A New Golden Rule

Everyday they check out our stuff in the lines that must seem never-ending to them.  One after another files by and off they go.  Their is the perfunctory, "Have a nice day," even at 11PM when the day is long past.  I wonder if they feel like extensions of their registers?  of the conveyer belt of endless stuff?  But hey, it is a job and they get paid, right? 

In the past year, I have really made an effort to speak to "Linda" at the grocery, "Carl" at Costco and many others by name.  I feel like I have a relationship of some sort with them.  Sure, they move my stuff through too.  But, I treat them as a person in my address to them.  And, I find something that they do to compliment--"I always get in your line because you really move us through."   I do this very easily in Maine because everybody knows everybody in such a small town.

Then, it really dawned on me.  I emerged from the store feeling more like a person because I treated that person like a human being.  There is the danger that we become our own "stuff" instead of the people we are meant to be because we treat others like machines as well. 

Could the Golden Rule be 

that we become what we treat others as?