The Customer Is Not Always Right
| a people pleaser’s guide to loving others
origami by Kailyn Liu | photo by Estelle Hooper
This article is part of the Claritas spring 2023 issue, Love. Read the full print release here.
By: Kailyn Liu
How do I glorify God in my vocation?
That was the question on my mind at the great New England institution of Dunkin’ Donuts, my first ever retail job. I worked there as part of a summer mission trip to New Hampshire where I was encouraged to do “ministry on the job” alongside my fellow students. Despite the cheerful pink and orange, the frosted and sprinkled donuts, and the aroma of sweet coffee concoctions, I found the new experience to be overwhelming, especially during rush times. When I made someone wait five extra minutes and they got upset, I felt like I had committed a cardinal sin. And it was no wonder, because I decided the way to glorify God was to always make people happy and satisfied. If customers got upset (and they often did), that must have meant I failed to show the power of Christ and love of God to them and to my coworkers. That answer also applied to other areas of my life. I had tried to share about Jesus with friends I made online, and they responded by telling me in a harsh tone that they don’t want to hear religious messages. I thought I must have been saying the wrong words to them, because shouldn’t they be happy with me telling them Jesus loves them? Even in confrontations not relating to religion, I got angry reactions just for saying how I felt instead of what people wanted to hear. Trying to please others was a great burden that made me doubtful of my ability to love them.
Our culture places a high value on pleasing people. Online shopping allows us to get almost anything we want within a few days. Black Friday puts the “mess” in Christmas as we fight each other tooth and nail to get the perfect gifts for those we love. [1] In my field of study, food scientists work tirelessly towards developing the most convenient and crave-able concoctions. And retail companies like Dunkin’ place customer satisfaction at the core of what they do, hence the phrase “the customer is always right.” Dunkin’s mission statement expresses quite clearly how central customer satisfaction is to them: “Everything we do is about you. From chefs who create exciting new flavors, to crew members who know exactly how you want your drink—we prioritize what you need to get you on your way.” [2] When we are surrounded by a culture that seeks every opportunity to gratify us, we learn that whether it’s a snack cake from the vending machine or our dream job, having what we want with minimal inconvenience is essential to having a good life. When we don’t get what we want, our disappointment turns into resentment because we’ve been denied the ability to have our way in life. I’ve seen this many times in my customers, and even more times in myself. It’s a terrible feeling, one I wish for nobody to experience. So it’s best to give them exactly what they want (the right coffee order, the right time, the right words to say) and avoid the discomfort altogether because I care about them, right?
After all, Jesus told us to serve him by loving one another , so why not love people by pleasing them? [3] In contrast to this idea, the Apostle Paul, who showed remarkable understanding of the meaning of Jesus’ words and actions, wrote: “If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.” [4] He explicitly excludes a life of pleasing others from genuine love and obedience to God, which came as a surprise to me because I hadn’t even thought there was a difference between the two. My question about glorifying God in my work became more specific: How do I love my coworkers and customers, especially in a job where customer satisfaction is so important? How do I make sure I am serving Christ, including his command to love, and not just trying to please people?
Telling the difference between loving people and pleasing people is difficult, but there are several ways we can build our discernment. One important way, as with sin, is to examine our motivations. Much of psychology agrees on the importance of checking our intentions for pleasing people: “We have to pay close attention to our motivations when we go out of our way to fulfill another’s needs, especially when we are doing it for validation,” writes Mark Travers, Ph.D., a psychologist with degrees from Cornell and the University of Colorado Boulder. Travers explains that low self-esteem causes people-pleasing because we want to fulfill the needs of whoever we value more. [5] We may also try to please people out of fear of punishment or rejection, desire for inclusion, or favors in return. These motives are unhealthy and do not come from the love of God. I thought about my motivations for pleasing people at Dunkin’. Yes, it was part of the job description, and part of how I could do my work with excellence to God’s glory. I had a genuine desire to make people happy by trying to please them. But at the same time, I gave too much weight to people’s disappointment, thinking it would severely harden people’s hearts against God. I worked out of a self-induced pressure to make people happy by my own efforts and put all the blame on myself when they were displeased, even when I knew they could be frustrated from other events. The focus of my “selflessness” was not really on God, or even on others; it was all about me and all the disappointments I caused. I could not show God’s love and character if I was not letting him fill me with it, which he is all too willing to do.
Another way to discern the difference between pleasing and loving, biblically, is to examine the context of Galatians 1:10 itself. In the beginning of his letter to the Galatians, Paul fiercely condemns man-made distortions to the gospel of Christ which have caused them to turn away from God before concluding with “For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.” The issue with pleasing people here is that it compromises the truth of who Jesus is and what he has done for us. Although we may not know the specific false gospels the Galatians struggled with, we may be familiar with attempts to make Christianity appealing that compromise biblical truths. For example, the “seeker sensitive” movement used business-based models to attract people to churches, focusing on aspects like exciting lighting and serving the right snacks with the hope that seekers will come for entertainment and stay for Jesus. [6] At the same time, seeker-sensitive churches often avoided aspects of the gospel that made people uncomfortable like the fallenness of humanity. [7] This movement and others (like the prosperity gospel) made entire churches try to please people, leading to distortions of the gospel of Christ where it conflicted with their goals. Love is different from pleasing people in that it includes telling difficult truths, like that of the gospel—or even just telling a customer that we’re out of their favorite donut.
