I get the psychology. I'm just weighing it against my experience with customer service.
When I started working at legitimate, government-taxable jobs in 1976, customer service meant exactly that. Jobs were scarce in 76. If your happy ass wasn't all smiles, assholes and elbows when someone pulled up to the pump, offering to check under the hood, clean the windshield, etc, they'd find someone else that would. The purpose to your existence was to serve the customer. Don't like it? Dig ditches. If you pumped your own gas at the one, self-serve pump over at the end (next to the one unleaded pump
), gas was five or ten cents cheaper per gallon.
At the grocery store, the bag boy packed your groceries properly, then carted them out to your vehicle. Your tips was all he got for pay. There was a line a mile long for one of those jobs at the Base commissary. You had to be squared away appearance-wise and you best be happy as Hell to haul that little old lady's 20 bags to her car for your $1-2 tip or you'd be back to dragging a lawn mower through housing on Saturdays.
Customer service now is I'm supposed to be thankful enough to tip a machine for the clown showing up to work to stand and watch me ring up and bag my own groceries?
If there is even any such thing anymore, work ethic is definitely not what it used to be.