The Customer is Always a Tyrant

[rebelsdarklaughter]

“The customer is always right.” -Harry Gordon Selfridge


Where does the idea that the customer is infallible come from? Mr. Selfridge coined the term in the early 1900s, and about a hundred years later, the phrase is still with us, and still taken as a truism by many. Selfridge may not have been as successful as other retail magnates, having died penniless, but his contributions to retail strategy can still be seen today.


“Selfridge promoted the radical notion of shopping for pleasure rather than necessity. The store was extensively promoted through paid advertising. The shop floors were structured so that goods could be made more accessible to customers. There were elegant restaurants with modest prices, a library, reading and writing rooms, special reception rooms for French, German, American and “Colonial” customers, a First Aid Room, and a Silence Room, with soft lights, deep chairs, and double-glazing, all intended to keep customers in the store as long as possible. Staff members were taught to be on hand to assist customers, but not too aggressively, and to sell the merchandise.” -Wikipedia


As can be seen from the operations of his stores, Selfridge believed that simply putting merchandise on shelves and expecting it to sell was simply not enough. In the same way that modern retail stores have cafes, pharmacies, free samples, optometrists, makeup artist, hair stylists, and manicurists, Selfridge knew that he could make more money by convincing the customer that they were special, that they were important. Would an unimportant person be catered to by such a diverse menagerie of services?
A century later, we are still seeing Selfridge’s legacy, however, unlike the department stores of old, which catered to a somewhat upscale clientele, these practices can be seen across the board. Even lower-end retail chains like Wal-Mart have crammed the front of their stores with everything from auto services to dentists. Not only do these extra services provide extra revenue for the retailer, but they also engender a sense of entitlement amongst many patrons.


“The customer is always an asshole.” -Shannon Hamilton


Anyone who has worked retail has heard the question “Do you know how much money I spend here?” While retailers actively seek the loyalty of customers, the customers have been tricked into thinking that the retailer should have a sense of loyalty towards them. The entire business model has been masked to make those who buy things think that they have any amount of power. We have even come up with the term “service industry” to obscure the fact that it is truly capital who has the power. A hundred years ago, if you had mentioned the phrase “service industry” to someone, they would probably think of the butlers and maids that served the upper classes and aristocrats. Today, the service sector has ensured that instead of an upper crust being serviced, those being serviced now belong to a mass of little aristocrats.


These little aristocrats are not just limited to retail. We are all small-time rulers now. Every restaurant is a castle, and every beauty parlor a fief. Service industry employees must not only be expected to pledge loyalty to the King, the company, but also to the never-ending stream of Lords and Ladies that flow through the doors. Today, more and more people are coming to depend on this pseudo-serfdom to make a living.
“In the United States 70 percent of the workforce works in the service sector; in Japan, 60 percent, and in Taiwan, 50 percent. These are not necessarily busboys and live-in maids. Many of them are in the professional category.” -Kenichi Ohmae


Regardless of one’s position within the hierarchy of the service industry, every service employee is subject to the whims of the customer almost more so than to the company itself. Even CEOs and district managers must occasionally grovel at the feet of an upset customer. While the upper classes refuse to acknowledge that their businesses would not operate without employees, and fight viciously against giving even an inch to their workers, they are quick to satisfy even the most ridiculous of customer requests.


Perhaps the most ridiculous and demanding of service industry environments is the restaurant. Even a basic act like eating gets transformed into an experience in which the customer gets to demand nearly anything, and then decide whether or not those who serve them get compensated for their work.


“The first restaurants began to appear in Paris in the 1760’s, and even as late as the 1850’s the majority of all the restaurants in the world were located in Paris…Before that, people didn’t go out to eat as they do today. Aristocrats had servants, who cooked for them. And the rest of the population, who were mainly peasant farmers, ate meals at home.” -Prole.info



Do you need an extra side of ranch dressing? Sure, pay no mind to the fact that the server just walked back to the kitchen to get someone else at your table an extra side of BBQ sauce. Need a refill? Just slurp loudly at the watery ice at the bottom of your cup while attempting to make eye contact with any employee that will look at you. There is something about the restaurant setting that turns even mild-mannered people into tyrants…the “tip.”


