Hidden or overshadowed by U.S.
President Trump’s coined term, fake news, American retail’s utterly
contrived, and thus fake jargon went unscathed by consumers in first few
decades of the twentieth century. Even nonverbally acknowledging the verbiage spewed
out by employees and even front-line managers in a retail store or coffee shop
as if the jargon were legitimate subtly enables and thus extenuates the sordid
trend. Were enough customers to question and even object to the “corporate
correct” lines, perhaps the feedback would move its way up managerial hierarchies
and result in cleaner, more transparent conversation at the store level. To the
extent that business culture pervades a society, changes are greater that the verbal
artifice will be received as if it were real, and thus a valid way of
communicating. Perhaps the more general question concerns the extent to which
linguistic artifice saturates American culture and has even come to be viewed
as genuine. The subtle influence of business culture in America may be vastly overlooked.
Perhaps the most contrived verbiage utilized strategically by retail managements is, I do apologize. Especially fake is the corporate apology when for your inconvenience is added. That the customer has been inconvenienced by a managerial decision that is in the financial interest of the company without the manager being willing to compensate the customer in any way for the “inconvenience” renders the word itself, as well as the apology, utterly fake. It may even be considered to be passive aggressive, especially if the manager could offer to compensate the aggrieved customer. An apology is not in itself compensation, even if it feels good to hear the word, but such a feeling should not lead to the conclusion that the apology is genuine. In fact, customer-service employees, such as at call centers, are trained to apologize for virtually anything because apologizing is free. In a pro-business societal culture, customers may leap to the conclusion that even such an apology, even when a company wrongs a customer and the management could compensate the person for the harm or cost but refuses, is genuine. The astute customer might reply, unfortunately I cannot accept your apology because your company has not solved the problem but could do so. The use of the word unfortunately is just as fake as when it is used by an employee or manager as if the outcome were unfortunate also for the company, which is not the case because it benefits financially by not solving the problem or compensating the customer.
The underlying brain sickness behind
the corporate apology can be detected when, after replying, unfortunately I
cannot accept your apology, the customer is treated to yet another apology!
With such passive aggression (i.e., in the sheer disregard and thus disrespect
of what the customer has just said), the angered customer could also be repetitive:
Unfortunately, I cannot accept your apology. Astonishingly, even that
statement may be insufficient to stop the verbal diarrhea on the other end.
Perhaps the line of apology as an appeasement strategy is so entrained by
supervisors that the underlying pathology triggered in the employee lies in the
brain’s reversion to a primitive, reptilian stage.
Another, not so passive aggressive,
instance of fake managerial jargon in retail is the fake greeting as a customer
enters a store. When done by security guards, however, any greeting is
inherently passive aggressive. Translated into real meaning, such a greeting as
welcome means Just so you know, I’ll be watching you. The
managerial decision to fuse the two roles of greeter and security guard at the
entrance of a store reveals not only a basic disregard for the comfort of
customers, but also an unconscious sadism, wherein the infliction of discomfort
and even pain in another person gives pleasure to the culprit.
The sheer fakeness of
greetings by employees and store managers when customers are entering a store
even before they are oriented to the new surroundings can be seen in Starbuck’s
corporate directive to have store employees say Welcome in to customers
as they enter, as if welcome and come in make any sense fused
together. An astute customer could reply, Greetings! Such a way of
saying hello is so stilted that it can communicate the acknowledgement that the
communication is utterly contrived and fake rather than genuine. Perhaps the
way to eventually end the linguistic managerial fakeness is to give employees
and store managers a of their own crap in return. The exchange of genuine and
fake, from customers and employees, respectively, is unfair to the customers,
as it is insulting to speak genuinely only to receive trite, contrived pieces
of company jargon, especially if every employee is utilizing the same words.
A third instance of contrived jargon concerns a retail company’s managerial decision to revert to Happy Holidays immediately after Halloween, as if the words Thanksgiving and Christmas were toxic even though both holidays are official U.S. holidays and thus completely legitimate in all of the member-states (each of which recognized both holidays, at least as of 2026). To single out two major holidays as if they constituted cups of bland, generic water is not only dogmatic, but also passive aggressive against Americans who legitimately express positive sentiments about either or both of the two holidays. It is interesting—meaning ideologically convenient—that on the day after Christmas, the same employees who had been saying Happy Holidays suddenly can’t stop saying, Happy New Years. The fact that not every American celebrates every holiday does not invalidate any of the official holidays; nor does the fact that some people dislike an official holiday.
It is arrogant, even presumptuous, to demand that other people refuse to acknowledge an official holiday that a person dislikes. In enabling this sordid, even pathological mentality by substituting the passive aggressive “greeting” Happy Holidays for Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas, retail managers, whether in stores face to face with customers or in corporate management, do not realize that the appeasement is both enabling and passive aggressive. The astute customer could think of an equally generic response to convey a refusal to accept the squalid subterfuge as if it were not actually hostile and ideological. Perhaps Have a happy 24 hour period may be sufficient to convey the acknowledgement of the unsuitability of the generic holiday “greeting,” but something else equally generic and more oriented to holidays may be better suited as a reply. “Wishing” employees Happy Holidays for every other holiday is one possible tactic.
If the generic holiday applies to Thanksgiving and Christmas, then the
same greeting applies to Independence Day, Veterans Day, Memorial Day, Labor
Day, and Halloween. After all, some American Black people object to the first
holiday due to slavery existing when the Declaration of Independence was
announced on July 4, 1776, some Quakers may object to Veterans Day and even
Memorial Day, and some rich industrialists in labor-management disputes might
object to Labor Day. Evangelical Christians may object to Halloween due to its
devilish connotations, preferring instead All Saints Day on the next day. Is the
name of every American holiday to be forbidden in retail settings just because
at least somebody objects to a given holiday? It is unfair to capitulate to only
the detractors who harshly accost people who mention Thanksgiving or Christmas
by name. In doing the bidding of those detractors, retail managements take
sides ideologically and even impose the ideological bias on customers whose
mention of either or both of the two legal holidays is entirely
legitimate and therefore should not be countered with Happy Holidays as a
virtual slap on the face. Astute customers may dismissively retort, also in passive
aggression, Of course you do, as well as wield the Happy Holidays club
themselves on every other legal (and other) holiday.
The extent to which retail managers in stores and even at corporate headquarters engage in what is really passive aggression in the guise of appeasing customers so not to lose any has not been made transparent to the vast majority of American consumers. Taking Happy Holidays superficially at face value enables the grinches who have lashed out verbally at employees merely for saying Happy Thanksgiving or Merry Christmas. Employees and managers alike should have replied, Thanksgiving (or Christmas) is a national holiday in the United States. The corporate path of least resistance can itself be problematic, especially if enough consumers in America become aware of the sheer manipulative artifice being utilized in the retail sector and are offended by the ungenuine, scripted replies by employees and store managers. Resisting the generics with generics may cure the patient or at least shift the disease to defense.
