Forum: ‘Customer Service’ is just another invasive species

Published 1:30 am Saturday, May 2, 2026

A fella named Luther Burbank was, I’m sure, convinced he was doing us a favor when, in 1895, he introduced the Himalayan Blackberry to the Puget Sound region. Invasive species always begin their take-over blessed by the good intentions of those who launched them. I’m sure there’s a well-intentioned story behind the arrival of Morning Glory, Japanese Knot-Weed, Marsh Buttercup, Southern Californians (JK) and European Green crabs, too.

Invasive species are not limited to biology, though. They occur in human culture – in the ecosystem of human thought and behavior. An idea with a noble and rational origin can end up wreaking havoc and displacing the natural inhabitants once it begins to spread.

“Customer Service” is just such an invasive species.

Unlike plants and animals, it’s hard to pinpoint the exact date an idea was first introduced into an ecosystem, but I would venture that CS entered our “Values Garden” in the late 19th century along with mechanization, materialism, urbanization and the emergence of the middle class. The phrase, “The customer is always right.” is widely believed to have come about in this era, and it captures the heart of the CS value.

Whatever was intended by the introduction of this idea (likely just increased profits, but let’s put that aside for now) what it has become is not unlike the blackberries: problematic, ubiquitous and ultimately accepted as a “natural” part of the system; something to be lived with, even celebrated.

It has invaded to such an extent that we no longer consider the possibility of being wrong. It’s always someone else’s fault. “After all … I’m the customer, and the customer is always right … even when I’m unreasonable, entitled and selfish.” The White House is currently occupied by the most advanced and highly adapted examples of this invasive species.

The spread of CS over the last 150 years has led to everything from The Great Pacific Garbage Patch to the increase in police pursuits, from running red lights as a common practice, to the lack of affordable housing. The origin of all these lies in the idea that it’s acceptable, even expected, for me to get what I want regardless of the impact.

For those of us with a living memory, the arguable over-diagnosis of ADHD and associated behaviors is only barely arguable. In the 60s and 70s (before CS had fully invaded the public education ecosystem) parents were not yet “customers” and so there was a peer-to-peer, cooperative relationship with educators. Many (not all) of the behaviors now associated with ADHD et. Al. were dealt with pretty effectively because home and school worked together. Now, the state is customer of the teacher, the teacher is the customer of the parent and the parent is the customer of the child, each level demanding flawless Customer Service from those “beneath” them.

It’s one thing for a restaurant to begin serving meat-free, gluten-free, fair trade, locally sourced, solar-powered soy muffins because customers demand it. It’s another thing for educators to endure verbal assaults and classroom anarchy because students and their parents believe they are “always right.”

Climate change and gun violence will run their inevitable courses to their inevitable nightmarish conclusions, not because they are unstoppable (they are) but because the customer base for crude oil and high caliber ego-boosters is just too powerful. And those who call for change are ineffective because they uncritically see themselves only as a competing customer base, demanding almond milk in their lattes rather than cow’s milk.

Nothing will truly change as long as we see ourselves as a customers. That so-called sacred ideal of Democracy has been stripped and the parts sold for scrap. What’s left is customer service: the shabbiest and meanest version of democracy: if most of us want a thing then it is, by definition, the right thing and we will extract it at any cost.

I’m no political scientist, so maybe we can’t call it democracy, but what’s needed are partners and collaborators, not customers.

Dan Hazen lives in Marysville and works in Everett.