Interrogation Room: The Supermarket Edition

Last week, a mere 2 days after I got home from South America, my mom sent me down to the grocery store to get some food for the house (Important note: I was already doing more in the little mom-mandated field trip in GringoLand than I did in my own Chilean household - I barely lifted a finger down there. Yeah, I was fucking spoiled). 

So I get in line, and at the checkout counter, the lady is going through my grocery items. Then, 15 seconds later, out of the blue, I hear way too much enthusiastic noise coming from her. The way too enthusiastic noise manifested itself into a question:

"WELL HOW HAS YOUR DAY BEEN SO FAR????"

I flinched. I was taken about. I was shocked. Scared. Surprised. Offended. 

I felt like my whole soul had been ripped out and that this lady was going to exam it on the operating table. I felt emotionally violated. More importantly, I felt annoyed. Why the hell is it this lady's right to know what I have been up to today? And why do I have to expend precious energy to explain it to her?

You see, being down in Chile meant that there was no real concept of customer service. No one would tend to you in restaurants. In pharmacies, workers either acted like you were ruining their day by merely existing, or act like you were invisible while they would ring you up. Here's your bloqueador and your leche con chocolate. Now get the fuck out. It was something at first I was a bit turned off by. Like any average arrogant and self-absorbed norteamericano, initially, I thought, "Why don't you care about ME?? Why DON'T you want to know about MY interesting life?? 

After a while, their apathy became something I appreciated because I didn't have to perform for strangers. So, if I had a bad day, I could still be emo around them without them noticing or caring. Cry-Time in public spaces now? Awesome.

And now that I am back in the US, this interest - whether it be fake or real - in my life bugs the shit out of me. I had to quickly pull myself together at the supermarket to restrain from yelling at the lady and telling her to shut the fuck up with her artificially sugary sweet attitude towards me and get the fuck out of my business. Luckily, my gringo knowledge of social norms kicked in just in time, and I engaged in obligatory 2-minute-pretend-like-supermarket-worker-is-my-best-friend-talk and got out. 

So that was the beginning of my reverse culture shock here. My only question now is, when the hell is it going to end??