Reprinted with permission from Larry Fortner.

The old fella and his wife got up from their table at the Ground Round in Duluth, and he dropped a tip by his plate.
   As they made their way to the exit their waitress began clearing their table. She was young enough to be their granddaughter or, more likely, their great-granddaughter.
    She tucked the tip into a pouch on her apron, looked up and called after them, 'Thanks, you guys!"
    I saw him wince, not in pain but in disgust, and heard him mutter as he walked past our table, You guys.
    I'm with him. This irritating you guys thing has gotten way out of hand.
    It's everywhere. Not from our peers, but from servers and clerks who are generations apart from us and have no reason to be chummy with us but who nevertheless think that because we are their customers they can be our pals.
    They work in our restaurants, our banks and our big-box retail stores. They must think they're being slick; instead, they're simply being condescending.
    You look up from your glasses of water, and your server, who insists on introducing himself by his first name only, chirps, "How are you guys tonight?"
    I am not well. I do not appreciate being called you guys by some twerp who doesn't even know me. By now I'm fairly certain that I do not want him to get to know me.
    I went to the bank one day, and when the teller turned and walked to the computer behind her to check on my account she revealed skin between the place where her top ended and her pants began. I'm not against skin. I've seen skin before, and in even more interesting places. But midriff skin in a bank? I was amused but still mildly offended. In my mind, this was a version of the you guys thing. I wanted to say, Go home
and get dressed.
     Just a week ago we were in the Outback steakhouse in St. Cloud. This is the town where, two or three years ago, I first encountered the Do you want change from that? ploy.
    Here's how it works: At the end of your meal, your server deposits your bill on your table. You in turn put a few greenbacks on the bill, more than enough to cover the expense. Your server picks up the bill and the
cash and, instead of saying, I'll be right back with your change, says, Do you want any change from that?
    I want to say, Of course I want change from that! But I grit my teeth and simply nod an affirmative. Instead of finagling her way to a more-generous tip than I would have intended, she has just cost herself a few bucks.
    At the Outback in St. Cloud, I didn't pay with cash; I paid with a credit card. And when the twerp server of that particular night - already having done the you guys thing a few
times - brought the ticket to our table for me to sign, he said, 'Thanks, Larry."
   Larry? Who does this guy think he is? I wanted to grab him by the scruff of the neck and get right in his face and do a Clint Eastwood thing: That's Mt: Fortner to you, chump. Instead, I deducted a couple of bucks from the tip.
    It gets worse. Just the day before I sat down to write this piece, I was up at Sam's to renew my card.
   The clerk who took my old card moved a couple of computers away, tapped in a few key strokes and then commanded, "Larry, will you step over here?" Larry? Not Mt: Fortner?
    She completed the paperless paperwork, snapped my picture, processed the new card, handed it to me and delivered this devastating line, 'Thanks, Lar." Oh, honey, I am not Larry to you. And I am not Lar to anyone.
    I am a customer. I am Thank you, Mt: Fortnet: I am Thank you, sir:
    I'm not demanding respect; I'm just expecting professional courtesy.
    I deeply resent being talked down to. I am a generation or two separated from you and your guileless, clueless, patronizing pap and I am no longer amused.
    Take that, you guys.

September 2002 . The Senior Reporter. 3