There are few other service environments that put so much power into the customers hands, and as often seen with power, it drives people mad. Very rarely is the livelihood of the employee literally given over to the customer. In many countries, servers make an actual wage, and tipping is unheard of, but in the US, tipping can make the difference between a living wage and destitution. The “tipped minimum wage,” developed in 1996 by Herman Cain, ensures that in most states, employees that receive tips are not entitled to the actual minimum wage. Currently, the federal minimum is $2.13. Some states, like Washington or Oregon, have a minimum above $9.00, which may explain why chains like TGI Fridays have closed all locations in those states.
The “acceptable” tip amount on a meal is 20%, but not a day goes by for most servers that they don’t get stiffed at least once. There are even those that make it a principle to never tip their servers. Whether it is out of ignorance or malice, not tipping someone making significantly less than minimum wage is insulting no matter how inadequate the service may have been. All servers have to “tip out” on their sales, usually about 3%. If a table spends $100 and does not tip, assuming the server is making $2.13 an hour, that means the server literally just paid $0.87 to take care of that table. It is entirely possible to lose money on a table.


While much more stable than front-facing restaurant work, retail is not without it share of pitfalls. The idea of retail is to create a middleman that buys things cheaply from manufacturers or wholesalers, and then marks them up to sell to customers. In the early days of retail, it was not uncommon for sales associates to make commissions, but recent times have seen a trend of businesses going the extra mile to advertise that their associates do not make sales commissions. Instead of giving the employee a monetary incentive to please the customer, they are now given a minimum wage and threatened by both angry customers and secret shoppers.


Secret shoppers are essentially the snitches of the retail world. They go to stores and report the activities of the employees there, in exchange for getting their purchase for free or at a discount. This can mean reporting that a certain employee did not offer to sign them up for a rewards card, or in the case of restaurants, reporting when a server does not card them for alcohol. A bad secret shop can lead to anything from disciplinary action to termination, and employees are kept in a state of constant fear that their next customer might be their last.


Another method that retail pioneered, and is now seeing use by larger restaurant chains, is the customer survey. This essentially gives absolute power to the customer to decide the fate of those who have serviced them. Most surveys go directly to corporate, instead of the older method of complaining to a manager, who actually has a presence in the store. Surveys pit the customers word against the employees, and when “the customer is always right,” the employee can do little to defend themselves. Additionally, the way most corporations have set up their surveys, anything less than a perfect score often counts as negative. Unless a customer gives a 10/10 across the board, surveys are often counted as “detractors.”
With this sort of unwarranted authority given to the customer, they have come to see themselves as deciders of who should shop where. Sites like Yelp provide an open forum for people to complain about the slightest of problems, and often have it show up near the top of search results for a particular business. Take this example from Roscoe’s House of Chicken and Waffles:


“Well, I’ve never even eaten here…….so why, you ask, do I even bother to rate this place? Because I did walk in here, sit down, and read the menu. Then I looked at my friends and said, "There’s no way I can eat this.” It was all grease and fat and a whole buncha yuck jumbled together. NO WAY. I’m just not into that kind of eating or food combinations…..so NOT appealing to me. So we left…..yet, it’s a local institution of sorts. Oh well.” -Claudia B.


In what world is fried chicken not greasy? Obviously a world where someone that doesn’t even eat at a place is qualified to write a review of it. Not only is this user allowed to write a review, but she is given extra status by Yelp as an elite user, and has written over 700 reviews. Yelp is built for entitled poseur foodies who think their opinion matters, and Yelp is not ashamed of this. Yelp makes money by showing ads to its users, and it is in their best interest to make their users feel as important as possible so that they return to the site and write more reviews to generate more ad impressions.
“Your trust is our top concern, so businesses can’t pay to alter or remove their reviews.” -Yelp


While Yelp may be off limits to business interference, the rest of the internet is not as picky about who reviews what. Sites like Yelp engender a reliance and false trust in the power of customer reviews, and other sites that are not as customer driven take advantage of this trust. The internet is full of sites that sell “fake” reviews, and any business can pay a nominal fee to make themselves look reputable. Many sites that sell things, Amazon for instance, have an obvious vested interest in people buying as much as possible, and of course they will sell more items if they all have five star reviews. Such fake reviews, called “astroturf,” are extremely common on the internet, and play off the customers’ tendencies to trust other “real people.”


