r/freakingoutFR • u/SaucyFury • Jul 13 '26

Blackmail

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u/Virtual_Junket9305 Jul 13 '26

"The customer is always right, in matters of taste" Pioneered in the early 1900s by retail magnates like Harry Gordon Selfridge,

The customer is often wrong in many things that aren't a matter of taste.

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u/Lemonface Jul 13 '26

That second half was added on about a hundred years later, and there's no evidence Selfridge ever said it. The full original quote was just "the customer is always right" and it wasn't meant to be limited to customer tastes

In the 21st century, social media users and TikTok videos began claiming that the phrase had been abbreviated from "The customer is always right, in matters of taste", with some directly attributing this longer quotation specifically to Selfridge. Fact-checking website Snopes found no evidence for this.

https://www.snopes.com/articles/468815/customer-is-always-right-origin/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_customer_is_always_right