Call me an early adopter, but I’ve been asking to speak to a manager since long before ‘Karen’ (the slang term for a rude, entitled woman) became a thing. I do this at bookstores, pharmacies, grocery stores, retail outlets, restaurants and airports. Even in the virtual world, where exchanges with customer support ‘geniuses’ and ‘gurus’ are allegedly being recorded for quality assurance, I leave nothing to chance.

On certain occasions, I go over the manager’s head. There’s nothing like an unsolicited LinkedIn message to let a CEO or business owner know how you really feel.

Before you cancel me, know that getting customer service people fired is not my game. Once I have the manager’s attention, my goal is to tell them exactly what their employee did…to make my day.

We should all be #ReverseKarens.

Imagine if consumers everywhere started chasing down the manager, not with complaints and concerns, but with compliments and praise. Would businesses take the hint and double-down on training and empowering their staff? Would employee burnout rates plunge? Could service excellence become a self-fulfilling prophecy? What a world it might be.

Until then, it’s easy to blame technology for our impatience. The magical ease with which we can work, play, shop, eat and exercise in our pajamas has made us wary of what writer Tara Henley calls, the “messy unpredictability of leaving the house”. And was it not Alexa, Amazon’s AI-powered virtual assistant, who made it culturally permissible to bark orders at a disembodied voice without saying please?

In the early nineties, around the time overseas call centres emerged as a solution for B2C businesses looking to cut costs, I remember reading about an art installation in New York consisting of a desk, a chair and a telephone. Museum visitors who sat down and picked up the phone would instantly be connected to a call centre in India. The concept: have a 5-minute conversation with the person on the other end of the line. I can no longer remember the artist’s name, but I’ve never forgotten his point. Technology has made it possible to talk to a stranger on the other side of the world. How could it not occur to us to be a teeny-tiny bit curious about this individual as a human being, his family and how he lives?

For a culture of travel story, I once researched the question: why do North Americans find the French so rude? Part of the answer is in how the French approach service. The customer-clerk relationship, it turns out, involves an element of role reversal known to induce culture shock: workplaces in France are about providing employment, not service. It falls to the customer to earn the clerk’s respect and the right to be served. When entering a boutique, bakery or post office, for example, it is customary to greet the clerk with “Bonjour Madame” or “Bonjour, Monsieur”. This is the ‘code’ that identifies you as a civilized insider worthy of attention.

Few have internalized the ideal of being worthy of being served as deeply as my friend, Laura. A citizen of the world and prolific cookbook author, Laura sees every customer service encounter as composed of two people: host and guest. The barista preparing your coffee is your host. The plumber fixing the kitchen faucet is your guest. For Laura, viewing every exchange through this prism has an automatic civilizing and kindness-inducing effect. Her framing makes me think of Ritz-Carlton’s soul-stirring motto: Ladies and Gentlemen Serving Ladies and Gentlemen. Demonstrate respect, and you’ll receive it in return.

In a summer crackling with cancelled flights, lost luggage, understaffed patios, and air conditioners that need fixing, it’s natural to embark on a “customer journey” with low expectations and girded loins. But think about how it feels when you encounter a human being who is genuinely invested in helping you. The dread melts away like strawberry ice-cream on a hot sidewalk. You experience a ripple of surprise, delight and something that feels like hope for the future. Next time this happens, tell them. Thank them. And then ask to speak to their manager.