Thank you for this post. You're spot on. Like everything else, social skills requires practice, authentic effort and sincerity.

Whenever I travel abroad to Asia especially to places such as Japan or Thailand, I'm always impressed with how polite the people are. They look you in the eye, smile and greet you with no expectations of delivering a sales pitch. They don't go out their way to criticize our foreign policies, military adventures or corporate imperialism.

This sense of cultural etiquette, proper manners and good will seems to be vanishing especially in this polarizing climate. But it doesn't have to. We can be civil to the person providing a service to us.