Hey, Google! Who said the customer is always right?
And what was he drinking?
Unfortunately, Google does not give a definitive answer to that question. “The customer is always right” has been attributed to Marshall Field, a retailer who started a famous department store in Chicago in 1852.
The phrase has also been attributed to Harry Gordon Selfridge who started Selfridge’s Department Store in London. Those who point to Selfridge as the phrase-coiner say it originated in 1909.
Regardless of who said it first, we know it came into prominence in the early 20th century and became a motto of customer service. The idea was that customers should expect to have a superb experience when they shopped at one of these establishments.
In 1974, Burger King took the idea a little further with a new slogan to emphasize their superior customer experience over their rival McDonald’s: “Have it your way.”
If I’m the customer, I like being right and having things my way.
I’m not kidding!
Spoil me. Pamper me. Make my life convenient.
No, not convenient; make my life abundant. Make me feel important.
And don’t forget that you exist for my pleasure. You, customer service person, are here to serve me.
Can I get an AMEN!
There’s only one problem with that.
It’s completely wrong.
There is not a single, solitary person on this planet that exists for my pleasure.
There is not a single, solitary person on this planet that exists for my convenience.
There is not a single, solitary person on this planet that exists for my abundance or sense of importance.
If my pleasure, convenience, abundance, or importance requires that those things be minimized in someone else, then mine are illegitimate.
I suggest that we see ourselves not as customers to be served, but as contributors to the kind of community we want to live in.
The kind of community where anyone who serves me in a moment in time feels valued and appreciated for their efforts and their contribution to the community and where I serve them back with respectful treatment and affirming words of gratitude, recognizing that their service in this moment doesn’t mean that they are my servants.
The kind of community where we move easily from giving to, receiving, and back to giving without any thought for who “deserves” the role of servant or consumer. We just serve each other according to the needs of the moment.
As we approach Easter, I’m thinking of the words of the Apostle Paul who wrote to the Philippians:
“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!” (Philippians 2:3-8)
How amazing is that? If anyone deserved to be always served—to have it completely His way—it was the One who was God in the flesh.
And yet, He served our greatest need.
Let us have the same mindset.
Be amazing today, my friend.
