I don’t agree with the claim that “the customer is always right”. The experience I have is not 100% representative, as I used to work as a curator in an art gallery. The peaceful environment-thank God-didn’t leave enough space for huge tension between us and the customers/visitors.
Except of the usual “don’t touch the art works, the paintings, etc”, the main problem we had, was related to the closing hours. I can totally understand the fact that you wanna take some time to relax and enjoy the exhibition. I never interrupted anyone, till half an hour after the closing hour. This is when I started turning off the lights, after kindly announcing that we have closed. I mean come on, you wanna take your time and I wanna take my poor self back at home-10 hours are enough I guess. Come tomorrow to see the rest of them, don’t be such a douchebag.
What really impressed me one day though was the following. For two hours, 15.00-17.00 we used to get the rolls down, but we were always leaving a small open space just to make sure that we would not lock ourselves in-this had happened in the past and it was not pleasant. In that time we were working on presentations and several other things for the gallery.
Suddenly a woman appeared out of nowhere in front of us smiling. The first thought that came to our mind was that we forgot to get the roll down. I went to check again and it had about 50 cm open space.
So this woman just literally crawled in, besides the fact that the lights were off and the roll was almost down and asked us to see the exhibition. We were standing there speechless, looking at her like she had 10 noses, whereas she was smiling, as everything was totally normal. We tried to explain to her about the opening hours etc but since she found people by sneaking in, she refused leaving without completing her mission.
We had no other option but to let her stroll around. This is when I realised that some people are idiots. I mean those bloody rolls are down for a reason and that reason is certainly not to play limbo. But probably some believe that they deserve doing whatever they want.
The customer is not always right. Employees are just doing their job and this should be respected as well as the customers’ needs. Let’s make a try to cooperate for the best and coexist peacefully!