I have had just about enough of being treated like a second-class citizen, simply because I happened to be that put-upon member of society-a customer. The more I go into shops and hotels, banks and post offices, railway stations, airports and the like, the more I’m convinced that things are being run only to suit the firm, the system, or the union. There seems to be a new motto for so–called “service” organizations – Staff Before Service. How often, for example, have you queued for what seems ...

I have had just about enough of being treated like a second-class citizen, simply because I happened to be that put-upon member of society-a customer. The more I go into shops and hotels, banks and post offices, railway stations, airports and the like, the more I’m convinced that things are being run only to suit the firm, the system, or the union. There seems to be a new motto for so–called “service” organizations – Staff Before Service.

How often, for example, have you queued for what seems like hours at the Post Office or the supermarket because there weren’t enough staff on duty to man all the service grills or checkout counters? Surely in these days of high unemployment it must be possible to recruit cashiers or counter staff. Yet supermarkets, hinting darkly at higher prices, claim that unshrouding all their cash registers at any one time would increase overheads. And the Post Office says we cannot expect all their service grills to be occupied “at times when demand is low.”

It’s the same with hotels. Because waiters and kitchen staff must finish when it suits them, dining rooms close earlier or menu choice is curtailed. As for us guests (and how the meaning of that word has been whittled away), we just have to put up with it. There’s also the nonsense of so many friendly hotel night porters having been phased out in the interests of “efficiency” (i.e. profits) and replaced by coin-eating machines which dispense everything from larger to laxatives. Not to mention the creeping menace of the tea–making kit in your room: a kettle with assortment of teabags, plastic milk cartons and limp sugar. Who wants to wake up to a raw teabag? I don't, especially when I am paying for “service”.

Can it he halted, this erosion of service, this growing attitude that the customer is always a nuisance? I fervently hope so because it’s happening, sadly, in all walks of life.

The writer feels that nowadays a customer is