Ah yeah, still have a copy of Empire somewhere, but never been able to get through it.
@Tea, I'd personally separate this new over-friendliness from the more 'traditional' American customer service schtick, which tbh I've always found fine, because with the latter it seems to happen more when the person serving genuinely has time to talk, and ends up in a conversation. Which, while banal, is at least a simulacrum of genuine human interaction. In fact, I'd go so far as to say I often liked that aspect of 'US culture' when going to the States. I mean, when I've worked in shops in the UK (which, alright, is ages ago now, so before the age of affective labour perhaps), sometimes it has been nice to engage a customer in brief conversation just to make the day go that bit quicker/out of genuine interest. I certainly wasn't doing it to impress/satiate a middle manager.
The thing with the Pret affective labour is that it makes everyone talk exactly the same, off virtually the same script, and the interaction is so brief that there is no genuine engagement whatsoever, cos there's a queue of 30 people behind you just waiting impatiently - it's a kind of knowingly post-human pseudo-interaction. Plus it involves the dreaded false smile.