In China, service isn't called service; it's called handling: you're not being helped, you're being ‘handled’. Without so much as a smile, without showing any interest, without asking how your day has been. This is not out of lack of friendliness but because those kinds of questions add nothing: they only cause delays.
Your problem arrives, gets solved and disappears, not because someone thinks you're unimportant, but because you’re not interesting enough for the system to waste time on. Time is scarce, and anything that doesn't lead to a solution is considered dead weight.
In Europe, they call this attitude ‘cold’ because there, they have come to confuse service with theatrics. They love empathy, eye contact, phrases like, ‘I understand your frustration.’ It feels human. The only problem is that usually nothing else happens after that, or it happens later, after consultation or after filling out yet another form that no one ever reads.
