Mickel+S's+Op-Ed+Article

The Customer is Always Right

media type="file" key="micaels-muckrakers-2012.mp3"

It’s really very simple, anywhere you work, no matter who you are or how old, if you have a job that has anything with having to do with customer service, there will always be one very simple, very incorrect, and very distressing phrase that will be told to you by anyone and everyone in charge: The customer is always right. Come on, the customer is almost always wrong! Unless you posses some sort of supernatural stupidity, a very strong case of deafness, or maybe it’s your first day on register or something of that sort, a person dealing with a customer for the most part doesn’t make very many mistakes, I mean come on… it’s pushing buttons. The hardest part about being a food services employee and especially of being register, is when you have to attend to a customer who is extremely picky, very unsure of what they want, or doesn’t know how to order what they want and make the order very, excruciatingly confusing. May I give an example? “I want a single cheese, with no cheese, does it have onions, I want none of those, and pickles I want pickles, just mustard, ketchup, and lettuce on it, nothing else, wait does it have tomatoes because I also don’t want those, but I do want cheese on it.” I kid you not, I get people like this all, and I do mean ALL, the time! So where did this infuriating, preposterously stupid lie of “the customer is always right” come from? The oh-so perfect people who have never dealt with a real live customer once in their life and somehow feel they have the extreme authority to tell all employees how one must interact with them. NO! Absolutely no! The customer is NOT always right! In fact they’re almost always wrong! They don’t know what all the sandwiches come; they don’t really know what they want to eat because if they did they’d be able to figure out how they want their pathetic three dollar square shaped beef burger the second they got there! They shouldn’t be allowed to just make a simple phone call about a cashier who—in the midst of all giant line of cars and people ordering like vicious maniacs—accidentally forgot their kid’s meal ten ounce High C Fruit Punch, or was two cents off on their change. Most of those young kids you see on register are high school students desperately trying to balance school and work while maintaining decent grades and somehow saving up for college, a car, a new phone because their old one got stolen, maybe just trying to have money in their wallet in case they want to go out with their friends during lunch and get a quick smoothie or coffee. Have a little sympathy, these kids work hard, you’re not correct, you are wrong, and most of the time, unless I give you the finger or curse you out in some sort of completely undeserved unforgivable way, you really have no excuse for complaining. Take your small chocolate frosty dairy dessert that you really wanted as a medium, and go.