"The Customer is always Right?" Not where I'm standing!

Factual Questions
1

As a member of the sales force (I work in a comic book store), I’m always being questioned by idiots (the general public) about they way things were (Back in my day, comics were 10 cents and my mother threw them out with the bathwater!) and the way things are now (Why would anyone pay $2.99 for a bunch of pictures of half-naked, top-heavy women and over-developed men beating the shit out of each other?).

Since I work cheap, I’m in NO danger of being fired and I have the freedom to “politely” tell these people off. But I sometimes wonder about those who are less fortunate than I.

Therefore, my question to the board is this: Who coined that idiotic phrase “The customer is always right?”

2

According to these folks, it was one H. Gordon Selfridge.

3

I guess your boss gets what he pays for.

4

Yes, he does.

A hard worker who likes what he does.

5

>> A hard worker who likes what he does

I would also enjoy telling customers to shove it. :slight_smile:

6

Two choices for you:

  1. smart off to the customers enough and you WILL get fired no matter how little you make or how easy it is to be replaced

  2. suck it up and learn to live with it.
    That aside, I have learned (after 20+ years in retail of one sort or another) that the phrase really means, “The customer should always be made to believe he is right”. Think of it that way and you’ll last a lot longer.

7

I know of no original cites, other than the notoriously incorrect Word and Phrase Origins by Hendrickson. He never gives sources. That’s probably where most sites on the net get their info.

Barry Popik has found it used in a NYTimes advertisement from 1915, used by a local drugstore.

Selfridge(of London department store fame) may have invented it, but there is no proof as of this time.

8

Except for…you know. :slight_smile:

9

My brief experence with retail has lead me to believe that a customer can get anything he wants for free if he complains ‘well’ enough.

Note ‘well’ does not mean loud or long but it could include either or both.

10

I’m more likely to give people stuff cheaper (I only have a few things I can do that with, and even then, it’s not free) if they’re nice, not whiny. I’ll only give whiny people stuff when my manager tells me to to shut them up.

11

My customers are not always right. Sorry. They’re just not.

This has nothing to do with the level of service I provide, or what they’re spending, but rather with the fact that often they ask me to make pesticide applications that are dangerous, unnecessary, or flat-out illegal.

“Can you spray into the drain for me?”

“No, sir, I can’t. It’s against the law.”

“I see the ants along the floor near the garbage. Make sure you spray well right there.”

“Well, ma’am, they’re at the garbage because it’s a food source. But I’ll be better able to handle your problem if I treat around the doorframe and the pipe access holes in the wall under the sink. And you’ll be exposed to less pesticide that way.”

The customer is not always right. But if they’re satisfied, they sure as heck won’t complain.

12

“The customer must always be treated professionally”, which is not nearly as snappy, but way more to the point.

Sometimes the customer is simply wrong, and he should have no expectation of that being ignored just because he’s involved in a professional transaction.

I’ve never worked retail (although it’s beginning to sound good), but I’ve consulted on IT projects with people who expected me to circumvent the laws of physics and hand over thousands of dollars worth of free stuff because their hallowed status as customer meant that no one would ever dare contradict them. Obviously, that’s not reasonable. And luckily, I worked for a company that had no problem with acknowledging that some customers are not worth the trouble.

13

I have worked retail now and then. Customers are people. And if you have chosen to work in a specific area (as did you, TERRA), your customers will, for the most part, share many of your enthusiasms and interests.

No, they are not, literally, “always right,” and if they are asking me to do something unreasonable and inappropriate, I find nice, non-defiant-sounding ways to decline their requests: with explanation if it can be put concisely and won’t sound like an invitation to argument. Sometimes I have to give them the “look of sorrow and pity” and say, politely, “I really believe I said No.”

Most customers are NOT jerks, idiots, or scam artists. If they think you’re listening to them and not shining them on, they will quickly calm down.

But pardon me, Terra, if you feel like telling customers off because they have opinions of today’s comic books that you don’t happen to share…perhaps there’s a slight mismatch between you and your job.

14

it seems to me, terra, that you are in one of the high risk occupations for nerd hanger-onners(sic). didn’t you expect hazards like this when you applied for the job?

15

Well, not only nerd hangers on, but parents and older comic book fiends, too.

When I was a kid, I could buy every comic on the rack at the drugstore for about five or six bucks.

Now I am 38, and I could buy every comic at the comic book store (all the ones that came out this week, that is) for about two to five hundred bucks, depending on what came out this week. Please note that my local comic shop only carries the stuff the owner thinks will sell locally, by the way.

I don’t read comics any more. But if I did, I would make a point of remembering that the guy behind the counter isn’t the one who wrote, drew, printed and priced the fraggin’ comics. He simply orders them from a distributor, and sells them for the suggested cover price.

Add that to the fact that most comic shops now sell a variety of “collectibles” ranging from HeroClix figurines (which can fetch up to $50 on Ebay for the rarer ones) to Cold Cast Porcelain Topless Lady Death 62EEE Cup Statues for $blue zillion…

…and when Little Johnny comes bouncing out of the store with this lovely treasure under his arm, and Mom sees it and promptly pops a circuit breaker… oh, man, is that comic shop clerk going to get a faceful, or what?

Of course, many comic shops don’t do refunds. They don’t dare, not with the collectible nature of their product. This means that Little Johnny isn’t going to get his Gramma’s Christmas money back from the store to spend on something Mom approves of. At least, that’s the way my local shop operates. It’s not the clerk’s idea, either – it’s the owner.

…but the clerk’s the one who gets the faceful from Mom, in her hopes that if she’s loud and psycho enough, he will give her the fraggin’ money back, just to go away…

“High Risk Occupation” indeed. You meet some fun folks, sure, but you also meet some of the people God must have made when he was just kidding or something…

16

Um, it’s a well-known fact that in exchange for the shit pay and total lack of career opportunities, employees of indie record and comic books shops are allowed to be as rude and surly to the customers as they feel like being. Experienced record and comic book enthusiasts actually expect this and are disappointed if you are helpful and friendly.

-fh

17

Really? I’ve never had a harsh word spoken to me by a comic shop clerk.

Then again, I’ve never gotten in one’s face about why Men In Tights Monthly ain’t thirty-five cents no more…

18

Having worked for a number of years in both Comic and RPG retail and wholesale I’d like to second that observation. Most of our customers were the nicest people you could meet, but the percentage of socially challenged ones, and those who could have perhaps more closely investigated personal hygiene options (to wit soap) was alarmingly high.

One of my ex-business partners stated that most of our customer base could be divided into “dweebs, nerds, white slugs and armchair Princes of Darkness”. :slight_smile:

Since this is GQ, and in an attempt to tie back to the OP – in New Zealand we have very tough consumer protection laws, so while the customer is not always right, they are often well protected.
In the case of the comic shops there a special little “gotcha” – being a specialty store the staff can be considered domain experts, which means that advice given to a customer can have legal consequences. We were advised to never recommend or comment on the collectability of particular books since we could be held to it – “they advised me that Silly Putty-Man #27 would increase in value 500%, what do you mean it’s only worth 25c!!!”

19

Damn, that friggin’ sucks!

Good thing I never say that!

20

your shop wouldn’t be the “The Android’s Dungeon” by any chance?