Pressing In And Moving On

This is my bone of contention with an older generation, but before I get into it let me give some background.  My positive working career began at a small grocery store in 2001 then I took two Church positions for about six years and now I am back in the grocery biz for a little while as Jennifer and I go to school. When your working in retail or in a place where you provide others with customer service there is a way that you deal with people in a polite manner. So this is how it works for me. When I encounter a male I say to him ” how are you today sir”, and when its a female I say ” how are you today ma’am?” Now, 95% of the time this goes over without any hiccups, but there are always some that have something to say about how I address them. Here lies my contention. My generation is often labeled as a disrespectful generation or a people group who have little respect for an older generation and are lacking the same level of politeness that they possess. Often when I address some males, with the greeting ” How are you today sir”, I get this response in return, “don’t call me sir I work for a living.” This phrase drives me mad, mad, mad. The reason it drives me mad is because I get stuck in a catch twenty two. My catch twenty two is this, if I say” Whats up bro, or how you doing dude”, we continue the cycle of disrespect in their eyes. But if you call them sir they get angry about that too. Please for the love of raising up a respectful generation, allow young people to call you sir and ma’am, of course fitting for your specific gender. Thus we break the sick disrespectful cycle.