There are several countries with a Mandatory Military Service. Some of the terms are fairly short with a requirement of only 6 months.
Take that concept and apply it to service industry work.
Imagine if everyone in society had to have at least one retail or food service job before they were issued a driver’s license or allowed to be employed in another job. Even wealthy people would be required to do this with no loopholes or ways to buy their way out of it.
I think this would teach empathy for many. Of course, there would always be some who would not learn anything but it would definitely change some people.
Also, some judges are already doing this as punishment for bad behavior.
why? our tech level is almost to the point where we really wont need fast food or retail workers - not in the numbers that exist now, anyway. at best, you might have such a program for maybe 10 years - and it’d be seen as violating intrinsic rights. mandatory military service in 1st world nations is largely unneeded anyway, they have a lot of volunteers - mostly from the same lower economic bracket that retail workers come from, curiously enough.
for the fast food chains it’ll be AI running the drive through and maybe one person loading various pre-cooked/flash-frozen items into the machines that will do the cooking/re-heating - and perhaps a manager but they’ll be more of a district manager overseeing many stores in their area, and honestly even that sort of thing is easily replaceable by software.
clothing stores are already on their way out, have you been to a mall recently? online shopping is far easier to maintain and to participate in, only higher-end clothiers and bespoke tailoring establishments will still have in-person retail workers, but only because old money folks are slower to adopt changes (they can afford to wait, you see).