Quote: The customer is not an interruption of our work - he is the purpose of it (May 1941, Kenneth B. Elliott)

[Garson O'Toole]

A popular collection of guidelines for customer relations is often
attributed to Mohandas Gandhi. Here is one version:

[Begin excerpt]
A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. He is not
dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption in
our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our
business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favor by serving
him. He is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so.
[End excerpt]

List member Mark Mandel asked about tracing this quotation in a
comment at the Freakonomics website in June 2011. He noted the
connection to New England retailer L.L. Bean. The Quote Investigator
website now has a post about this quote here:

http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/08/02/gandhi-customer/

Special thanks to Stephen Goranson who helped check a hard-to-access
reference using the magnificent Duke library system.

Additional information and citations are welcome.
Garson

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