Again, with the smile

Three very long days, hundreds of "end of summer" passengers, strange cities, amidst a heated political climate and a southern storm a brewin', and even though I can barely stay focused on the last two trips of the evening, I'm still smiling. On auto-pilot, so to speak, but very much, just being me.
A businessman walks out of the bathroom and asks for a Coke. Simple enough. I scoop ice, pop open a can, and grab a napkin. As I hand him the items, he says, "that is a well rehearsed smile", or something to that effect. Implying that my smile which he perceived as fake, was something I doled out no matter what the circumstance.
Although this bears witness to two facts, 1) he doesn't believe he was worthy of my fantastic smile, and 2) he felt as if asking me to get him a coke was a pain in my ass and I gave him the smile in response.
Wrong on both counts and insulting to who I am, it also reminded me what I offer up, even when on auto - a huge smile to everyone who needs one.
My response to his remark, "I smile like this all the time. I am like this, all the time".
His response, "it's annoying".
Whoa.
My smile is annoying?
Look here, Grinch...but before I could even respond, my associate, my partner in crime for three days, jumped in. "Annoying? She IS like this all the time. She is one of the nicest..." yadda yadda.
Then I laughed. I don't need to defend myself to a stranger, and how sad, to be so conditioned that you believe anyone who smiles at you is only doing so facetiously.
He then stood in the back of the plane and chatted with us for about twenty minutes before returning to his  seat. He talked about all the legacy carriers and how, "they just don't get it". How rude and awful the crews are and how our airline is so different in the way they treat customers. A common exchange between many of our customers, how much they love us and prefer us to all the other airlines.

Ironically enough, this particular trip showed another side to our passengers. We had passengers bring us chocolates, compliments and even jewelry. The three days was filled with gratitude and love from our passengers and I felt truly lucky to have my job this week. As exhausting as each day was, we received genuine appreciation from our  passengers which, sometimes, is far greater than any compensation.

By the end of this particular flight, as the gentleman from the beginning of this story exited the plane I waited up front to say goodbye personally, I asked if I was still annoying him and he smiled and said, "Actually, it's quite charming."
Yeah, that's what I thought.