Even more importantly, we can look at how Jesus himself loved people. Not only did Jesus’ life and actions influence so much of Paul’s writings, but how could he—and we—serve Christ without knowing what he says and does? Consider John 13:34 again: Jesus tells us to love one another “as I have loved you.” He loved us while we were undeserving sinners, even taking the punishment for our sin by dying a painful death. [8] Through his life, death, and resurrection he calls us to love others sacrificially. We must be willing to put aside our own needs, interests, priorities, and personal happiness to help the people in need around us—our neighbors, one would say. At the same time, overextending ourselves to help others is also part of people-pleasing, and Jesus’ life answers that as well. Jesus had much more wisdom and ability to help others because he is literally God, but there were still many times he withdrew to be with the Father in prayer even when people sought him. Jesus knows better than anyone else the complete dependence we must have upon God if we are to love others.
Throughout the Gospels, Jesus displayed great love and compassion for those who society deemed unlovable: the disabled, the distrusted, the hated. Everything he did was out of pure, unbounded love. But Jesus was no people-pleaser; many of his actions were disruptive and upsetting, in fact. For example, Jesus healed and did other acts of mercy on the Sabbath against the will of religious leaders, causing at least six confrontations! Why would Jesus cause so much disruption when he could heal people on any other day? Wouldn’t the leaders support him, and believe in him, that way? In our human way of thinking, we think that we should please those who are influential if we want to be successful—in other words, Jesus should be networking with the religious leaders! But the authors of the Gospels, and Jesus himself, made a point by repeating these events. The religious leaders made the Sabbath an occasion for strict rule-keeping to justify themselves before God while condemning others, so Jesus wanted to show them more of who God is and what he desires, while extending compassion to those in need. During one such incident, he tells the outraged Pharisees that God “desires mercy, and not sacrifice,” and “the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” [10] Jesus wanted the Pharisees, who claimed to uphold God’s word, to know that God made the Sabbath as a time for rest and restoration in his presence and to show mercy to the needy. Here we see Jesus displeasing people to love people by pointing towards the heart of God’s commandment to love him and love our neighbors.
People-pleasing comes entirely from our own efforts. It is up to us to say and do the right things to get on people’s good sides and keep them happy. But serving Christ comes from his power working for us, and does not rely on changing others’ feelings or “fixing” people; these are things that cannot and should not be in our control. What I learned from my experiences at Dunkin' is that it’s important for me to carry out orders well to the glory of God, but I don’t need to measure my success on how people react. Human expectations, including those of me, my coworkers, and customers, are often fallen, and disappointment is a natural part of life. While we should not disappoint people by failing to keep our promises, we should all seek gracious ways to resolve disappointment rather than ruthlessly trying to prevent it (and consider ourselves failures when it does happen). In my work, I can ask God to work through me and give me the actions and words to meet people’s requests (and complaints) with a gracious heart. Some degree of gratification—sometimes instant, but more often not—is involved in healthy forms of love, but keeping everyone gratified is a misguided, exhausting, and ultimately impossible task. With God working in us, we can pray and strive to love others with His love no matter what the immediate results may be.
This article appeared in Claritas’ spring 2023 Love Issue
Sources
[1] Black Friday Death Count. 2021. Distributed by BlackFridayDeathCount.com. Black Friday Death Count
[2] “Dunkin’ International Site,” n.d. https://www.dunkindonuts.com/en/about/about-us.
[3] John 13: 33-34 (ESV)
[4] Galatians 1:10 (ESV)
[5] Travers, Mark. “A Psychologist Poses 2 Questions To Anyone Stuck In A People-Pleasing Trap.” Forbes, April 19, 2023. https://www.forbes.com/sites/traversmark/2023/04/19/a-psychologist-poses-2-questions-to-anyone-stuck-in-a-people-pleasing-trap/?sh=33d3703044e8.
[6] DeYoung, Kevin. “Listening to and Questioning the Seeker Church.” The Gospel Coalition (blog), October 19, 2011. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevin-deyoung/listening-to-and-questioning-the-seeker-church/.
[7] GotQuestions.org. “Should a church be seeker sensitive?” January 4, 2022. https://www.gotquestions.org/seeker-sensitive-church.html.
[8] Romans 5:8
[9[ Matthew 12:1-8/Mark 2:27, Mark 3:1-6, Luke 6:1-5, 13:10-17, 14:1-6, and John 5:1-18 (ESV)
[10] Mark 2:27-28