They’re everywhere – the people who we perceive with our eyes but don’t truly see. They permeate our lives, enriching them, supporting them, and sustaining them, yet it’s rare to observe people acknowledging these others on a regular basis as a full, valuable, and sentient entity.

I’m talking about toll booth attendants, garbage route workers, cafeteria cooks and servers, fast food workers, dry cleaners, administrators and their assistants, and all those of the like. We depend on them for such fundamental additives and nutrients for the continuation and vigor of our journeys, even if in a mundane manner. But for the modern American, easily distracted and, on average, rather self-consumed, only the flashy, brazen, and exciting merits due attention and novel mindful investment. New products, services, companies, and claims pop up out of the ground on the basis of hours, and thanks to social networks, we don’t even have to wait for the work or school day to end to go home, turn on the TV, and let their deluge flood our brains.

As life reaches the pinnacle of volatility and drama, we tend to lose focus on the ordinary, and this unfortunately extends to the truly invaluable people who nourish us and keep the way clear for our advancement and edification in a more direct manner, arguably, than even some of the people whom we hold most dearly. I didn’t have my first full-time job until I was 18, at which point I began working at Chipotle Mexican Grill, one of the best decisions of my life. Having made the transition from in front of the counter to behind the sneeze guard, I can say with certainty that such ignorance is indifferent to character or conduct outside of the restaurant. When some of the people whom I knew would come through the line, interaction immediately became less personable. There is truly nothing more disheartening for a fast food employee than the lack of a reply or, perhaps even worse, the monotonic reply of “Burrito” to our venture, “Hi! How are you doing today?” It does happen. Frequently. In fact, the pleasant conversations, the real connections, and the enjoyment of someone’s company as a person and not merely a patron are exceptional, not commonplace. Maybe it takes an experience like mine to reassert importance to fair and kind treatment of those who blend into the background of our daily routines, but I don’t think it should.

Here, at the University of Rochester, I can walk into any one of my dining halls, sit down, and listen for the absence of “thank you,” “please,” “how’s your day going?” and “pardon me…” Granted, I’m not insinuating that every single person out there demonstrates such negligence, but as I stated before, with the current configuration of the flow of information and attention, this action pattern tends to be the lowest-energy state. My hall friend recently shared with me one of her subconscious criteria for establishing friendship, and it ties directly into the purpose of this piece. “How does s/he treat waiting staff?” This is the heart of it. Albeit along a gradient of efficacy, we can all make an effort to brown-nose or butter-up when it suits our endeavors, presenting a façade of politeness and courtesy. But I think that she’s spot on when it comes to simple yet profound character assessment. It’s the interactions that we don’t plan carefully or think about extensively that speak most deeply about our instinctual nature. When someone treats even these people with respect and kindness, those who play a repetitive and uninteresting yet completely essential role, yes, that person catches my eye and stirs my heart in appreciation.

I’m so fortunate to have grown up in the household created by my morally uncompromising, spiritually upright mother. She, more directly than any other person, instilled in me the instincts favoring decency and expression of gratitude. In applying these lessons, I’ve come to find yet greater meaning in living this way and enriching my motivation. Simply stated, the easiest strategy for eliciting smiles is to ask about how someone’s day is treating them. The Chipotle customers who would beat me to the punch and ask first how

I was reminded me why I love my job. It provides an upbeat, demanding environment in which one can literally meet and serve many hundreds of people on a daily basis. Although not every one of these interactions lingered in my memory or bolstered our team with positive sentiment, experiencing humanity on this level is like a treasure chest, just waiting to be opened. We have to venture out with positive thoughts and intentions ourselves if we are to appeal to the same potential within others.One of the principal reasons why I love going to the dining hall is the knowledge that I can put more smiles on more people’s faces in a shorter period of time and more simply and directly than in the overwhelming majority of situations that I now regularly encounter. Look for the smiles, even if you have to go digging. Trust me, it means more than you think.