It was recently announced that the religious police, the mutawwa, are being given special training in dealing with the public. The hope is that this will make them “user-friendly” and thereby improve the way Islamic standards are maintained. But it is not only the mutawwa that can benefit from training. There is a desperate need for training across the board.

That was demonstrated starkly by last Friday’s report in this paper of the chaos in a Riyadh supermarket when a young Saudi cashier refused to lift goods from a customers’ shopping basket because the customer was an expatriate from the Subcontinent. The supermarket manager’s inability to open other checkout counters because none of the other Saudi cashiers had turned up to work made matters even worse (all supermarket cashiers must now be Saudis under Saudization rules).

The behavior of the cashier in question was not only arrogant and rude, but racist. Maybe he was exhausted because his workload had doubled as a result of his colleagues not turning up, but that is no excuse.

There can be no place for anyone with such attitudes — and no job either. Such views should be grounds for instant dismissal. The story, however, comes as little surprise.

The business community has long claimed that there are too many young Saudis who do not want to work or view certain types of work as beneath them.

However, the fact that some newcomers to the workforce are lazy or bad-mannered must not be used as an excuse to undermine the Saudization program.

Without Saudization the country will head into social catastrophe. The answer is to change attitudes, not least the ridiculous notion that it is demeaning to serve others. We all have to serve each other in different ways. Service is the glue that holds society together.

That means education and training. It needs to involve schools and colleges; but it also needs to involve the employers as well. At the end of the day, they have to realize that they need to skill the people they employ.

Companies must have training programs — in the case of supermarkets, on how to deal with the public. It is in their interest. If their staff are reliable and pleasant they will get more customers. If they are offensive, people will go elsewhere.

Employers have a major weapon at their disposal: The sack. Lazy and offensive workers will soon find that if they want work and want money, then they have to start treating their work and the people they meet through it with respect. Market forces will soon change attitudes.