that snapping a rubber band would work as well as any other aversive stimulus.
When I read your column about a man doing just that to help break the habit of cursing, it brought back that conversation of 30 years ago.
Since then, this technique has entered the mainstream of behavior therapy, but this is the first time I've raised my hand to claim credit for it.
- Andrew Salter,
psychologist
Dear Dr. Salter: Congratulations, and thank you for coming forward to claim credit for a widely practiced technique.
Dear Abby: More about kids and weddings: I always got along very well by myself and had no intentions of being a married man. Then came Frances, with 3-year-old Johnny Wes and 9-year-old Kandy Lyn. Suddenly, I was 39 years old and thought, "Who wants to be an old bachelor?"
We were married on Christmas Eve at midnight. It was also Kandy's 10th birthday so, naturally, she stayed up. From that time on, when Kandy referred to the occasion, it was always, "When we married Daddy. . . ."
Kandy now has three teenage boys, but whenever this old-timer hears "When we married Daddy," his entire interior glows. Kids at weddings? You bet!
- John A. Chester,
Pittsburg, Kan.