I've been handling phone calls for three days now. I may or may not talk about the job more, but there is one interesting aspect of the job I feel more than free to comment on: Politeness.

I always make an effort to be nice to people serving me, whether at McDonald's or on the phone with SBC Communications. Needless to say, not everyone is inclined towards the same courtesies. This is particularly true when they are calling about this problem or that. I must say, however, that some people are exceedingly polite and patient.

Working for a 1-800 number, we recieve calls from across the country. There are some interesting geographic and demographic patterns that I have noticed that I would like to comment on.

Southerners are almost uniformly the most pleasent people to talk to. The more southern, the nicer. I smile when I see that the caller is from Alabama or Mississippi. The only three exceptions to this are Florida, and sadly, Virginia and Texas.

After Southerners, the most polite and patient callers are from, of all places, California. Northern or southern California, it didn't matter. Los Angeles callers have been particularly good.

The worst by far has been the northeast, starting with Virginia and moving northward.

African-American men over the (estimated) age of 25 have been great. African-American women have been either very nice or not-at-all nice. Very little in between. The younger and elderly African-American women have generally been good and the 30-50 year old range have been a little harder to handle.

Judging by packages, there is an inverse relationship between how wealthy and how nice people are on the phone OR there is an inverse relationship between how interested they are in our services and how nice they are.

Keep in mind that I'm working off a somewhat limited sample here, but I found the observations to be interesting.