"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."
- Gandhi
That doesn't sound right. It's a pastiche of things Gandhi might have said, except that he would surely not have used the word "customer" in this way. That comes from the language of 20th century capitalism, which Gandhi abhorred.
Capitalism happens when the factors of production (land/capital) can be private, not necesserily owned by the goverment, "business" or "customer" are really irrelevant to the economic system :)
I don't know what you were just reading, but I'll bet it has little to do with what Gandhi actually thought, said, or did.
Googling the quote yields no citation, just reams of quotespam of the sort that surrounds this kind of bogus attribution. It's an old trick: put the best lines into the mouths of the most famous guys and people will more likely repeat them. A Russian once told me that the funniest jokes were all attributed to Pushkin.
The most common claim is that the line comes from a speech Gandhi gave in South Africa in 1890. Hmm: in 1890 Gandhi was a 20-year old law student in England. He took a job in South Africa in 1893. Maybe the date was rounded down? But any speeches that survive from that period would surely be from the anti-racist campaign that made him infamous, not pep talks to local businessmen.
The real problem, though, is with the language of the quote. How likely was an Indian lawyer in his early 20s in South Africa to dash off homilies about customer service that sound just like inspirational American business literature of several generations later? Amusingly, the internet can't seem to make up its mind whether Gandhi said it or L.L. Bean did.
If anyone can dig up a real reference, though, I'm happy to be proven wrong.
I couldn't find a transcription of the speech they are referencing.
But to be totally clear, referring to him as a 20-year-old law student is a bit misleading. In 1890 he joined the executive team at the Vegetarian society (a charity that had an international presence.) So the idea that he may travel and give a speech is not far-fetched. Additionally as you point out, the year may not be correctly cited.
