“Customers are vermin, Mr. Jones. They infect companies with disease.” He says this with complete solemnity. “A company is a system. It is built to p… - Max Barry

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“Customers are vermin, Mr. Jones. They infect companies with disease.” He says this with complete solemnity. “A company is a system. It is built to perform a relatively small set of actions over and over, as efficiently as possible. The enemy of systems is variation, and customers produce variation. They want special products. They have unique circumstances. They try to place orders with after-sales support and they direct complaints to sales. My proudest accomplishment, and I am being perfectly honest with you here, Mr. Jones, is not the Omega Management System and it associated revenue stream—which, by the way, is extremely lucrative. It is Zephyr. A customer-free company. Listen to that, Mr. Jones. A customer-free company. In the early days, you know, we tried to simulate customers. It was a disaster. Killed the whole project. When we started again, I cut every department that had external customers. It was like shooting a pack of rabid dogs. Now, I’m not claiming Zephyr Holdings is perfect. But we’re getting there, Mr. Jones. We’re getting there.”