The customer is always (NEVER) right!

Who was that brilliant person —please notice my sarcasm— who decided the phrase «the customer is always right» was a fact that needed to be taught in every customer service job training? I have worked in customer service; that is why I know what I’m talking about when I say that the customer is never —never ever— right. I promise you, they aren’t right. Maybe there was one time they were, and someone decided that; if it happens once, then it must always be true. If that person exists, I would like to invite that person to work one day in the service industry. That fact will turn into a vile lie in 5 minutes. The way customers use that phrase to justify doing and saying the most entitled and horrid things you will ever hear is amazing. Every time a customer said «but the customer is always right,» I knew that the whole conversation was in vain; this person was so entitled that there was no point talking to them at all. 

I could give a TED talk about how much I hate that phrase, because I really do. But there is something more important than that: the customer entitlement on its own. Yes, that phrase is the reason why you will never be able, as an employee, to explain to a customer all the ways why what they are saying is crazy and wrong. But the fact that the customer acted so horribly in the first place is the real problem. Why do they think that it is okay to be mean and disgusting towards a person who is just doing their job, to a person that is trying to help them? Yes, you don’t always get what you want; we all know that. Why don’t customers? And the existence of that phrase is just one more reason to believe that all that is fine. It’s not right to treat people badly to get what you want, and these customers wouldn’t do it to anyone else but employees. So maybe the mere existence of the phrase is the reason why customers act like this. In any case, I really hope that it stops existing one day.