Still, true or not, if we take this second, more specific version of the phrase, now it starts to make a little bit more sense. It no longer excuses the entitled behavior that we have come to expect to experience from customers through the 00s and 2010s while working in customer service roles. It also doesn't excuse the people who are patrons of a store to be patronizing toward staff, treating them as if they are inferior just because they are wearing a uniform and standing behind a counter.
As it turns out, just because someone didn't get your "no foam" right on your Starbucks order doesn't excuse you from treating them like they are subhuman.
Although human decency isn't something that we should have to convince people they should have in the first place, simply because some saying told them to or not to. But reality is often disappointing in this way.
Still, if your customers are quite literally excited about an idea, it's probably a good indication that the idea is a good one. This was the case in this story, where this employee shared an idea with their boss only to be laid off and have their boss steal the idea for their own company in the future.
There are some clear lessons here: be careful who you trust and don't offer too much without proper documentation.
See their story as follows below.
3 years ago someone said I had a good idea and told me to present it to leadership. When I shared it, they told me my idea “made their head hurt”. So I created some prototypes, tested it with our customers, and they were genuinely excited about it. One of the devs who believed in the idea too took it on as an extra project to build a proof of concept.
The CEO vetoed a lot of it in favor of what he liked because “the customer doesn’t know what they want.” When we brought my designs with his modifications to customers, they were disappointed. We ended up going to market with his idea anyway, and the whole thing didn’t do so well- he was asked to step down.
An old advisor was brought in to be the new CEO. I got along with him a lot better. He was usually nice and encouraging. When I showed him some of the old designs, he said they were s#%$. He saw them when he was an advisor and always thought it was a bad idea.
Within months of him joining, the new CEO took things off the rails. He had a similar approach of trying to convince people of what they want instead of listening. I noticed he was icing me out, so it wasn’t a surprise when he laid me off.
What I didn’t expect is that a few more months later he would sunset the company and launch a new one- using my designs! He didn’t even use a more polished version of them. He just built the wireframes. And people are already paying for it.
Now if that new company happens to do well, I won’t even get equity.
I should have just quit the day I was told “you’re making my head hurt” by someone who is supposed to have seniority over me. Unbelievable.
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