Hello, Hello, Hello

The other day I walked into a Home Depot store and was quickly greeted with a hello.
And then another and another. Each of these orange vested employees must have been instructed by store management to obviously greet each customer they come in contact with. Probably just another way of reaching out to the customer to build a good repoire.Once I found what I was looking for, I made my way back toward the front of the store where I was greeted with another hello. Only this time it was the same guy who greeted me just a couple minutes earlier. Either he forgot what I looked like and assumed I was just another customer,or he is just programmed that way to acknowledge whoever walks by. In any case, I could have been sarcastic and said something to the effect of,"You just said hello to me two minutes ago,don't you remember? Hello?"
But I kept my mouth and shout and accepted his second greeting.

I remember my very first time visiting the nostalgic Notre Dame Football Stadium. As we entered the gates each usher that came in contact with us were instructed to greet us with,"Hello. Welcome to Notre Dame." This form of greeting at Notre Dame has been around for many,many years. And each time I heard it on my first visit there brought chills down my spine; mostly because of the excitement of finally getting a chance to walk into the prestigious stadium that some call Hallowed Ground.

Another one of my favorite Seinfeld episodes is when Kramer goes into a bank where they will pay you $100 if you are not greeted with a hello. And so when the bank teller acknowledges Kramer with only a Hey, Kramer tries to cash in. He goes straight to the bank president and explains the situation. The president calls the teller in question over and asks him if he greeted Kramer; he explains he said Hey. With Kramer taking this form of hello as not the proper greeting, a situation arises. The president calls over three more tellers to ask their opinion in the matter. Each greets and acknowledges Kramer with a different form of hello:

"Hey"

"How you doin'?"

What's up?"

The bank president calls a little pow-wow between himself and his tellers and then acknowledges Kramer,

"Okay, you received a greeting, it starts with an H, how's $20 bucks sound?"

"I'll take it!" Kramer anxiously replies.

My normal acknowledgement of people whether I am at work,church,or just out and about anywhere is,"Hey." And yes,you may literally take that as a hello.

Just a friendly reminder that any friendly greeting is better than none at all.