THE WOMAN at the hotel front desk, who bore a name tag reading Jessica Doodle, must have got high marks in Service with a Smile class at hotel management school. She beamed at me as if I were every present under the Christmas tree, and said, “Welcome, sir, to Colonial Williamsburg!” She didn’t say Thank God you’re finally here! but she implied it. As she tapped my information into her computer, she looked like she was about to explode into tears of joy. “You can pick up your tour passes, sir, down the hill at the Visitors Center!” From her tone, I got the impression this “Visitors Center” she was talking about was a 95-room chateau overlooking the Mediterranean. It turned out to be not that kind of place. We had advance reservations, but the people manning that desk were knocking off early. They waddled off sullenly, as if they’d heard a rumor that McDonald’s was about to run out of Big Macs. So we got into another enormous line, which crawled like the ones at airport security checkpoints. It was full of shoving parents and complaining children, the former keeping the latter in line by means of the occasional slap. The atmosphere was about as relaxed as the embassy roof during the evacuation of Saigon. So I sent my family back to the hotel. Big mistake. When I emerged from the front of the line an hour later, I was told that each individual had to be photographed for his own pass. (I also learned that, in a kind of sick joke, these were called “Freedom Passes.”) By the time I’d reassembled the family in the Visitors Center, the line was twice as long. It was dinnertime when we got to the front. “Hmm,” the agent said, “This is not where you pick up your passes.” “It’s not?” “No, sir. Your passes are waiting for you at the hotel front desk.” In almost no time I was stomping across the hotel lobby in the direction of Jessica Doodle. “Hello, Sir!” She gave me a broad smile, as if to say: It’s that wonderful man again! “Hello, Jessica,” I said. “My family planned on spending this afternoon at Colonial Williamsburg, but instead we spent it standing in line in a place that looks like an airplane hangar.” “You did?” she beamed. What fun for you! “Yes, I did. And when I got to the front of the line, they told me you had my passes.” “They did?” she beamed. Those crazy cut-ups! She tapped at her computer. “Well, here they are, right here!” I was not going to yell at Jessica, but I was not going to leave without an apology either. “And . . . ?” I said. “And here they are, right here!” she repeated. Her joy was undiminished. “Is that all you have to say?” “I guess so, sir, unless there’s something else I can do to help you.” Her eyes were twinkling with sincerity. “Em . . . What I’m saying, Jessica, is that when we arrived, you had our tickets. But instead of giving them to us, you sent us on a wild-goose chase. As a result, we spent the whole afternoon standing in line unnecessarily.” “Wow!” she said. You are such a wonderful, fascinating man! So I left without an apology. This happens to me all the time lately: not getting an apology in a situation where any person with a milligram of courtesy would offer one. A few weeks ago, I bought a couple of cheap paperbacks in Borders from a clerk who had a big nose ring bored through his septum, as if the bookstore job were only a sidelight and his real calling were as a draft animal. It might as well have been because he mis-keyed my purchase. The total came to $118.64. “Hey,” I said, “that can’t be right.” He looked down at the receipt and said, “Yeah, it should be $18.64.” Well, duh. I assume you’ll revise the amount. What I want is an apology. These are not confrontations, and I never seek to turn them into fights. (Why should I? These people are uniformly “nice.”) They’re just situations in which one is left with the impression that the world is indifferent or hostile until one is reassured otherwise. Such reassurance, ultimately, is all an apology is. Maybe we should blame the American tendency to solve everything through lawsuits. Maybe the hard-and-fast rule of the courtroom– Never Confess to Anything–has seeped out into the public at large. Or maybe all the Marxist warnings about technological alienation are finally being borne out. Maybe taking orders from a computer all day renders a person so passive and fatalistic that he winds up not believing himself responsible for anything. Whatever the cause, it seems likely we’re approaching the End of Manners. Forget love–it’s being an American service employee that means never having to say you’re sorry. –Christopher Caldwell
