It's a funny thing the adage 'The customer is always right'. I get that the customer should always get his needs met. That's what service is all about. But are they ALWAYS RIGHT? Maybe someone ought to reconsider the weight of that statement. Say what if a customer comes in claiming that elephants are purple, are service personnel expected to nod their heads in agreement? The problem with that statement is that it merely assumes the customer is right all the time.
Another problem with the aforementioned statement is that people abuse that 'authority' given to them. Of course I'm generalizing. Anyway, this seriously cheesed me off yesterday afternoon while I was having lunch at the foodcourt. It all began when this man [in his late fifties] started yelling at the cleaning lady to clear his table and caused a huge brouhaha over basically, nothing. First of all, the lady was in her late fifties or early sixties, so she's old and may not move as fast. Secondly, she was clearing another table at that time. Thirdly, it wasn't a peak hour, so the foodcourt was relatively empty, and there were clean and cleared tables everywhere. Yet this man started demanding that the lady clear his table at once, and he created quite the ruckus because he was yelling at her. I got pretty disturbed and I felt for the cleaning lady because that man's actions were unreasonable, uncalled for, uncouth, imbecelic, idiotic, and a whole host of adjectives that I won't bother putting down. Seriously, couldn't he just sit at another table, and even if there weren't any other empty tables around, couldn't he simply push the dirty plates to a side for the cleaning lady to clear once she has finished clearing another table? Some people really take all these service personnel for granted. I read in a book that "the best judge of a man's character is in the way he treats his inferiors, not his superiors". In this case, I doubt I'll have to say anymore about this man. The fact that this little scene played out in my head for the rest of the day was enough to garner a mention on the blog. *grin* Seriously, I wish people would treat their inferiors the same way they would treat their superiors. All are humans and are capable of human emotions. I don't see why service personnel should be treated any differently just because they are there to pander to our every need, but rather, we should treat them with the utmost respect for being able to take so much flak from customers and still be able to resist the temptation to tip a whole steaming bowl of soup over the customers' heads and then slam the trays down on their noggins [which would be what I'd do to that man].