Ask Margar-etiquette about How to Treat Service Workers

Dear Margar-etiquette,

Why do otherwise polite people become so dismissive toward cashiers, servers, and customer service workers? I regularly watch people ignore greetings, bark orders, and act irritated before an interaction even begins. Have we forgotten there’s an actual human being standing there?

Watching and Wondering

Dear Watching and Wondering,

I do not think most people wake up in the morning intending to be rude to the barista, the cashier, the receptionist, or the person answering the customer service line. But somewhere along the way, many of us began treating everyday interactions as obstacles to get through rather than as moments with another human being.

We are rushed, distracted, overstimulated, and glued to our phones. We order through apps, check ourselves out at kiosks, and increasingly interact with screens more than people. Convenience has quietly trained us to expect efficiency over connection. Unfortunately, that mindset can spill over onto the actual people still doing the work around us.

The cashier is no longer Ashley or Marcus. They become “the line.” The server becomes “the order.”  The customer service representative becomes “the problem.” And once a person becomes a function instead of a human being, courtesy is often the first thing to disappear.

You can see it everywhere now: customers carrying on full phone conversations while ordering, people refusing eye contact, barking requests without so much as a hello, acting personally offended by policies the employee did not create, or treating workers as emotional punching bags for frustrations that started long before they walked through the door.

Of course, poor service exists. Some businesses are disorganized. Some employees are disengaged. Customers absolutely have the right to ask questions, speak up, and expect professionalism. Etiquette is not about silently accepting bad treatment.

But good manners do ask something important of us: that we remember the humanity of the person in front of us, especially in brief interactions where it is easiest to forget.

A greeting matters. Patience matters. Eye contact matters. A sincere “thank you” matters. Not because service workers are fragile, but because dignity matters.

One of the quietest forms of disrespect is acting as though someone is invisible while they are actively serving you. The person bagging your groceries may be on hour nine of a shift. The hotel clerk may have just been yelled at by three guests before you arrived. The waitress balancing six tables may also be balancing childcare, bills, exhaustion, or grief. We rarely know what another person is carrying. And truthfully, this is not only about kindness toward workers. It is about who we become when we stop extending basic humanity in ordinary moments.

The smallest interactions reveal us. Manners are not a performance for special occasions. They are daily reminders that every person deserves acknowledgment, even during a two-minute transaction over coffee.

Where manners meet real life,

Margar-etiquette