Work one summer behind a counter and you will never again be rude to someone wearing a name tag.

Service work rearranges how you see people permanently. Once you have been the person in the name tag, absorbing somebody’s bad morning for very little money, taking your frustration out on a stranger stops being available. Most rudeness of that kind comes from people who have never stood on that side of the counter.

If you have done it, let it show in how you speak to anyone behind a counter this week. If you have not, act as though you have: make eye contact, say the greeting, be patient about the thing that is not their fault. It costs you nothing and it is not nothing to their shift.