When I was a kid growing up, I was taught respect and courtesy. These traits were taught from a young age. This not only taught me how to treat others in my life, including strangers, but also how I should be treated as an individual.
As corporate giants such as Wal Mart have taken over the world over last 40 plus years, we have traded in respect and courtesy in favor of the inexpensive and cheap merchandise these retailers peddle. Our insatiate desire to have more and more has increased these retailers have jumped in and stolen from our society respect and courtesy once commonplace amongst us.
As these employers need more and more employees to staff their growing business they are relinquished to hiring anyone that breaths. This new crop of employees have grown up in a world where they can get anything they want. They are typically young egocentric kids that have no respect for anyone and this carries over to their work at these retailers. The retailers are unable to fire them because they need so many employees to run the store, management accepts their behavior.
We as consumers have traded respect and courtesy in favor of the low cost, cheap merchandise they peddle and we accept this to feed our own vanity with the cool cheap stuff we buy.
This problem has proliferated and become so commonplace that it now exists in nearly every experience in every location with every person we meet. Respect and courtesy of others has been lost. We have accepted rude and belligerent treatment from so many employees in every store, restaurant and shopping interaction for so long, that it has become the “normal.” Employees get away with it because the few complaints that management will receive is brushed off. They accept it because we accept it. There are no consequences for this behavior.
The meaning behind customer service is dead!
In restaurants, we tip, not for the service but because it is expected of us. We have let the retailers and restaurants tell us how they will treat us and we have blindly accepted their bidding. In doing so, we have killed respect and courtesy in every part of our lives.
We don’t say thank you when a door is held open for us. We don’t wave kindly thanking the car that let us into the congested street. We don’t return a kind smile. We don’t say please and thank you.
In sacrificing respect and courtesy in favor of the cheap, we have cheapened our world and the diminished our own richness in life.
jisbell22 