“This job would be great if it weren’t for the fucking customers.” -Randal Graves


Unfortunately, customers are necessary to the functioning of the service industry, and many would be without incomes if everyone were to simply stop buying things. The heightened status of the customer is not necessary, though, and the sooner we can stop putting patrons on a pedestal, the better off we will be. Customers are not the nobles of old, who contributed very little to the productivity of society, and do not deserve to be treated like them. We are all customers, but we do not all have to be tyrants. We can stop the tyrant in ourselves by thinking about the demands we make of those who “serve” us, and by ceasing to make unreasonable demands. We can stop other tyrants by calling them out on their actions. An employee has to sit and smile while they are berated, but everyone is perfectly capable of telling the person in front of them to stop yelling and move on with their lives. It is often said that everyone should have to work a day in the service industry to see how horrible it is, but even this is not necessary. We need to realize that we are nothing but an income source for the service industry, and rid ourselves of any idea that we have any real power over service employees.

From destroy.svbtle.com

[TC]

The power differential between the customer seeking a service and the person providing a service is nowhere nearly so clearcut as "the customer is always a tyrant".

It depends on the sector and the specifics.

While a poor waiter might be subject to the whims and, to a certain extent, under the power of the wealthy diner, this hardly the only sort of customer.

Consider the power dynamics between the medical customer, made to think of themselves as a "patient", and the many times wealthier physician upon whom they depend for their basic health - and who arranges their meetings (the thin and immodest hospital gowns, the use of intermediaries, the inequality of title, the belief in 'doctors orders' 'doctors know best', and that doctors can 'allow' patients this and that), controls what products will be furnished and how.

Consider the banking customer who supplicates themselves to the banker for a mortgage to get their first home?

Consider the housing customer who submits to a background investigation and signs a contract of adhesion disfavorable to themselves to rent from a landlord?

[rebelsdarklaughter]

I dont think I would consider physicians, bankers, or landlords as part of the "service industry." Those are all professions which predate the existence of the modern service sector, which is really what this article is about.

[Lynx]

An aptitude for "customer service" is required if you want to work in the service industry. In my experience some customers are exceptionally pleasant, some are tyrants, and the rest are forgettable. Few people are suited to do this kind of work as a career. I became burned out and quit.

[VivalaCuarta]

Lame article. What does it advocate? Revolution? Unionization? Protest? No, just admonishes us to be nice to the poor help. Who knew that the ultra "radical" website whose motto is "Destroy Everything: Anti-Authoritarian, Anti-Political, Anti-Civilization" would be writing rough drafts for Miss Manners!

[piet11111]

In my work i also often have to deal with people who somehow got it in their head that they can give me orders because we are paid by the municipality for our work.

I will try to be reasonable and explain what my responsibilities are and who they need to contact to forward their complaints.
But of course those who insist in their attempt to force me into fixing their issues are bound to get ever increasingly rude rebuttals.

This lead to some phone calls to my boss where 1 was about how polite and helpful i was and the other about what a rude arse i was all on the same day.
So at coffee break my boss asked me what that was about and i explained the situation and that i simply matched the tone i was being spoken to.

But honestly i could not function in this job if i could be fired just for being rude (i would need to threaten them)

[consuming negativity]

I feel like this is another one of those posts where I'm going to get murdered repeatedly, but the reason customers can be pushy and obnoxious at least in my experience is because persons at work or on the telephone or wherever else often purposefully and arbitrarily seem to want to fuck you over.

For example, I once went to a county jail in order to visit a friend of mine who had been recently arrested, as I was getting him out on bond. I walked in and was told by the persons at the counter that he would be able to see me shortly, and to wait in the lobby. About a half hour later, I went back up to the desk and the same people from before told me that no visitations at all of any sort were allowed for a week, after I had sat there waiting at their instruction. I ended up having to coordinate everything with the people at the bail bond company without being able to talk to the person imprisoned at all, who then went in and apparently worked their magic and got my buddy out.

