The customer is always right.

"The Customer is always" in the same way your mother-in-law is always right.

It's best to just agree.

Best to keep on good terms. You know, she only visits once or twice a year so you don't really have to change the way you do anything, and it never really has to be challenged cause with any luck she'll be gone in a couple of days.

But I don't think I'll shock anyone's sensibilities if I say, the customer isn't always right, but like your mother-in-law saying the most outrageous things, it's best to ignore and pretend.

The customer's information or knowledge is most definitely not always right. You know, I've only been doing this for 30 years or so, and everyone off the street is more right than me?

And finally, the customer's tastes aren't always right. But it's best to let them have their favorites without comment. Everyday someone will ask for a book or a comic that I dislike, but it doesn't matter what I like. I will say, even, that it's not a matter of what I like or dislike, but that some stuff just sucks.

Nevertheless:

The customer is most definitely always right when they buy something.

Let me repeat that -- because we want the customer to buy from us, we'll always agree with them.

Pretty cynical, if you ask me. The customer ought to be thinking what this means when a big box store (or small retailer) butters them up by saying they're always right. How can that be?

THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT

If you think about it, retailers say this not for your benefit but for ours.

So WE agree to everything YOU say, no matter how outrageous?

"Oh, yes, ma'am. Abba is so much better than the Beatles."

"Absolutely, sir. The Black Hole is a much better movie than Star Wars."

How condescending can you be?

It makes about as much sense as going to the doctor, and asking the doctor how you're doing and the doctor say, "How do YOU think you're doing?" "I think I'm O.K."
"Well, you must be right," says the doctor.

We all act like we're cynical about marketing, and yet at some level of sub-conscious, some marketing ploys are so insidious, so crafty, that we buy into them. Because it strokes our ego?

If we had a friend who told us we were always right, we'd think them a toady, a brown-noser, a wormtongue. We wouldn't think they were much of a friend.

We admire people who speak truth to power, no matter the consequences. Any smart power player would appreciate that.

You the customer are the power.

But you don't want us to speak truth.

THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT.

I had a couple of customers in yesterday looking a the S.F. and Fantasy books. One comments to the other that he never reads S.F. because they always pull out a gadget or a magic spell to save themselves.

My hackles rise.

That's only true in the most general of senses, and not all that different than any other kind of novel. I've only read a few books like that in the genre, and they were very early in the history -- E.E. Doc Smith, for instance.

Most are way more complicated and sophisticated than that.

Or I could've quoted Sturgeon's Law.

Or I could've quoted Shakespeare:

Hamlet:
And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

But I left him blissfully ignorant, just as I must almost all people's opinions of comics.

And I was rewarded by the purchase of a Watchmen graphic novel.

THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT.

But only if they want to stay wrong.