Thank you so much!

I buy an insignificant item from a department store. The cashier takes my card, processes the transaction and hands me my receipt and card.  I say "Thank you" and she says "Thank you so much!". I cringe.  

My 'thank you' was sincere, hers was insincere and out of place. Adding the "so much" made it even worse.  Nothing personal against the girl - she did her job just fine.  She rendered a service and for that I was grateful.  She should have ended our interaction with a more sincere response. "You're welcome" or "Have a nice day" would have been better.  Thank you so much - for what?

You may think I'm too pedantic or critical, but I'm not.  Let's take our thank you's serious please!

Being thankful and expressing gratitude is important to me.  I'm sure it is to you too.  But we are conditioned (is brainwashed too strong a word?) to say thank you even when we don't mean it.  And that I take issue with.

What if you had a daily or weekly quota of thank you's and you had to make do with that?  Like money, food or any other limited resources that you need to survive.  Would you squander them and diminish their value by indiscriminately using them as sentence fillers?  I don't think so.

I'm glad we have a never ending supply and I'm grateful to be able to say thank you as often as I like.  I make sure I mean it everytime.  Without the gratitude that goes with a genuine thank you, our lives would be poorer. 

Thank you so much for reading.