Situations like this, along with calls to customer service where I've been told to drive to cities an hour away when I could've just gone down the street, or when persons have lied to me about this or that arbitrarily despite my politeness, I've come to understand why people get annoyed when told "no" or whatever. It's because your coworkers and other persons in the service sector like to arbitrarily fuck everyone else over who is just trying to enjoy a night out or fix it when the company you work for has fucked them over somehow. I am still polite and 70% of the time get great service, helpful-if-exhausted customer service, or whatever else, but still the other 30% of the time I have to hold back the temptation to give people an earful when I know for a fact they're lying to me about something to get me out of their hair.

People at work are people, and so are customers. There's no reason for either to be rude or whatever else, and there are offenders on both sides of the desk. And understand, I've seen people badgering the cashiers or skimming on the tip in restaurants and those people are assholes. I always make sure I tip well and be as courteous as possible to people who are stuck at work helping me out with whatever. But, you know, this idea that all customers are assholes is basically just shitty pseudo-edgy misanthropy.

[piet11111]

Well communer i can see where you are coming from just thinking back about tech support stuff makes my blood boil with the copy paste emails they send you.

[Ocean Seal]

The power differential between the customer seeking a service and the person providing a service is nowhere nearly so clearcut as "the customer is always a tyrant".

It depends on the sector and the specifics.

While a poor waiter might be subject to the whims and, to a certain extent, under the power of the wealthy diner, this hardly the only sort of customer.

Consider the power dynamics between the medical customer, made to think of themselves as a "patient", and the many times wealthier physician upon whom they depend for their basic health - and who arranges their meetings (the thin and immodest hospital gowns, the use of intermediaries, the inequality of title, the belief in 'doctors orders' 'doctors know best', and that doctors can 'allow' patients this and that), controls what products will be furnished and how.

Consider the banking customer who supplicates themselves to the banker for a mortgage to get their first home?

Consider the housing customer who submits to a background investigation and signs a contract of adhesion disfavorable to themselves to rent from a landlord?

I agree with your points completely, but when it comes to service fuck the customer. Seriously, fuck them.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Lame article. What does it advocate? Revolution? Unionization? Protest? No, just admonishes us to be nice to the poor help. Who knew that the ultra "radical" website whose motto is "Destroy Everything: Anti-Authoritarian, Anti-Political, Anti-Civilization" would be writing rough drafts for Miss Manners!

I think it might be more useful to fill in the gaps of things like this rather than railing against the gaps and inadequacies. It would be nice to read things like this which could provide more of an understanding from revolutionary perspectives. I thought the article brought up interesting things, i just don't think the conclusions or conception of the issues were convincing.

As someone who probably has more than a decade of non consecutive years in low wage service jobs, I'd like to see this invisible frustration brought to the surface more. I'm biased, but I think the growth of service in the u.s. neoliberal era is kind of huge in terms of new specific class dynamics, connections with the modern forms of sexism and racism in the u.s., among other major things.

It seems to me that this is the basis of modern service in the u.s. ... De industrialization/creation of a new low wage labor force; Non-union jobs which tended to have suppressed wages and more repressive style management because of traditional u.s. conceptions of it being "women/ethnic-minority/teen work".

This article is mostly about a consumer entitlement mentality in the u.s. (Which I think is a fact, but i don't know if it's really new or just expanded as these jobs have grown) and makes it seem like the "consumer" is more powerful than the employer somehow. But I think it's more that the employers have increased their ability to control workers in these jobs which then increases the power dynamic between customer and employee... As if part of the service being sold is momentary management/control of labor.

That's in cases where it's "customer service"; where the customer isn't buying a service, increased control due to the low wage work-force manifests itself differently. Either way, there's frustration and tension due to the service worker being a buffer between bosses and customers. The boss cuts the number of checkers at the huge grocery market and so no "adequate service" is possible for the customer; for the worker, the customers are widgets on an assembly line - but widgets who all think they are special, unique, and generally have bad attitudes. It's management by stress; It's an alienating position to be in for the worker.

