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One of the world’s best known luxury brands recently conducted a survey of its global store network, sending local platoons of secret shoppers to assess the level of customer service. Despite their stellar reputation, the outlets in Japan fared dismally.

“The problem was not the service. It was the shoppers,” relates the senior director in charge. “In reality, we knew the service in our Japan stores was by far the best anywhere in the world, but the Japanese customers that we sent found faults that nobody else on earth would see.”

Many will see an enviable virtuous circle in this tale — a parable of what happens when a service culture seems genuinely enthusiastic about and responsive to the idea that the customer is always right. High service standards have begotten high expectations, and who would see downside in this?

The trouble is that, in Japan as elsewhere in the world, the “customer is always right” mantra is having a bit of a wobble. Perhaps existentially so.  

The concept has always come with pretty serious caveats; fuller versions of the (variously attributed) original quote qualify it with clauses like “in matters of taste” that shift the meaning. But in a tetchier, shorter-fused world the caveats are multiplying.

Japan’s current experience deserves attention. After many decades at the extreme end of deifying the customer (Japanese companies across all industries routinely refer to clients as kamisama, or “god”), there is now an emerging vocabulary for expressing a healthy measure of atheism. 

The term “customer harassment” has, over the past few years, entered the Japanese public sphere to describe the sort of entitled verbal abuse, threats, tantrums, aggression and physical violence inflicted by customers on workers in retail, restaurants, transport, hotels and other parts of the customer-facing service economy. One recurrent complaint has been customers demanding that staff kneel on the floor to atone for a given infraction.

However tame these incidents may appear in relative terms — comparing them with often violent equivalents in other countries — the perception of a sharp increase in frequency means the phenomenon is being treated as a scourge. The Japanese government is now planning a landmark revision of labour law to require companies to protect their staff from customer rage.

The real breakthrough, though, lies in legislating the idea that customers can be wrong — a concept that could prove more broadly liberating.

Luxury goods and virtuous circles aside, customer infallibility has not necessarily been the optimal guiding principle for Japan, and is arguably even less so now that demographics are squeezing the ability to deliver the same levels of service as before. Excessive deference to customers came, during the country’s long battle with deflation, to border on outright fear that the slightest mis-step risked losing them forever.

So much deference was paid to the customer that companies were reluctant to raise prices even as they themselves bore the cost of maintaining high standards of service. Japan, during its deflationary phase, became one of the great pioneers of product shrinkflation: a phenomenon that, from some angles, made deference to customers look a lot like contempt for their powers of observation.

Perhaps the biggest dent left by Japan’s superior standards of service, though, has been the chronic misallocation of resources. The fabulous but labour-intensive service that nobody here wants to see evaporating has come at a steadily rising cost to other industries in terms of hogging precious workers. That has become more evident as the working-age population begins to shrink and other parts of the economy make more urgent or attractive demands. As with any large-scale reordering, the process will be painful.

Worldwide, though, the sternest challenge to the customer is always right mantra arises from its implication of imbalance. Even if the phrase is not used literally, it creates a subservience that seems ever more anachronistic. In a research paper published last month, Melissa Baker and Kawon Kim linked a general rise in customer incivility and workplace mental health issues to the customer is right mindset. “This phrase leads to inequity between employees and customers as employees must simply deal with misbehaving customers who feel they can do anything, even if it is rude, uncivil and causes increased vulnerability,” they wrote.

Japan may yet be some way from letting service standards slip very far. It may be very close, though, to deciding that customers can have rights, without being right.

leo.lewis@ft.com

The offices of Resource Center Matamoros. The nonprofit works with asylum-seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Verónica Gabriela Cárdenas for NPR

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Verónica Gabriela Cárdenas for NPR

The offices of Resource Center Matamoros. The nonprofit works with asylum-seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Verónica Gabriela Cárdenas for NPR

April 15 started off as a typical day for Gabriela Zavala. She was juggling the demands of her busy family life in Texas, with running Resource Center Matamoros, a small NGO that helps asylum seekers in Mexico, on the other side of the border from Brownsville.

