"There you go."

When did “There you go” replace “Thank you” when a waiter hands you the check or a cashier the change from your purchase?

     I first noticed this one summer while vacationing on Cape Cod. After stopping at a local market one morning, I placed my coffee, newspaper, a half-gallon of milk, and a few bagels on the counter. The clerk added up the inventory and unceremoniously slipped me my change.

     “There you go,” he said without inflection, and backed away.

     I waited. Long pause. He turned back.

     “Did you want a bag for that?” he asked in a tone that put me on the defensive. Was he conserving, I wondered. Saving bags for regular customers perhaps? This was, after all, before the green initiative.

     No, I’ll just juggle everything until I get to on my car and try not to drop anything, I thought.

     “Yes, please.”

     Once again I was told, “There you go.”

     Was he channeling Ronald Reagan, who infamously put down Jimmy Carter during their 1980 presidential debate?

     On my way out, I held the door for a family coming in. Not one of them made a move to grab the door and no one said a word. There I go indeed.

     Could it have been my New York accent? Maybe it’s just a New England thing, bred by a stoic indifference to the cold winters and years of angst over the failures of the Red Sox (this was pre-2004) rather than just incivility.

     But since that day, the Red Sox have won two World Series and that bored and indifferent business interaction has not changed while it has migrated to other parts of the country.

     I’ve been to restaurants, diners, and stores in and outside New York and conducted innumerable commercial transactions with wait staffs, cashiers, and clerks. All too often nowadays, the check or the change is presented with the now-uncommon “There you go.” Sometimes with a smile, other times with a straight face.

     Tempted as I am to ask, “Did you mean ‘Thank you?’ ” instead I usually wanly reply, “Yes, there I go” or, “There you go.”

     Is it possible that the economic reports are all wrong and that business is so good that common courtesy is now an extravagance? Is the customer no longer always right?

     I suppose it could be worse. Think of poor Oliver Twist asking, “Please, sir. I want some more.”  In return, he was physically and emotionally abused and then banished. How much different and mundane his life would have been if the master had only refilled Oliver’s gruel with “There you go.”