These jobs are also very different due to specific contexts, but on the whole, the trend is wal-mart, not heterogeneous small shops. Wal-mart also encapsulates the ideological side of this trend too... But it's more just a marketing ploy. Really their power is in controlling the shit out of unprotected (as of yet) unorganized workers.

Anyway, if anyone knows some good articles that go into depth on this subject from a Marxist perspective, I'd love to read more about this.

[FSL]

There was a lottery ad I think in Greece that showed a couple winning "crazy money" and then spending their time in the pool of some fancy hotel with the waiter getting soaked trying to give them their cocktails.

This is the attitude the article is trying to tackle I think. Consumers -workers themselves most of the time- often feel "entitled" not simply to the service but to the person providing it, like he's a slave for rent.
This ad even got me thinking that restaurants and hotels and all those types of businesses should be organized differently in a socialist economy, to stop creating this notion.
When possible, people should take care of their own crap. You can carry your food to your table or make your bed. You do these things everyday and they're really not that much of a burden, there is no need to try and mimick a royal lifestyle.

[FSL]

People at work are people, and so are customers. There's no reason for either to be rude or whatever else, and there are offenders on both sides of the desk. And understand, I've seen people badgering the cashiers or skimming on the tip in restaurants and those people are assholes. I always make sure I tip well and be as courteous as possible to people who are stuck at work helping me out with whatever. But, you know, this idea that all customers are assholes is basically just shitty pseudo-edgy misanthropy.

A customer wouldn't need to be rude or an asshole. Giving a large tip along with a sly smile (an "I fixed you well, didn't I?" type of thing) would give probably every worker in the service industry a huge smile, but it still reinforces the idea that these people are from two seperate worlds.

[ckaihatsu]

A hundred years ago, if you had mentioned the phrase “service industry” to someone, they would probably think of the butlers and maids that served the upper classes and aristocrats. Today, the service sector has ensured that instead of an upper crust being serviced, those being serviced now belong to a mass of little aristocrats.

These little aristocrats are not just limited to retail. We are all small-time rulers now. Every restaurant is a castle, and every beauty parlor a fief. Service industry employees must not only be expected to pledge loyalty to the King, the company, but also to the never-ending stream of Lords and Ladies that flow through the doors. Today, more and more people are coming to depend on this pseudo-serfdom to make a living.

The democratization of power...




---

There was a lottery ad I think in Greece that showed a couple winning "crazy money" and then spending their time in the pool of some fancy hotel with the waiter getting soaked trying to give them their cocktails.

This is the attitude the article is trying to tackle I think. Consumers -workers themselves most of the time- often feel "entitled" not simply to the service but to the person providing it, like he's a slave for rent.
This ad even got me thinking that restaurants and hotels and all those types of businesses should be organized differently in a socialist economy, to stop creating this notion.
When possible, people should take care of their own crap. You can carry your food to your table or make your bed. You do these things everyday and they're really not that much of a burden, there is no need to try and mimick a royal lifestyle.

I'll respectfully differ with this position of yours, on principle....

If, once capitalist social relations have been surpassed, people might feel like providing such (menial) services to others, for (necessarily) entirely personal reasons, there could not be any conceivable reason to *dissuade* such voluntary actions, since the prevailing social context would be one that's 100% free of any duress.

Offhand I could liken such 'club' behavior to present-day consensual sexual activities, where 'adult' acts of all sorts take place amongst those with proclivities to act out imaginative and boundary-pressing fantasies.

Perhaps, for example, a voluntary social commune in a post-capitalist world might very well have such servant-like duties on a *rotation* basis, so that those who serve all others in the commune one day would become the *recipients* of such service on the next.

There are no valid material grounds for arguing otherwise, and to actually do so is, in effect -- ironically -- *lifestylism*.

I, for one, though, would prefer to see any such servile duties relegated to existing or future mechanical technologies, so that no *person* would have to put forth their labor to effect luxury-type conveniences for those who would prefer such.

[piet11111]

Under socialism i would expect people to continue working in service jobs.

People working in holiday resorts tending to tourists and i forgot the name but those people who tend to the house hold when those people had a baby to teach them the ropes and such.