By the evening, her world would be flipped upside down, as her inbox was inundated with threats.

Zavala soon realized she and her NGO, RCM, had been featured prominently in a social media thread showing flyers purportedly found in Matamoros, Mexico, that were urging migrants to illegally vote for Joe Biden in the upcoming election. The thread was posted by an arm of the conservative Heritage Foundation called the Oversight Project. It showed an image of a Spanish-language flyer with RCM’s logo and that of President Biden’s campaign.

A video in the thread showed the flyers hanging in portable toilets at a migrant encampment in Matamoros, with a message reminding migrants to vote for Biden to keep him in office. The flyers are signed with Zavala’s name.

The issue? Zavala says she had nothing to do with the flyers.

You’re reading the Consider This newsletter, which unpacks one major news story each day. Subscribe here to get it delivered to your inbox, and listen to more from the Consider This podcast.

Clumsy translations, defunct phone numbers

Mike Howell, the executive director of the Oversight Project, says the thread did not accuse Zavala of authoring the flyer. He also told The New York Times he condemns death threats. He told NPR the flyer is “very real.”

The flyers were composed in error-riddled Spanish. The text includes an outdated description of RCM from its website that hasn’t been updated in years. That part appears to have been run through Google Translate. The flyer also lists a very old phone number – which also appears on the outdated website.

“Reminder to vote for President Biden when you are in the United States. We need another four years of his term to stay open,” the flyer reads.

Zavala says she doesn’t support the flyer’s message, “I would never sit there and tell somebody that can’t vote, that I know can’t vote, ‘Hey. Go vote.’”

Zavala doesn’t know who wrote or who posted the flyers that were found in the portable toilets.

Andrea Rudnik, with the migrant aid group Team Brownsville says she didn’t see the flyers at the encampment, or hear from any volunteers or migrants who did.

“Those port-o-potties are pretty filthy, If we wanted people to know something, it would be put in a different place,” Rudnik said.

A social media backlash

By the time Zavala realized why she had been receiving so many hateful messages, the viral storm had already exploded.

The thread about the flyers spread quickly and racked up more than 9 million views on the social media platform X.

The social media thread posted by the Oversight Project credited Muckraker, a right-wing website, with discovering the flyers. Muckraker is headed by Anthony Rubin, who often uses undercover tactics in his videos.

Rubin spoke with NPR, and said that the video of the flyers was shot by an anonymous source with a “close connection” to his team.

On April 15th, in the hours before the thread about the flyers appeared online, Rubin and his brother rang the bell at Resource Center Matamoros saying they wanted to volunteer. Rubin confirmed that in an interview with NPR.

RCM’s staff called Zavala so she could speak to Rubin about volunteering. And later on, a clip from that phone call wound up as part of the thread about the flyers, with a caption saying Zavala had implied that she, “wants to help as many illegals as possible before President Trump is reelected.”

NPR’s Jude Joffe-Block delves into the full story on today’s episode. Tap the play button at the top of the screen to listen.

This episode was produced by Audrey Nguyen and Brianna Scott. Additional reporting from Mexico was contributed by Texas Public Radio’s Gaige Davila and independent journalist Verónica Gabriela Cárdenas. It was edited by Brett Neely and Courtney Dorning. Our executive producer is Sami Yenigun.

The UK government is split over a financial support package for Harland & Wolff in a row that casts uncertainty over the future of the Belfast shipbuilder behind the Titanic.

The Treasury has reservations about approving a taxpayer-backed £200mn guaranteed loan facility, while three rival ministries — Defence, Trade and Business, and the Northern Ireland Office — are all keen to press ahead, according to Whitehall officials.

