November 15, 2025
THE CUSTOMER IS KING
Photo by Georgia de Lotz on Unsplash - Image by @upklyak on freepik
For forty years, a sacred principle has reigned supreme : « The customer is king. » But this cult of instant satisfaction has distorted the very nature of service. Behind this mistaken message lies a society exhausting itself by catering to egos instead of responding to needs. The « king-customer-king » did not liberate the economy : it infantilized human relationships...
- The myth -
The expression « the customer is king » appeared in 19th-century British commerce, popularized by Harry Gordon Selfridge and César Ritz. But it became a managerial dogma in the 1980s, as mass marketing and consumer culture took hold.
The initial intent was noble : to put the customer back at the centre of business and the economy. Except that, repeated endlessly, the mantra turned the customer from a partner into a capricious monarch — able to bend an entire company with a tweet, a star rating, or a comment.
Sociologist Dominique Méda has often pointed out that the value of « work » has been replaced by the value of « marketability. » Everything is measured, rated, and quantified — especially people. And as Christophe Dejours, pioneer of the psychopathology of work, has shown, this « submission to satisfaction » erodes both mental health and workers’ dignity.
Across the Atlantic, Richard Sennett (The Culture of the New Capitalism) describes the same drift : « the human relationship has become a transaction. » And Herbert Freudenberger, who first coined the term burnout in 1974, had already identified this moral fatigue — born from the constant duty to please rather than to perform.
- Politeness -
But the problem isn’t the customer. The problem is the unchecked power we’ve given them — without protecting those who serve.
In call centres, hospitals, service desks, and public offices, training programs are now titled « Managing Difficult Clients » or « Defusing Aggression. » — in plain terms : learning to take hits without flinching. Toxic behaviour is excused in the name of that sacred rule — « the customer pays, therefore the customer is right. » Verbal abuse, emotional blackmail, impulsive tantrums from adults starved for recognition — all of it gets normalized, as if « service » and « servitude » were the same thing.
Meanwhile, teams grow exhausted, resigned, or dehumanized. Caught between pressure from management, colleagues, and users, faces harden, smiles freeze, and vocations — along with willpower — fade away.
According to the European Observatory on Psychosocial Risks (2022) and Eurofound (2021), nearly 70% of employees in direct contact with the public report having suffered aggressive or humiliating behaviour. A trend confirmed by Gallup (2023) : « Over 60% of frontline workers say they feel emotionally drained by customer interactions. »
The World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Labour Organization (ILO) even stressed, in a 2021 joint report, that repeated exposure to verbal violence (in all its forms) and chronic stress has become one of the leading global causes of work-related psychological disorders.
Respect has turned into fear. And fear destroys intrinsic motivation — the drive to serve out of conviction, not constraint. So, let’s be clear : NO! Paying does not grant every right. It’s neither a license to disrespect nor a permit to humiliate.
Treating the customer like a king means confusing respect with submission :
- Bad management -
But it’s not always the customer who believes they’re king — it’s often the system that crowns them.
Management has baked this logic of submission into performance indicators : NPS (Net Promoter Score), instant surveys, « green smiley » buttons at service counters. But behind these metrics, workers lose autonomy, creativity, and recognition.
As researcher Danièle Linhart (CNRS) explains, « we’ve individualized responsibility for service without giving the means to make it possible. » American sociologist Arlie Hochschild, in « The Managed Heart » (1983), goes further : she shows how the emotional labour demanded of employees — smiling, reassuring, containing themselves — slowly erodes their very authenticity.
In other words : the customer demands, the manager demands, and the person caught between the two has no room left to exist — literally trapped between hammer and anvil.
- A simple concept -
If the reign of the customer has damaged our relationships, we can rebuild by returning to a simple idea — « The customer is not a king : it’s an adult. »
An adult with rights and duties : to listen, to understand, to collaborate, to accept waiting or to hear a refusal. That moral contract is precisely what ensures service quality.
A service is a balanced relationship, built on competence, communication, and mutual recognition. It’s an exchange of dignity. And like every healthy exchange, it has boundaries :
The countries that understand this — Denmark, Finland, Japan — don’t glorify the customer : they glorify respect. There, service is a shared honour, not a humiliating hierarchy. The customer deserves to be served — but not to impose whims or fantasies.
- The social contract -
In the public sector, the drift is even subtler. When a citizen demands special treatment « because he/she pays taxes », they forget that they also pay so everyone can be treated fairly.
The role of public service is not to flatter, but to guarantee equality of treatment. A worthy public service is based on competence, clarity, and trust — not on the fear of displeasing or offending.
- When everyone is king, no one governs -
A society where everyone demands exceptions becomes a chaos of egos. That’s no longer democracy : it’s a playground cacophony.
And by confusing « expectation » with « entitlement », we destroy the only foundations that hold organizations together: trust and expertise.
True progress is not to make the customer omnipotent. It’s to restore power and dignity to those who serve.
Conclusions
The customer is not king. The professional is not a servant. They are two human beings who must respect each other for service to have meaning.
Rejecting the « The customer is king » dogma isn’t scorning the public — it’s recognizing them as adults. It’s giving meaning back to service, and to the social bond itself.
Because mutual respect is the only currency that never loses its value : it is given and to be earned — always in both directions.
What do you think?
