The Customer is (mostly not) always right

So, there's this mental illness that we have in the U.S.

I can encapsulate it in one sentence. Ready?

The customer is always right.

Right?

Wrong. The customer is not always right. Sometimes the customer is rude, unreasonable, uninformed, pig-headed, childish, or just outright wrong.

Anyone who has worked in the service industry knows that often the customer hides behind this axiom while they behave like petty tyrants, deliberately abusing people in that relationship because they know they can "get away with it" in a way that they never could with their boss, their spouse, or even some random stranger on the street.

I worked a bunch of service jobs. I've worked in grocery stores, bars, bookstores, libraries, restaurants, and even video rental places (my god, I'm old enough to have worked in an anachronism). In every one of those places, I had the repeated experience of being treated like a non-human simply because I wore a certain uniform and did a job that most people considered "menial" or "low class".

For a society which is purportedly dedicated to the freedom and equality of all, we as a people generally keep demonstrating that we suck at it.

I've come to the shocking conclusion that everyone deserves the same respect, no matter what sort of work they do or what sort of uniform they wear. If anything, I try and go out of my way to be nice to those wearers of uniforms, simply because I know that their abuse by "those" customers occurs daily. I can't fix it, but at the very least, I can hopefully provide some comfort and reassurance that not everyone behaves that way.

I'm very fortunate at this point in my law practice. I'm in a place where I can interact with customers on my own terms. In my law practice, I have certain standards for how I interact with clients. I have things I will and will not do for them. Those things, generally, are not negotiable. And while I may inform clients of this politely, the ultimate message is clear: if you don't like the way I run my store, you are more than free to get out and find someone else to help you with your problems. Play by my rules or get out.

If you want to be my customer, you have to be accountable. You have to communicate politely and accurately with my staff. You have to listen to what I'm telling you.

Here's the rub, though. I don't think this should be special. We should all be "allowed" to set these standards. In case I haven't stated this plainly enough, let me do so now. This should be the default practice everywhere. I think if we all hold each other accountable for our behavior, we grow as a society.

Imagine it. The customer who blows up and calls the staff at Target names gets told, "Leave. Don't come back to Target."

Now that person has to do a real analysis of how important his antics are, versus the service that store provides. The bad customer needs affordable housewares and Target is conveniently located down the street. Hopefully that leads the bad customer to an ultimate conclusion that goes something like: "These people have something I need. Maybe the experience with them isn't perfect, but I need to use all the resources available to me to create some sort of working relationship so we can both move forward."

That's constructive. Hell, that's the genesis of most positive human relationships.

I set these behavior bars, and my clients routinely meet them. It happens so often that I doesn't come as a surprise. Frankly, I kind of take it for granted. I have no reason to believe that this would not be true in other industries.

My experiences outside this country suggest this would work if widely applied. I had the good fortune to spend sometime outside the country as a teenager. In places like Italy, I'll tell you without reservation that the customer is not always right. I think of places like the shops in Assisi, where families owned their own businesses. If you disrespected those people in their own "houses", you'd get kicked the hell out. It would not get a second glance.

By, like, anyone.

This suggests to me that this model I'm proposing is not revolutionary, and would not cause panic in the streets or anything to that effect.

Maybe it is indicative of a deeper problem in our country. We're very much a "whipping boy" society. I see people take out all their aggression on "safe" targets. It is bad enough when people put the service industry in their "whipping boy" sights. It is even worse when it is family members.

I have seen parents talk to their children in ways they would not dream of talking to any other human being. I want to be clear here. I'm not talking about discipline or keeping the kid on the right track. I'm talking about outright, straight up, disrespect when the child does something the parent doesn't like. It can be verbal, or physical, or both. I really cannot wrap my head around why this makes sense. How does one's own flesh and blood merit less respect than a stranger he'd meet randomly on the street?

And yet, I see it all the time. It makes me grieve because I know it harms both parent and child, and both parties are usually totally ignorant of what's going on (even though the parent, at least, shouldn't be).

And be assured, whether we're talking about bad behavior towards children, waiters, nurses, customer service reps, or whatever, this bad behavior is a real harm to them. No one tells wants to star in a story going, "And the hero was heaped with abuse and accepted it silently, and the abuser totally got away with it." When these "safe" targets are hurt, it does real psychological damage. It hurts the self-image. Most of us tell ourselves that we aren't the sort of person who'd take someone else's shit. And yet, again and again, we do exactly that.

And the saddest part? The abuse is cyclical. Most victims of this abuse cope with that harm by paying it forward and doing the exact same thing to their own set of "safe" targets, whether they realize it or not.

The accountability I'm proposing is another way to discharge and ultimately heal the psychological harm done by this "safe abuse". Most people would be totally okay starring in a story that went, "And the hero told the customer to get the heck out if he continued with his childish antics." No deep-seated resentment to wrestle with there. Just a mutual exchange of accountability.

So, the next time you hear, "the customer is always right," allow for the possibility that the whole damn thing might be very, very wrong.