The general idea in business is that waiters, shop assistants and such ought to be polite to the customers. It was different in the old Soviet Union: the service personnel demanded politeness from the customers. It was understandable. Firstly, all business was government-owned, so there was no competition. Secondly, there was workforce shortage, so you could hardly afford to fire bad emplyees. Thirdly, the centrally planned economy fixed the prices below market value, which meant that the demand for wares and services significantly exceeded supply.
In spite of the capitalist economy, today's Western Europe seems to be on its way to forgetting what service is and where servants belong. The apparent reason is the equality obsession prevalent in the ruling leftist ideology. I remember a waitress in Germany who intruded into me and my companion's conversation as if we were guests at her home or something. And I remember when we were having dinner on a Greek island, and there was a middle-aged Swedish couple at the next table, and the man kept calling the waiter "sir" - like, he would loudly and jovially say "thank you, sir" when the waiter brought him the menu.
It's many years since I read in an advice book that you shouldn't wai Thais back when they wai you. The reason is very simple - there are complicated rules as to how high you should raise your hands and whom you should wai in the first place. I mean, I watched a Thai news broadcast recently, and there was a male newsreader and a female newsreader, and at the end of the broadcast they both waied, and the woman raised her fingers slightly higher than the man. So when you are not thoroughly familiar with their culture, you are bound to do it incorrectly, making yourself ridiculous and people around you embarassed. Unfortunately, many Farangs just think that they have to return the politeness, or they simply feel that waiing is so cute, so they imitate some kind of a greeting gesture they have seen in a Chinese movie.
But that is nowhere near as ridiculous as the scene I witnessed at an eatery a few days ago. A tourist couple next table had paid their bill and was leaving, and the waitress said "khoop khun kha", and the man answered "khoop khun kha". After that, I began paying closer attention to it, and amazingly I kept noticing several male tourists saying "khoop khun kha" or "sawatdii kha".
For those who are not getting the joke - Thai for "thank you" is "khoop khun". The sound written with "o" is actually something between a and o, such as in the English word "gone". "Kha" is the politeness particle which you add to the end of a sentence to indicate that you are being polite. (Actually the "o" in "khoop" is often pronounced short, and the "a" in "kha" is pronounced long, so "khoop khun kha" would sound like "khop khun khaa".)
The catch is that only females say "kha". If you are male, you are supposed to say "khrap" instead. So, a man can never say "khoop khun kha". He can only say "khoop khun khrap".
Similarly, the common greeting in Thai is "sawatdii". So when a Thai woman says "sawatdii kha" to you and you wish to reply in Thai, you must say "sawatdii khrap" when you are male, and "sawatdii kha" when you are female.
Thais often use the politeness particles in English, too. You will be hearing things like "seventy-eight baht kha", simply because no one has told them that "seventy-eight baht please" would sound just perfectly polite to us.
It's hilarious how some Farang tourists are too egalitarianist to accept subservience, but yet too close-minded to bother to find out what is appropriate in one or another culture and what isn't.
Once at a bookshop in Bangkok, a shop employee had to pass between me and another customer, a Thai. He did that crouching, apparently feeling that his head should be lower than that of that Thai. (I was taller than him anyway.) Will I ever see that kind of politeness returned by a Farang tourist?
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