If you work in retail or customer service you know the one rule we are supposed to work by, “The customer is always right." But why? Why is this one broken rule something that we must base our work atmosphere off of? Is the customer really always right?

There are times when the customer is far from being right. I deal with people complaining about this or that on a daily basis at my work. Clearly they are wrong, and only seem to be complaining to get something free out of this situation. But I cannot tell the customer they are wrong because that would be “bad customer service."

With the way that our society is turning, it’s making the “customer is always right” rule even harder to follow. Our society is turning in to a “me” society where all they want is to make themselves happy at no coast. It seems like anytime you see someone complaining at a restaurant, fast food place, or retail store, they do not care about how their words might effect that worker. All they care about is getting something free or discounted. This is sad. How has our world put money and objects above the respect of others?

It’s really hard to let a customer yell at you for a “mistake” that they think you made. It’s hard to sit there with a smile and have to admit to whatever mistake was supposedly made. It’s hard to have to go back and re-make whatever was wrong when you clearly know it was not made wrong in the first place. But as a good worker that I am, I let them yell at me and I apologize, when all I want to do is shake my head and tell them that they are wrong.

So I challenge all of those who are reading this. Next time you are in a retail or customer service setting and you think something is wrong, think about what you are going to say. Think about how you would feel if you were the worker who was getting yelled at for a mistake. Think about all the other people that might have yelled at the worker previously in the day. Is this really a mistake or did you order something wrong? Was it the worker that made the mistake or was it you? Is it worth yelling at someone over? Next time you want to complain about something, do it in a calm manner. In the long run, is this mistake really the end of the world? No its not. So don’t treat it as if it were.