Have a nice day, or whatever

How come when someone says to us, “Have a nice day,” we sometimes feel offended or dismissed instead of welcomed or appreciated? This four-word greeting can be as fake and condescending as it can be uplifting or soulful.
We all encounter “Have a nice day” exchanges multiple times almost every day. Sometimes it’s genuine and sometimes we feel numbed. Either way, we can’t escape that these four words can make or spoil our day. Hearing the words can separate our true friends from the fake ones. It’s funny, but this trite little phrase can truly define how we feel about why we choose to live here (or stay here) and which gatherings, stores and places we frequent more than others.
We all like to believe we live in the very best place we could imagine. Healdsburg is small enough to know most of our neighbors by name. We might also know their children from school, even if our own children are in a different grade or class. Almost all the faces in our local businesses are friendly and familiar. We learn their names by their badges and they learn our names from our credit cards. Pretty soon, we’re chatting on a first name basis.
We like living in a place where people know a little bit about us, but not too much. We see each other in church, at the bank or the grocery store. We share more than four little words; we share experiences, stories and a real community.
But, try as we may wish for one another, every day is not always a “nice” day. Besides our own momentary troubles, all it takes is for  one rushed or robot-sounding “Have a nice day” to leave the opposite effect.
We can’t force everybody to always have a nice day. We can’t require all the newcomers to town to memorize all their new neighbors’ names. Business owners and corporations try to train their employees to say “have a nice day” with a smile, but they don’t always have nice days either.
The phrase “Have a nice day” is so ingrained in our everyday life that there is a syndrome named after it. Repetition, blandness, forced emotions and insincerity have ruined the phrase forever for some people.
We’d like to think of Healdsburg as a place where we all have more nice days than other places, like bigger towns, busier shopping centers or fast-changing landscapes.
We worry about too many tourists invading our hometown. We fret that newcomers without names are buying second homes here and trying to change our definition (or costs) of having a nice day.
With local housing becoming too expensive for our children and store clerks to afford, will the strangers moving in next door be the “friendly” type or the “fake” type of well-wishers?
Maybe Healdsburg should outlaw the phrase “Have a nice day.” How about, “Have a relaxing day?, or “a productive day?” Other suggestions could be “have a fun, boss, groovy or bitchin’ day.” What do you think? Maybe Healdsburg can coin its own phrase, so when we hear it, we know it’s not corporate-mandated, like chain store speak. It could be our secret handshake, how we tell the locals from those overbearing tourists.
What’s the use? Either we’re going to be genuine with one another or we’re not. How we answer the four-word phrase can be just as important as its delivery. Speak to others as you would have them speak unto you.
“Thank you, and I hope you have a very nice day, too” sounds about right. Just be careful. If we get really good at this, the next time you ask someone “how’s your day been?” you might  need lots of extra time to listen to the answer.
Meanwhile, have a nice week.
— Rollie Atkinson