Picture this: A warm, sunny Friday afternoon in late October. My roommate and I were on an adventure to buy a set of glasses. We wanted to make homemade milkshakes, watch a movie, and bedazzle our lip balms, but I was adamant that we could not use just any old plastic cups; we needed nice glasses. After walking 20 minutes to visit a wildly expensive antique store and finding no luck, my roommate and I walked by a restaurant. “I know they’ll have glasses,” I said. “Let’s just go in and see if we can buy some from them.” Why not, you know?
I explained our predicament to the woman behind the bar who waved her manager over. After a brief consultation she turned back to us. “Just take them for free.” What!? My roommate and I turned to each other shocked, we couldn’t accept this! We went back and forth, and we ended up giving them 20 bucks and walking away with these beautiful glasses.
This interaction with the Sasha’s Wine Bar employees was one of many that makes up the culture of “Midwest Nice.” “Midwest Nice” describes the cultural behavioral pattern of people in the Midwest being overly kind and polite to strangers, writes Kimberly Haala, a clinical health psychologist in Psychiatry and Psychology, in an article from Mayo Clinic…