Customers and Guests

When did customers and citizens start to become "guests"?

Department stores, government agencies, Amtrak and a dizzying array of service-oriented businesses have renamed us. They don't serve customers anymore. They welcome guests.

This must stop.

A guest is someone you welcome into your home. In most world cultures, the relationship between guest and host is sacred. You are given somewhere comfortable to sit and made to feel welcome. Maybe the liquor is broken out; maybe it's fried goat entrails, glutenous rice or a just a tall cold glass of lemonade. Depends on where you are, when you are and who you are, but the message is always the same: "Welcome. Relax."

Done properly, it's an elaborate dance of offer and acceptance that reaffirms friendships, puts strangers at ease and papers over any of the many differences that make us want to choke the hell out of one another. It's not about commerce. On the contrary, you're spending money and time for someone you might not even like. It's about culture. It's about "home." It's about shared humanity.

To a true merchant, the customer is not a guest. The customer isn't a friend, a traveler or a storyteller. The customer is a wallet with a brain attached.

To suggest that a customer is a guest is an insult to both. You don't want me in your store to make me feel any more comfortable or welcome than is commercially reasonable. And I don't want you to bother. Maybe free samples make people buy cocktail wieners. Maybe a handshake and a "how do you do?" from a greeter makes people want to come back. Maybe polite, attentive service relaxes the obnoxious little genie of conscience that stops us from buying unneeded merchandise.

That's not the same as welcoming a guest, though. It's a completely different dance, done for an entirely different purpose.

So why conflate them? It may go back to the well-meaning cheapening of the college degree.

At one point in time, a man or woman with a bachelor's degree was looked up to as a truly educated person. Most people learned trades or did manual labor. Service work was far from glamorous, but there was a certain pride that went along with keeping a clean shop, doing an honest business, and treating customers well. Jobs of any sort were more valuable than they are now — the McJob hadn't yet been invented.

Then came the G.I. Bill and an explosion in college-educated Americans. The subsequent boom of education (tempered by life experience) blasted the United States forward to its current, increasingly shaky perch as the world's leader. But as time went by, the college degree meant less — it was easier to obtain, and in many circles, it became shameful not to have one — regardless of how little actual effort it actually signified.

People who shouldn't have bothered getting liberal arts degrees — a good percentage of America's artists, writers, service workers and craftspeople — got badgered or tricked into the schoolwork out of family obligation or as an alternative to the hard paths of apprenticeship and humiliating dues-paying struggle.

All of which were waiting on the other side of graduation, regardless.

So, the quality of people doing service jobs declined. People didn't get stupider, or less capable — they just had more options, and service jobs lost status. They were no longer seen as a way up, or even a reliable lifeline. Quality of service declined. Abominations like Best Buy became the norm, and suddenly we had a crisis. Customers were increasingly aware that their waiter at T.G.I. Friday's, their clerk at Office Max and their customer service rep at Continental Airlines just couldn't give a damn. And knew nothing about the merchandise, to boot.

Major American corporations deployed their standard answer to everything: "Rename the Problem, and Maybe It'll Go Away." Following in the proud tradition of "right-sizing," "golden parachutes" and "right to work" shop floors, American companies decided to call their neglected customers "guests."

In theory, this makes customers feel better, and makes underpaid, undertrained, bitter service employees treat their "guests" with more care.

In reality, the new name just ironically underlines the incredible gap between service expected and service delivered. Nothing's more aggravating than being called someone's "guest" as you're served a lukewarm, $8 dish of shrimp cocktail dubbed "The Super Shrimptacular."

A real host would never do that. Nor would a real merchant.

— James Norton (jrnorton@flakmag.com)

— graphic by Harsho Mohan Chattoraj (harshomohan at yahoo dot com)