The Saying Is 'The Customer Is Always Right'

The phrase has been flattened from something more sensible, and there is a popular claim it was deliberately cut short. Early 1900s retail pioneers like Harry Gordon Selfridge, Marshall Field, and others promoted 'the customer is always right' as a slogan about taking complaints seriously and treating shoppers with respect, an attitude, not a literal claim that customers are never mistaken. In context it largely meant the customer is always right about what they want, that is, do not argue with people's tastes and preferences. A widely repeated version online adds a supposed original ending, 'in matters of taste', though historians note solid evidence for that exact extended wording is thin. Either way, the founders never meant that a customer screaming abuse over a clearly wrong demand must be obeyed. So the absolute, weaponised version is a distortion of a customer-service philosophy about respect and preference, not a rule that the person at the counter is infallible. Staff everywhere will be relieved.