Penny Mordaunt, who carried her sword with such panache at the coronation, has called for 2024 to become the year we ‘make the consumer the king again’. I like Mordaunt. You should see the way she demolishes her Labour and Scots Nats counterparts in the Commons. But with her call for customers to be treated as monarchs, she may face an unwinnable battle. Businesses regard customers not as kings but as potential muggers, racists and a thoroughly dodgy lot.

‘Le client n’a jamais tort,’ said the hotelier César Ritz (d.1918), and he made a fortune. The more common attitude among today’s business owners, particularly in London, is that le client n’a jamais right. Are they correct – or is their much-paraded suspicion worsening the atmosphere?

The customer as king? Dream on. The customer is a lackey and a nuisance

Here are some signs seen in shops and cafés. Exhibit one: ‘Zero tolerance. Shouting, being disrespectful or abusive towards staff will not be tolerated at any time. Our hardworking, amazing staff have the right to be treated with dignity and respect at all times.’

Exhibit two: ‘Our people are people too. Please respect our Team so we can create a positive retail experience.’

Exhibit three: ‘Zero tolerance policy. We will not tolerate any forms of sexual harassment, aggression, racism, misogyny, LGBT phobia, religious bigotry.’

Exhibit four: ‘Giving money or food to people outside our store is encouraging theft, aggressive behaviour and substance abuse. There are many charities that would love your support. Please consider before handing over any money outside our store.’

Harry Gordon Selfridge (1858-1947), creator of the department store on London’s Oxford Street, helped mint the dictum ‘the customer is always right’. Selfridges is today more concerned about parading its own righteousness. On its website, alongside statements about its ‘tax vision and tax strategy objectives’, its modern slavery statement and gender pay gap report, you will find an ‘unacceptable behaviour policy’. Here, Harry Gordon Selfridge’s successors – ‘we are diverse, we are inclusive, we are Selfridges’ – wag their fingers at customers. Members of the public are told they will be reported to the police ‘or other relevant authorities’ if they use ‘derogatory language’, ‘language that is prejudiced based on a person’s sex, sexual orientation or gender identity (homophobia, transphobia or biphobia)’ or if they commit ‘cyberflashing, cat-calling or up-skirting’. Blimey. And you only stepped in to buy a packet of handkerchiefs. I don’t even know what cyberflashing is.

The Retail Trust, which campaigns for shop workers, says violence towards retail staff is worsening. It claims 90 per cent have been abused, with one unfortunate woman at a hardware store being told ‘I will slam your face through the desk’ before the customer punched her. Having done my time as a barman, I suppose I was once part of the statistics. An over-refreshed patron at the Red Lion pub in Oxford flayed a fist at me after I declined to serve him a snakebite. More recently, a minister for culture came charging up to the press gallery of the House of Commons and started screaming at me for having shown insufficient respect to her in a parliamentary sketch. The minister, since you ask, was Dame Caroline Dinenage. Perhaps I should report her to ‘the relevant authorities’. But I probably deserved it.

Attacking shop staff is surely illegal. No one can condone such scurvy conduct. But these corporate warnings seem to be about something else. Companies are parading political positions. Managers are telling customers who is boss, and it ain’t them.

My friend Janet, a nonagenarian widow, was taken to a Herefordshire pub the other day. Janet no longer has much appetite and chose something off the children’s menu because it would be smaller. ‘It’ll be on a cold plate,’ said the waiter. Janet politely asked if the plate could perhaps be warmed. ‘Nope,’ came the reply. ‘Children’s dishes come on cold plates. Safety protocols.’

One of the liberations of early Thatcherism was that companies started trying harder to please customers. Competition in previously stagnant and nationalised industries meant, for instance, that British Telecom was more helpful than the old GPO if you wanted a telephone line. Service in shops and public transport and hotels improved. Briefly, the philosophy of César Ritz flourished.

A couple of decades later, things started slipping to the old ways. Switchboards were replaced by phone trees (‘automated attendants’). Privatised utilities introduced reference numbers ‘for the convenience of the customer’ that were long and fiddlesome, plainly more for the convenience of the company computer. Holiday bookings became hellish. We now had to reserve hotels and flights ourselves. It is unlikely anyone under 45 knows what heaven it was to leave such chores to your travel agent. Now you have to input your details, print your boarding passes, faff around with your seat choices, the price rising at every click of the mouse.

The pandemic made things worse. Retail managers were finally able to impose one-way systems, queueing flows and bollards to control the duplicitous swine who wanted to spend money in their shops. My wife, at an otherwise empty Homebase store, ducked under some plastic tape to reach the till more quickly. The supervisor yelled at her as if she was a shoplifter: ‘Follow the arrows!’

Theatregoers used to arrange to meet in the foyer. You can’t do that now. You have to queue outside in the cold and dark while bouncers glare and shout at you and call you ‘guys’ or ‘people’. At our local Vauxhall dealer-ship, a sign says: ‘Due to coronavirus we will no longer be accepting cash payments. We apologise for any inconvenience.’ Apologise, my hat. They love it. Same with the catering trolley on trains. Ever since Covid it has been ‘we’re not taking cash at this time’. It’s the ‘at this time’ that maddens me. Some train companies have no intention of ever accepting cash again. They can’t be fagged.

The customer as king? Dream on. The customer is a lackey and a nuisance. Have a nice day.