Re: CHAT: "have a nice day"

>I'm sorry, but I'm just not getting it. If "have a nice day" is offensive,
>what is a NONoffensive way to convey the same thing? And what makes it
>offensive (or is it just something like broccoli that one doesn't like for
>no apparent reason)?
I dislike the expression for several reasons:

(1)  It's become a cliche--but not enough of a cliche to go unnoticed.

(2)  The word "nice" is so insipid.  When applied to people ("He's a really
nice person") the word still carries some significance, but in expressions
like "Have a nice day" the word "nice" has become so semantically bleached
as to be virtually meaningless.  If the best you can say about something
is that it's "nice", that's a pretty bad sign.  It's a classic case of
damning with faint praise.

(3)  For me and many other people of my generation (and no doubt the
previous generation as well), "Have a nice day" is the epitome of
the empty 'feel good' bumper-sticker sentiment.  It conjures up in my
mind the malaise of the mid-to-late 70s, when it was more important
to feel  good about yourself than to do anything about anything, and
when having a nice day was the best anybody could hope for.  Later it
was picked up as a catch-phrase by bureaucrats, PR people, cashiers,
and 'customer service respresentatives', and quickly became
synonymous with insincerity.  In short, this innocuous little expression
carries a surprisingly large amount of negative cultural baggage.

Get it?

During my brief tenure as a customer service representative, I used
"Have a good day".  Not much better than "Have a nice day", but
at least "good" is more unambiguously positive than "nice".

Matt.