The Soup Nazi from Seinfeld was an interesting character. He was abusive and rude to customers, but he was able to get away with this behavior because his soup was just so good. People would put up with the abuse because it was worth it to get that soup. Now, I don't want this essay to be misconstrued as advocating being a complete jerk to your customers. This is just dumb. But I do want to put to rest an idea that I have believed for a long while, but I now reject. The customer is not always right.
People misinterpret what it means when people say that the customer is always right. The actual meaning of the statement is simply a rephrasing of the statement that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Basically, taste is relative, so there is no point in arguing with the customer. Just give them what they want.
The Soup Nazi does not believe this garbage. His soup is the best, and you will buy it and on his terms. If you don't like this, no soup for you!! It really is very simple. It is take it or leave it. The Soup Nazi has no interest in your personal tastes or preferences. If he were to cater to every person's whims, the soup would be bad as a result. He might overdo it with the Nazi stuff, but this is as a consequence of the determination you have to practice to go against the herd.
The reason the customer is not always right is because truth, goodness, and beauty are not subjective. They are not subject to a vote like contestants on American Idol. This does not mean that there is not variety with these things. But we know that truth, goodness, and beauty are not subjective when we encounter the false, the evil, and the ugly. The absence of the true, the good, and the beautiful becomes very apparent.
When you accept the objective nature of truth, goodness, and beauty, you tend to eschew the market driven and democratic approach to things. In America, we believe that the customer is always right which means that the customer is king. Here is how this plays out. We have an abomination of a government that is for sale to the highest bidder pandering to every interest group under the sun with bribes, theft, and lying at every level. We have megachurches spouting every heretical notion you can imagine and raking in the dough but leaving people empty. We have hundreds of channels of mindless garbage and an internet devoted largely to spam and porn with search engines and tracking cookies trying to divine everyone's unique preferences. In short, we live in a customer driven culture.
The customer driven culture drives out the true, the good, and the beautiful. For instance, megachurches cater to the felt needs of many Protestants, but they all come away profoundly unsatisfied with the churches they attend. Similarly, politicians bend over backwards to appease their constituents, and they are all dissatisfied with government as a result. Likewise, we have hundreds of channels of cable, but we can never find anything worth watching.
The things of real value are not subject to personal taste. They exist independently of what you or I may think about them. They exist in the mind of God. The best that this customer driven world can do is make copies of the true, the good, and the beautiful, but they all end up being terrible as a result. And those who champion the true, the good, and the beautiful end up being viewed as dictatorial or autocratic.
No one better exemplifies this idea than the late Steve Jobs. Jobs had definite ideas about what products should be, and he was very unwilling to compromise on those things. Jobs was never customer driven. He just believed that products should be beautiful, simple, functional, and durable. It seems like common sense until you consider how much crap gets made, bought, and used. This is why a guy like Jobs could come across like a real jerk much like the Soup Nazi.
I find this happening in myself as I reject the customer driven approach to things. I used to love getting comments on my blog. Now, I don't give a damn about what people think because what they think really doesn't matter. Most people are fools, and you will be a fool, too, if you go along with their folly. So, you learn to stick to your values and your principles, and you ignore those who don't know any better. This means enduring great hatred, but it is a blessing to be hated by idiots. It means you are doing something right.
As a converse, I must also add that the customer is not always wrong either. If they were, the Soup Nazi would be out of business. What we can say is that the customer can learn and appreciate what is true, good, and beautiful. There is hope in that. If you adhere to what is truly valuable, people will come around to your way as an inevitability. This is because there is no other place for them to go. Everything else is just a poor and inferior substitute that does not satisfy.
The way to go in this regard is to spend a great deal of time and effort in getting it right. For the tradesmen, this means learning their trade. For the writer, this means learning to write as well as possible and spending time reading the classics. This path is not always easy, but there is no other way to go. And when you find the right path, you stick to it. As for the customers, they have two options. They can take it, or they can leave it. When you have a satisfied customer, they will come back.
People don't know what they want, or what they should want. They have to be shown the way. You have to be smarter than your customers. You have to believe that you are right. This means telling people that they are wrong. No one likes being told that they are wrong, and they will certainly hate you for it. But if you are right, this will overcome the hatred in the long run. The true always beats the false. Stick to what is true.
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