They’ll ask me to do something, and then a few seconds later they add, “Please, thank you,” as if they realized that they have to say it.
They’ll ask me to do something, and then a few seconds later they add, “Please, thank you,” as if they realized that they have to say it.
This is just my conjecture but the fact that it’s a Mexican restaurant seems relevant - it might be cultural; I’ve noticed that plenty Mexicans (and people interacting often with them) are considerably informal, even for Latin American standards. As a side effect, politeness words end sounding a bit stronger and more verbose for them; requests and the likes are probably done in a more direct way, if the request is no biggie.
I think that it’s easier to explain with an example. Imagine that someone told you “if you don’t mind, could you kindly provide me the menu? Thank you very much in advance”. It would sound weird, wouldn’t it? As if the person was being excessively indirect for something so mundane. I think that that’s how your usage of “please” sounded like, for her.