Make empty selection in a custom field.

I create a custom Taxonomy called Business_Partner, create couple options for selection, and add it to a custom field to appear on the submit-listing page for user to select an option. But the field default to a specific option. This is not good if the user forgot to change the default option to something else. Is there any way to include an empty selection, so the user has to choose an option to considering an option is selected? Also, being able to label the empty selection to “Please selection an option”

Same thing for the Store Taxonomy too, I have a coupon site, and need to default to an empty selection same as described above.

Also, is there any way to hide the counter number next to the option as seen on the attached picture?
I don’t want to show how many listings had associated with each option.