The customer is always right?

The customer is always right.

I do not know the origin of this phrase. Oh, I have searched but there is little to actually go on. It's just one of those things. I can't tell you much about it but I can tell you this, I hate it. Now, I know that if you are a shop-a-holic, which is a cutesy American phrase for an ass hat with far too much money and not enough brains, that you think the world of this phrase. I also venture to guess that, if you enjoy making a waitress or waiters workday a living hell, that you also enjoy this phrase. One thing I know for certain about this set of words, if you work in retail or the food service industry, you absolutely hate it. Yes it all probably started out innocently enough, some high end store in New York in the late Forties. A time when people still had the taste of the Great Depression on their tongues. I am sure some store manager told his staff " remember, the customer is always right".

There is actually a story about a guy named Ceasar Ritz, I believe it was, he owned a few hotels in France and told his staff "The customer is never wrong". If you think about it, that seams fine, if I owned a hotel that charged out the ass for a bed that other people used year round, I would try to keep my staff from arguing with the clientel over who may or may not be a thousand dollar an hour hooker. Other stories link the phrase to Macy's. Well Macy's too was once a very high end store and store managers would probably like to keep their high fallootin' high hats coming in to be treated as they felt they deserved and, of course, hand over the bucks. The funny thing is, I have connected the origin of this phrase to several, at least formerly, high priced stores toward the early part of the twentieth century. I am actually fine with that. If I go in to a Ferrari dealer, I would expect to be pampered and doted on, more so than if I had popped on down to Crazy Achmeds scratch and dent lemon stand. That's the thing about this phrase, it belongs in a high class, high money environment. It does not belong at Denny's or Target.

And there lies my problem with the phrase. Since its rather innocent and not so humble beginnings, all the way to our current day. This phrase has been taken, horribly, out of context. People wear this ridiculous phrase on their sleeve and, at the slightest discomfort, whip it out like a dagger at the worlds fattest, laziest knife fight. " What do you mean I can't substitute ham for eggs? Don't you know the customer is always right?", "Why can't I get a discount? I didn't spill juice on it, that was my kid. the customer is always right.", " I'm not paying fifty bucks for such a mediocre half and half. Go ahead and call our pimp, I will explain to him that the customer is always right." Okay that last one is a bit of fantasy but I just hope to get to see that one day. I think that person might learn a valuable lesson about when and when not to use certain phrases, or they might get killed, either way I'm good with it.

I have worked my fair share of retail jobs and have dealt with the troglodytic armies of backward thinking, mouth breathers that enter any store in our country and, I have been bombarded by this silly, overly repeated phrase so many times I am surprised I have never summoned some dark and unholy art to form the words into stone and beat seven kinds of hell out of each and every person that has ever said it to me. god only know how, during my short time managing a Gamestop, how the cage in my back room was not full of decomposing corpses with the words "custo" or "alwa" indented into their pulverized foreheads.

You see the phrase is not meant for every one, it is meant for more expensive places with more valuable fair. It is never to be used in a food shelf line, as I am sure it has. It is meant for Chez Pierres, not Bob's Burger Hut. The Carlton, not a hotel that charges by the blood stain. You use t when you buy an Audi, not when you are trying to get your hands on your neighbors '76 Pinto wagon. It is a phrase that was made for the upper ten percent, yet it is exploited by the lower thirty. For many, it is the only string of words they can put in sequence because of the years of cousin on cousin marriage and fetal alcohol syndrome. And, they use it to death.

Look I am no fan of the upper ten either, they are bastards to a man a far as I am concerned. Yet I can not tolerate the miss use of a phrase as powerful and annoying as this. So join me gentle reader and the next time you find yourself in line behind the great, sweaty girth of one of these customer service lampreys. Take a moment to stop and just, I don't know, start them on fire. They would most likely burn for days and you could use that energy to power a lamp. Just a thought, g'night.