Everyone should wait on customers at some time in their life

Young Israeli men and women serve in the military after high school. Whatever you think of the geopolitics of Israel, the fact is that they are frequently in a state of war, making compulsory military service consistent with the needs of that country.

Americans are frequently in a state of shopping. We shop because we had a bad day or because Timmy’s birthday is coming up or because we simply must get in on the formal shorts trend before it passes. As you may have noticed, we are currently in a shopping frenzy to celebrate the birth of Jesus, or the miraculous longevity of the Maccabees’ oil, or because we care about someone who celebrates one or both.

At this point, we could have a series of conversations about whether we should be so involved with shopping, or the ethics of choosing to whom we give money through our purchases, or even the long-term environmental impact of what we buy. Or, we could acknowledge that ours is, in fact, a capitalistic society, with a free market economy, and therefore shopping can, will and arguably should, on some level, happen. That accepted, would it not be in keeping with the needs of our kind of country for our young men and women to be drafted into compulsory customer service after high school?

I served my time: first at an alternative medical practice, then on and off for years in food service. During my service, I learned that I wouldn’t find that kind of work interesting for long, and should therefore truly apply myself in college. But I also learned about the customer/server relationship: exactly how much discourteous behavior I would accept from a customer before peeling off my service smile and the kind of service I needed to provide in order to feel good about my job and allow the customer to have a pleasant experience.

Additionally, I now have a very clear picture of what kind of consumer I want to be: I tip big (when deserved), I don’t enter businesses within 15 minutes of closing time and I treat customer servers like human beings rather than automatons created to fulfill my every whim.

Of course, I now also have a very clear picture of what kind of service I want: I want to be treated like a human being, not like an automaton created to inconvenience customer servers. I want the barest of greetings, or at least acknowledgment, when face to face with a server. And I’d like to believe that the servers I encounter have some sort of pride in doing their job well, or at least don’t show outward signs of being in excruciating workplace pain.

So, you see, the draft I propose is not one of ensuring that my favorite stores are well-staffed, but of giving Americans the opportunity to think more about how we interact in our most widely used gathering spots: stores. I would be pleased as punch if our youth chose to instead spend time in the Peace Corps or working at community service organizations across the Triad – anything that reminds us that even our me-first society would function more smoothly, and be a greater pleasure to be a part of, if we made a little more effort to consider one another.

‘Tis the season to truly indulge in the great American pastime, shopping. ‘Tis also the season of caring, giving and love. Perhaps this year, we can work harder to marry the two.