One of the pleasant surprises about Texas has been the awesome service - pretty much everywhere you go.  The wait staff at restaurants are always super-friendly and attentive.  In the Northeast, probably half the restaurants have staffs that look like they are thinking, "WTF am I doing here waiting tables?!?"  And they start flinging the food at you and sneer at you when you ask for more water.  And I don't want to say what happens to people who leave less than a 15% tip - bodies are found floating down the Hudson River on a regular basis (at least the ones that aren't tied down properly).  I know a guy who left a $170 tip on a $1,200 dinner bill (that's 14%) and the waiter came by and asked if the service was okay - because he was used to getting more.  Um... sorry if the $170 for 15 minutes total of your time was insulting.  Anyway, the guy crossed out the tip on the receipt and left him nothing.  But down here, they just all seems so happy to be bringing our food - it actually starts bordering on being creepy.  I want to know if they take any drugs before their shift.  I'm thinking "probably."  Or maybe it's all the sweetened iced tea that people drink down here.

And the people at the supermarkets actually care about their jobs and take pride in what they do.  Like there's a guy at the local Walmart, whose sole job it is to greet the people coming in and hand them a shopping cart.  Whaaat?  The friggin' Walmart!  And the people will fry you up a fresh batch of chicken if you ask them to.  I could walk into the best department store in the Northeast and have some stuck-up bitch turn her nose up at me because I'm not going to be interested in being bombarded with whatever fragrance she is trying to sell.  Or maybe it's because I've been known to ask them to spray me below the belt, but whatever.  Location location location.

And last week, we went to the Lexus dealership to get our car serviced and we were just blown away at how nice the facility was and how attentive the people there were.  I guess having gone to the Lexus dealership at one of the most expensive towns in the Northeast, I just assumed that was all there was.  Nope.  There was a guy who actually opened the car door for us!  The waiting room actually looked like it could be part of a nice hotel lobby.  What was unbelievable was that the basic service was half the cost of what it was in CT.  HALF!!!  And they had a cafe, various complimentary beverages and a bunch of computer terminals for my use.  It was pretty awesome - until they had to escort me out for having the internet porn too loud.  But hey, you live and learn.

But Wow!  People who actually take pride in their jobs.  Having lived in the metro New York area most of my life, I didn't think such a place existed.

(In case you are wondering, I was not the "guy" who left a 14% tip (I'm a great tipper), and I was not escorted out of the Lexus.  No comment on the below-the-belt cologne.)