Well, maybe that’s a bit of wishful thinking. I mean I wish United would try this thing out. Not to pick on them, but hey, I’ve had a few bad experiences with them. The guy at the last rental car counter I visited could definitely benefit from this as well.
This ‘thing’ is a technology currently in use in Japan. The Keihin Express Railway Co. has debuted software technology that rates the smiles of employees bracing to face passengers. (Railcar passengers in Japan are notoriously harried and often unhappy, perhaps because of such Asian innovations as ‘People Pushers’ – attendants charged with ‘helping’ travelers into an already crowded car by shoving them in).
An employee simply faces a computer screen and flashes those pearly whites (or not) for a read-out on the perceived ‘friendliness’ of their expression. The software, developed by Japanese company Omron, grades the grin on a scale of 0 to 100. The rating is based on an analysis running on algorithms that calculates the “full potential of a person’s biggest smile.” The scan considers individual features such as lip curves, eye movements and wrinkles. The analysis includes suggestions to remedy low-scoring attempts such as ‘lift up your mouth corners’ and ‘you look too serious.’
It won’t help to ‘game’ the system, though. Right now utilizing the instrument is voluntary, and if a long day or a trying passenger gets you down, the unit provides a photo of your winning smile to remind you to cheer up throughout the day.
The possibilities are endless. Imagine requiring flight attendants to check that grimace right before facing the drunk in seat 4A, or telling you the pilot is waiting for a gate clearance. How about making gate attendants try it out before announcing the flight is oversold? I’d settle for a way to clone the happy countenances I’ve seen on some Southwest employees throughout the rest of the industry. It seems most of the FAs I encounter either ordered their smile out of the Paula Deen catalogue, or recently had intense dental work.
Come to think of it, mostly I’d like to move right past the smile detector to the lie detector.
