Disturbing stories about customers confronting retail employees, sometimes violently, have been unfortunately growing in frequency in the U.S. for a number of years, especially since the beginning of the pandemic. One reporter recently attributed this escalation to an old retail truism she finds ill-suited to today’s world.
The retail mantra that “the customer is always right” has led to a sense of entitlement sometimes culminating in violence, journalist Avery Hartmans argued in a recent Business Insider article. Ms. Hartmans retells a series of alarming pandemic-era anecdotes about retail employees being threatened, assaulted and even killed over mask mandates.
