This is a line that parents tell their children when they've received something. It's their way of gently reminding the child that when someone does something for you, you should thank them for it.

I hear people ask the question: what happened to good customer service? You'd get the impression from people asking the question that if you were to walk into any business, you wouldn't find a single employee who treats the customers with any respect.

I've been observing these interactions for several years now. If you're waiting in line to check out in a store, I find that keeping a keen eye on the people who are interacting with the cashiers around you, and taking the temperature of each interaction, is a good way of killing time.

Sometimes these interactions are friendly. If they're not both smiling and chatting with each other, then at least you get the sense that they're each operating with a sense of mutual respect. It's with surprising frequency that you find a situation in which it appears that either the customer or the employee is being cold to the other. In my anecdotal experience, the blame for this is usually on the customer, who has their nose stuck down in their cellphone, barely making eye contact as the employee conducts the transaction. Or the customer stares off in the distance, preoccupied with something they're weighing in their minds, detachedly responding to the employee's questions.

I get the sense that you'd have to have nerves of steel, to be completely impervious to being socially shunned, in order to keep a cheerful attitude as an employee in any retail environment or service business. It seems that you have to be equipped to deal with a stream of customers who aren't even polite enough to acknowledge you as another person.

What happened to good customer service? I'd like to know what happened to the courteous customer.