Personal Narrative: A Cultural Norm

I sat at the table, grumpy and confused. I look up to see a grinning face at me. Not a normal happy grin, but a big, goofy, “I know I’m being stupid” grin. The grin passed slowly around the table, my dad, mom, and two brothers stare at me intently, mouths wide, teeth showing. Finally I give in and let out a smile and a laugh. I will never remember exactly why I was so unhappy that day. Perhaps I had a rude customer at work or I got a bad grade on a test. It clearly was not important enough to remember later on. There was an idea from that evening, an idea that I wanted to test. I wanted to know if just smiling at someone, you could get them to genuinely smile back, maybe even make them a little happier inside. This is not, I learned, something I could test at home in the United States. I have found that it is a cultural norm to be pleasant, polite, and to smile to everyone in the United States. Even if you are strangers. So where could I go? Vienna.
You will find their personalities direct, unhappy, and most of the time without a smile. While there is nothing wrong with not smiling, I wanted to see if I could get some Viennese to smile back. The first test was rather minimal at Merkur. I collected everything I wanted to purchase and walked to the register. Once the woman started ringing up my order, she softly said her hello. I looked at her directly in the eye, gave a big grin and said hello back. She didn’t really look up long enough to realise or react to the smile, but I was not going give up so easily! Everything was rung up and I handed her money. When she handed me my change, I looked at her again, smiled big and said thank you. She saw my smile and instantly gave me a toothy grin. My first test