I would not mind a job tending to tourists if i was compensated well and not treated like a slave especially if i knew i was going to have plenty of time off to be spoiled as well

[ckaihatsu]

Under socialism i would expect people to continue working in service jobs.

People working in holiday resorts tending to tourists and i forgot the name but those people who tend to the house hold when those people had a baby to teach them the ropes and such.

I would not mind a job tending to tourists if i was compensated well and not treated like a slave especially if i knew i was going to have plenty of time off to be spoiled as well

At the risk of sounding nit-picky here, I'd like to point out that the whole idea of being 'compensated' for one's efforts in a post-capitalist society, is *problematic*.

Sure, people could readily swap personal favors of any and all kinds, as people do today when they're on more-or-less the same socio-economic level, but to imagine payments of abstracted valuations (currency), or exchanges of liberated labor for material rewards is -- again -- problematic, since such would be too close to the effective *commodification* of labor power.

(This is my standing critique of the well-known 'labor vouchers' proposed implementation.)


Pies Must Line Up

[piet11111]

Compensated well as in not working until i die and then 6 months more to pay for my funeral along with plenty of days off and everything i need to live a decent live.

But i can see how using the word compensation lead you to think i was talking about making a lot of money instead of having a working life that can be considered humane.
For that i take full responsibility.

[Jimmie Higgins]

I think there would be some increase in service type positions after capitalism, at least ones that couldn't be automated. And there's no reason that these positions would need to be degraded, degrading, alienated and frustrating. Post revolution, service and servitude wouldn't be the same thing, service could be valued for it's usefulness if the point of it was actually to be useful for a community. Helping people in a genuine way, because you like the food you cook or feel useful to others in the community is possible, but in capitalism generally service only exists to help the boss make money, under conditions and actual prescribed behavior set by bosses and management.

It doesn't cost anything to smile and say hello, but when you are monitored and threatened with economic consequences on the job if you don't say "hello, can in help you" to everyone who steps within 15 feet of you.... Well then basic friendliness is a commodity and when you get off the clock you just want to go around saying, "fuck you, step back" to anyone who comes within 15 feet of you.

The actual management of behavior and personality is really an insidious part of modern service management techniques. It's like the hours are not yours (as in any wage job), the act of work is broken down and made into repetitive time-based actions (like any modern work), but you also sell your personality and mood to the boss along with your hours.

[ckaihatsu]

I'll also add that, given that labor produces goods and services (and infrastructure), and that all goods and infrastructure would be part of the collective commons in a post-capitalist society, that leaves just *services* remaining as a variable -- and, in that context of collectivized implements, 'services' would thus then include 'the production of free-access goods and infrastructure, by liberated labor'.

So while 'services' today is instinctively thought of as 'servant-like effort for clients', the services of a *socialist* liberated labor would actually effect *mass production* -- free goods and infrastructure for the common good.

(I've incorporated this understanding into a model / framework for the functioning of a socialist-type economics.)

A post-capitalist political economy using labor credits

To clarify and simplify, the labor credits system is like a cash-only economy that only works for *services* (labor), while the world of material implements, resources, and products is open-access and non-abstractable. (No financial valuations.)

[...]

http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?bt=14673

I'm of the position that a post-capitalist system of abstracted material valuations -- if any -- should *not* represent / be transferable for actual material items. Instead, with all goods and services, assets and resources being *collectivized*, the material domain would be basically freely available, like nature itself, though mediated through a collective-political process.

What's always at issue is human *labor* -- *that's* what I think should be the 'independent variable' to be qualified and quantified as well as possible, to serve as the determining source of all other political and economic activity in a post-capitalist social environment. In my conception (accessible as a model at my blog entry) self-selected actions of freely given liberated labor would entitle the laborer to, in turn, authorize the same from others, going forward, in a like proportionate quantity.

Since all of the material proceeds (goods and services) from such liberated labor effort would already have been pre-planned by the larger collective-political process, the output of all liberated labor would always be *collectivized* and *not* under the control of any individual liberated laborer, or grouping of liberated laborers. Therefore there would be no need for the abstract valuation of material items (goods and services) whatsoever -- only the co-administration of them as collective assets and resources according to their basic physical properties.

tinyurl.com/ckaihatsu-concise-communism