Mind your Manners, please!

The frustrating thing about people who call corporate offices is that they seem to forget that they're calling a professional establishment. They lose all semblance of manners and decorum when they find they have reached "an actual, live person" - as I have been called on many occasions. Instead of being thrilled to pieces, as I would imagine I would be, should I encounter a similar situation, they seem upset because they were all set to just leave a message, or press some buttons to get an answer, or possibly get all their business done with an automated lady who has a slightly sexy twang to her voice.
"Oh, um...I was expecting a recording, um...what the hell was I calling for again?" That is how most of the calls begin. To center them, I repeat the name of the company - in case they dialed a wrong number. That is usually followed by a long silence, where some days I swear I hear crickets in the background. Sometimes it is just dead silence. It is like I have caught them with their pants down and even though I can't actually see them, the fact that I am speaking in real-time to them ruins that anonymous feeling they need to be comfortable. Sometimes the reality of a real, live person throws them off so much, that they decide it is too much and hang up.
It strikes me as sad and pathetic that we have become so accustomed to resolving our issues with as little human interaction as possible. So ingrained are we in our new bad habits that when we do encounter an instance where we must speak to someone (either face to face or by phone because IM-ing is NOT interacting), we find we have lost any or all skills we might have learned as kids.
Speaking of kids...WTF? The poor little critters of today are barely taught any manners at all. At most, they say thank you. And I am being rather generous in that supposition. Usually what you see lately are children who talk back to their parents, or any adult. Children who cry, kick, scream and some even curse when they don't get their way. Children who wipe their hands on their clothes, eat with their fingers and ignore their parents. They snatch something being offered to them without so much as a please, or thank you. They don't grasp the concept of behavioral limits
Yes, we of the last two generations have so appallingly lost our manners and our way and anyone that's come after us has none to speak of. How can we teach or preach what we ourselves do not practice? The children's whole world is anchored in the computers, cell phones and i-things of their lives. Through them interaction becomes cold, distant, ineffective, unaffected and virtually (no pun intended) in-human.
Now I am not going to sit here and preach the ways of yesteryear. After all, I am not as old as this post is making me sound. However, I do believe there is a lost art we're freely agreeing to let go of in this post-manners era we live in. There is a certain nostalgic good-bye to times when we understood that as citizens of the planet we should, as the very least, be pleasant to live, work and play with.
So that's all I've got to say about it. It is short, but it is necessary. A bit of wake-up call sprinkled lightly about to remind us, myself included, that it is always better to look someone in the eye, smile and be grateful for the company - however brief it may ultimately be.