The Customer Is Always Loud

The modern Karen isn’t born, she’s activated. All it takes is a mild inconvenience and a surface-level understanding of policy. A line that’s moving too slowly. A price that didn’t match the imaginary one in her head. Suddenly, this is no longer a transaction — it’s a moral crisis that requires a manager, a witness, and at least one person who did nothing wrong to be punished publicly.

What makes it fascinating is the confidence. Not confidence in being correct, but confidence that volume will substitute for it. Facts become optional once the performance starts. There’s pointing, sighing, name-dropping corporate policies no one has read, and the sacred phrase: “I pay your salary,” usually said to someone who looks one paycheck away from quitting and moving to the woods.

The strangest part is how normalized this behavior has become. We’ve all watched it, endured it, and quietly thanked God it wasn’t us — while also knowing exactly how it spreads. Reward tantrums often enough and people stop asking nicely. They escalate. And somewhere between customer service scripts and viral videos, being an adult turned into a negotiation conducted at maximum volume.