Teens need to learn service skills at home before working with customers

What a difference a day makes. Or in this case, what a difference a day and a few hundred miles.

We were heading out of town for a much-anticipated vacation but had a few errands to run before we hit the road. Maybe it was because of the hot and humid weather; maybe it was because it was the end of the week or maybe it was because everybody just needed a vacation. We seemed to run into every tired, bored and grumpy teenage sales person, clerk, teller or restaurant server in the Western suburbs.

I remember what it was like when I was a teen and spent my own Saturdays behind a counter, so I do have some sympathy for these kids. I was surprised, though, at the lack of even basic civility on some of their parts, let alone any interest in me as a customer.

Later that day, we stopped for the night after the first leg of our trip. The first motel we checked out was full, but the front desk staff - all teens - called around to three other places to find us a room. They also gave us directions and suggested a good place to eat. The teenage staff members at the second motel were equally helpful, as were the teenage wait staffers at the restaurant where we had dinner. All in all, they couldn't have behaved more differently than the teenagers we had encountered just a few hours before.

Raising a teenager at the time and working with teenagers as a counselor, along with having been a teenager myself who worked in the restaurant and hotel industry, I was intrigued by the difference. Something was going on.

I finally came up with two possible explanations for the difference in behavior. First, I suspect the second group of teens is more dependent on their jobs than the group back home. This second group lives in smaller communities, which depend more on tourist income. Such communities tend to have fewer higher-paying jobs for parents, so these teens likely have to work to earn some of their own money. Their West suburban counterparts, on the other hand, are more likely to be working because mom or dad decided it would be good for them. They might even be working out of boredom. I know this is not always the case; a lot of us are struggling financially just as much as people in small towns. But overall, I think the second group of teens was probably more motivated to provide good customer service than the first group.

Second, I wonder whether the second group hadn't received more instruction at home about the importance of serving others. Though almost all companies train their employees in how to provide good customer service, I think we parents actually do most of the work in instilling such lessons, usually long before our kids reach working age. Things like listening to other people, considering their needs, responding with empathy, putting another person's interests before our own, going out of our way to help - not to mention just plain, basic politeness - involve attitudes, skills and behaviors first learned at home. If kids haven't learned them by the time they go out and get a job, they're not likely to learn them there, either.

I can put up with surly clerks, etc. I am concerned, however, for how these kids will fare in the workplace of the future. Their success as employees, or even as employers, will have a lot more to do with how they treat other people than with their IQ, academic credentials or who they know. And it is likely that a good many of our kids will wind up in jobs where they will have to know how to serve others if they are to have jobs at all.

So let's add yet another thing to our parent "to do" list. Customer service, or just plain service, is first learned at home. And we parents are the first teachers.

• Dr. Ken Potts is on the staff of Samaritan Counseling Center in Naperville and Downers Grove. He is the author of "Mix Don't Blend, A Guide to Dating, Engagement and Remarriage With Children."