I had an errand to run at a stock brokerage house last week. This particular business is located in a huge, big city skyscraper with all the trappings and appearance of bustling commerce and unmistakable success.

The brokerage firm maintains suites on one of the highest floors of the building. First, you register with the visitor desk on the main floor and get a visitor badge. Then, you pass by two security guards. Next, you take an escalator to the second floor of the huge, soaring lobby. It is there you choose from a bank of elevators that will whisk you skywards.

Impressed yet? I certainly was. And up on the 50th floor a view awaited me that was nothing short of incredible, breathtaking.

The view was not the only thing that greeted me up on 50. There was also an empty waiting room, a locked entry door and a vacant desk with magazines and a phone with instructions to summons someone inside the offices. Oh yes, there was also a note for the UPS guy. Too much information, thank you.

So for all the appearance of grandeur, the trappings of success, the security and the view, what was missing from the equation was someone to greet the visitor.

What price do you put on hello?

I wasn't interested enough to ask the obvious. It wasn't my stock or financial interest that brought me to this particular door. But I wonder, even now in retrospect, if the big wigs at the firm know at what cost comes the lack of a greeting.

Maybe there's no greeter for security reasons. That doesn't really make sense to me. Maybe visitors are few and far between. I'd like to think my money was with someone popular! My guess is, it's plain, old cost savings. But wow, if the keeper of one's investments can't afford someone at the front desk, well, it gets an investor to thinking.

Greetings, such a simple concept. And yet...

Have you ever noticed the flashing messages on the cash register at checkout counters all over?

"Greet the customer," the screen reads, then after the sale is rung up, "thank the customer."

Apparently some corporate types think "howdy" has something to do with business success.

This is an area of society where small towns and rural communities shine. Greetings are aplenty. They tend to be shared with pleasure. I don't think there's a clerk, cashier, or counter person in Carroll County who needs his or her cash register for a reminder to offer a greeting.

Down in Indy, there might be a few.

Frankly, I'm always amazed when greetings are withheld. And I'm convinced that when they are withheld, it's for a particular purpose. They are withheld to distance, to discriminate, to dismiss. Greetings are rarely withheld for noble purposes.

I have a new favorite grocery store for food shopping when I'm doing my city stint. It's my favorite because of the checkout options. In addition to the traditional cashiers, there is self-checkout.

I choose self-checkout every time.

I choose to do the work of checking out myself to avoid the feeling of being invisible. I prefer to wrestle with those hard-to-open plastic grocery bags than have my cashier and the next one over talking over my head or beneath my chin about when they are getting off and how stupid "Phil" is for not...blah, blah, blah.

And one more thing, my self-checkout register, it always greets me with a flashing hello.

Now, about those clingy, little plastic grocery bags that I can't seem to pry, peel or plunder open...

Any suggestions?