Work one summer behind a counter and you’ll tip, smile and say thanks differently forever.

Service work rearranges your view permanently, because you learn what a rude customer feels like from the inside. Once you have stood there, small courtesies stop being manners and become something whose value you understand. You cannot get that by being told. It comes from a few hundred hours on the receiving end of other people’s bad moods.

On a shift like that, notice which customers make it easier and copy them when you are on the other side of the counter. With no job yet, you can start now by thanking people by name and meaning it.