In my experiences a lot of people, certainly not all of them, grow up learning to objectify others. People grow up watching their parents have their every desire catered to by customer service agents such as waiters and cashiers.
In order to ensure the widest customer base possible a company often orders their employees to cater to even the rudest of customers, in fact many times the rudest customer gets the best discount or the most attention.
Children grow up watching people being ordered around like dogs, learning that they need only throw a temper tantrum to get the best deal. They grow to see others not as beings with feelings and needs, but as objects to be commanded. They view others as servants.
Imagine that the iPhone’s Siri asked “How are you today?” You wouldn’t feel any need to respond knowing that Siri really doesn’t care about the answer to that question, knowing that Siri isn’t going to get lonely or feel unwanted. Siri is nothing more than an object that exists only to service you.
So too do many grow to view others. They grow up and so many of the people around them do nothing more than get paid to cater to their needs. These people you speak of, they probably see you as nothing more than a servant, a device whose only purpose in that moment is to serve them. Nothing more.
The phenomenon is hardly unfounded. Research suggests that the more a person is pampered, especially during the younger years, the more they grow to view themselves as the center of the world and others as objects whose only purpose is to cater to their every whim.
Research suggests that, for instance, singling out children who score high on IQ tests as ‘special’ actually hurts their ability to function in society. Essentially it gives them a superiority complex, they begin to view themselves as superior to others, more important than others.
While I’m certainly not going to single out women, this phenomenon does tend to play a big role in the female gender. This is not due to some genetic predisposition, instead women considered highly attractive garner more attention, generally from men. By fawning over attractive women men actually do themselves and women a disservice because it gives the woman a narcissistic tendency. Being catered to, having doors opened for them, having jackets thrown over puddles for them, being given expensive gifts or otherwise treating them as though they were a princess makes them feel as though they are a princess while others are their servants.
This is certainly not limited to women though. For a time I lived in a predominantly homosexual neighborhood, my two roommates were gay. I found that the men considered most attractive tended to be complete jerks who treated others with utter disrespect, nonetheless they had no need to treat others with respect because, with their perceived attractiveness, they had no trouble having large groups of people following and catering to them.