Rasczak, we didn't say that employees are only rude to the individual customers that are rude to them. We said that common courtesy in general is going downhill, and rude customers put employees in a bad mood for future customers. In general, I think it is the big-box retail machine system that is causing the problem: both employers and customers are increasingly seeing employees as simply part of the machine, like automated tellers. It is refreshing to have the occaisional polite employee or customer, but the norm is generally not polite.