Fifty kilometres can make all the difference in the world – even 15 for that matter. In a few short minutes, with a grandly demarcated frontier in between (on one side a fluttering Swiss flag and border guards in military fatigues, on the other a newly built Carabinieri outpost, with tanned officers in pressed grey uniforms and absurd caps with ski-jump brims) everything is different.

In Switzerland the roads are perfectly groomed, with teams of workmen (and the odd platoon of goats) trimming and clipping the Alpine grasses; in Italy scraggly brush threatens to invade the highway. In the villages of Celerina, Pontresina and Sils in the canton of Graubünden, the coffee is watery and for the most part dispensed from efficient Swiss machines that take all of the craft out of making; yet not far from the Italian border guards the coffee is rich and the milk perfectly steamed so that it’s thick and molten.

And then there are the national costumes – not the heavy wools and meaty linens of yore, but the contemporary dress of today. In Switzerland you’d be excused for thinking this was a nation that had banned all fashion and style magazines from 1983 onwards or perhaps the steep mountain passes had made it too difficult for titles such as Marie Claire, Grazia, Vogue or Elle to make it to newsstands.

With the exception of large chunks of eastern Europe and assorted “’Stans”, Switzerland is one of the few markets where you’ll find women of a certain age with bleach blonde hair and a skunk streak of black across the front, spikey mannish cuts that are a bit Billy Idol at the front with a touch of Swedish 1980s hockey star down the back. They are also fans of the two-for-one cut, where they go for the same short back and sides as their husbands.

South of the border, the middle classes of Lombardy and Veneto all look pretty much the same in their elevated Hogan sneakers, skinny chinos, monogrammed custom-tailored dress shirts and triple-ply cashmere jumpers trussed around torsos in fancy knots.

Most striking of all is the attitude to service on each side of the border. As customer service is something of a running theme in this column, I was looking forward to a few days up in St Moritz to catch the last warming rays of summer and have my knee checked out at the Klinik Gut. Switzerland normally scores high in my service ranking, so it might have been the combination of catching worn-out hotel staff at the end of a long season and my having just returned from the land of peerless service (Japan) that made the whole experience feel a little off. Then it might have been that all the managers were on holiday and their frontline teams were free-styling, or it could be that this particular patch of Switzerland no longer cares about delivering competent service.

In fact, save for unbeatable service at the Klinik Gut, which involved a speedy check-up followed by an MRI scan and an accommodating surgeon who said he’d work around my schedule for the operation, the mood in and around St Moritz was a bit sour and grumpy. In less-than-busy restaurants I watched diners rudely turned away because tables weren’t immediately at hand and shown the door without so much as a “Would you like to wait in the bar till a table comes free?” or “Here’s my card – next time ring me a few hours in advance and I’ll get you a nice table.”

Swiss of the more nationalistic sort will dismiss the poor service as being carried out by non-Swiss waiters, doormen and shop staff. I’d venture that most of the rudeness came from domestically bred talent, if Swiss German is much of an indicator. For a region with precious few other industries, the recently rebranded Engadine tourism authority might want to call a service summit to remind people how to flex their smile muscles and, in extreme cases, slap some of those scowls off a few faces.

It seems a pretty straightforward equation that if your sole revenue generator is tourism, then you need to get people on board who actually enjoy the business of service. It’s too difficult to find and keep good staff in the mountains for seasonal work, I hear you say? Then it’s time to rewrite the model and work on creating a 12-month-a-year business model rather than winding down for a few months twice a year. At the same time, work harder at bringing more people in from the other side of the border to replace the layabouts who seem to be doing little to retain business and a lot to ensure that visitors won’t want to return.

On Tuesday we descended from the mountains and wound our way down to Como, where the shift in service couldn’t have been more marked. At favourite men’s shop A.Gi.Emme, Alberto raced around to show the new collection, the taxi-boat driver was graceful and chatty and despite preparations for the Ambrosetti conference (an annual gathering of Italy’s great, good and not-so-good), at the Villa d’Este the tone was pitch-perfect. As half of Milan already seems to live part of the year in the Engadine, perhaps the Swiss might let them have it on a long-term lease?

Tyler Brûlé is editor-in-chief of Monocle
tyler.brule@ft.com
More columns at www.ft.com/brule