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, who must greenlight the package, has not made up his mind and is still receiving advice, with some involved in the talks claiming he is dragging his feet on the decision, three people with knowledge of the talks said. Insiders said a decision is expected in the coming days. H&W wants to borrow up to £200mn from a group of banks at a lower interest rate with the government acting as a guarantor for those loans.

Without the guarantee, the lossmaking business will need to find other sources of financing to help meet its working capital requirements and fulfil key contracts that include building three ships in a £1.6bn Royal Navy contract.

The company’s auditors last year warned the business faced “material uncertainty” unless it could source fresh financing and win additional new work.

The group is also engaged in pay negotiations with staff and “needs the money” to meet payroll, one person with knowledge of the business said.

Report of the government split comes only days after defence secretary Grant Shapps claimed the UK was entering a “golden age” of shipbuilding, after he approved new warships as part of the UK’s increased military spending.

Two of the officials said that the government was inclined to help the Aim-listed company, which has operations in Scotland and England as well as the iconic shipyard where the Titanic was built and whose yellow cranes dominate the Belfast skyline.

One insisted that the Treasury was concerned about the specific financing mechanism proposed, but was not opposed to the principle of extending support to the 163-year-old company. Officials are weighing alternative support options in the event the chancellor blocks the guarantee scheme.

However, MPs have questioned whether it is right to use taxpayers’ money to support the struggling business at all.

Kevan Jones, Labour MP for North Durham, on Wednesday called on the National Audit Office to investigate the matter.

“There are serious questions to answer around the use of taxpayer money in guaranteeing a multimillion pound loan to Harland & Wolff, given its current financial position,” Jones told the Financial Times.

Jones, who has previously raised concerns in parliament about the intention to offer an unprecedented 100 per cent guaranteed loan, wrote to Gareth Davies, head of the NAO, earlier this week asking the agency to look into what guarantees were in place to protect taxypayers. 

Jones said there were also questions to be asked about the “due diligence that was done on the ability of H&W to deliver on the £1.6bn contract prior to it being awarded”.

“The National Audit Office should seek answers to these questions on taxpayers’ behalf,” said Jones.

In a statement on Wednesday, H&W said its management was “comfortable with progress on what is a complex and large transaction for all parties involved”.

H&W shares fell more than 28 per cent on Tuesday before recovering half their losses to close at £10.10, valuing the business at less than £18mn.

The company’s latest annual accounts, to the end of 2022, showed revenues of £27mn but losses of £70mn. H&W also had net debt of £82.5mn, in part thanks to high interest payments on a $100mn loan to New York-based Riverstone Credit Partners.

In December, H&W said it had “sufficient funds” to meet its working capital requirements “until the new loan facility is completed”.

Francis Tusa, analyst and editor of the Defence Analysis newsletter, said “awarding a £1.6bn contract to a company with a market value substantially below this level is not best practice”. H&W has not built a complex warship for more than two decades.

Ministers had agreed in December to advance the loan guarantee to the next stage, so that H&W could work on financing with its bank syndicate.

The officials said the MoD, DBT and NIO want a financial package agreed swiftly to offer certainty around the future of the shipbuilding business.

The package is critical if H&W is to deliver on a £1.6bn contract to build three support ships for the Royal Navy, which it won in 2022 as part of a Spanish-led consortium. Unions have previously raised concerns that the work could migrate to Spain.

The NIO supports extending finance to Harland & Wolff, mindful of its status as an iconic Belfast-founded business that has particular significance to the unionist community, according to one of the Whitehall insiders. The government pledged in January to support the region’s shipbuilding and defence industries.

Despite the row, first reported by The Times, unions remain confident. Alan Perry, senior organiser for the GMB union in Belfast, said he was “definitely not” hearing the company was in any danger or anything “at the moment that would concern us”.

A government spokesperson said: “We continue to engage with Harland and Wolff with the export development guarantee. Due to commercial sensitivities, it would not be appropriate to comment further until the outcome of the process is confirmed.”