True respect must be earned by young and old alike. The real issue is how we TREAT one another, not so much how we FEEL about them.
A few years ago my son had a run in with his rebbi, one where the rebbi was clearly wrong no matter how you looked at it. I don;t want to get into the details of it, but in the end I told my son that no matter what happened he must always SHOW respect to the rebbi even if he didn’t really feel it. If everyone would just take a moment and step back a bit and think about how they want to be spoken to, and/or treated, this issue would go away.
Also, if you are dealing with someone that you will not have to see often, how hard is ti to really bite your tongue??? If it’s someone you deal with all the time, are you really that weak that you CAN’T hold your tongue. If you CHOOSE to engage in a disrespectful manner, then you can fully expect the behavior to come back to you and the cycle never ends.
Saying please and thank you goes a long way to start the process, even if it’s the person’s job. This really isn’t that hard.