The old adage that the customer is always right works fine as a motto, but what if the customer is a jerk? Are jerky customers always right? Should the squeaky, annoying, ignorant wheel always get the grease?

Liz Pulliam Weston has an article out showing that more and more companies are pushing their worst customers away, sometimes forcefully but more often through subtle means such as making them wait longer on hold, making store returns more difficult, giving them lower priority on frequent-flyer seating.

While I don't like the idea of being treated worse if I don't spend a lot of money at a particular store, or if I habitually use frequent-flyer miles but never actually purchase a ticket, I don't blame these companies for doing so. They're in business to make a profit, and it makes sense to treat your best customers with the highest priority.

If you've ever been a frequent customer with a store or business and suddenly been treated poorly, you'll probably remember how much more incensed you were at that company than you would have been if it were a place you rarely frequented. As a customer, you expect stores where you spend a lot of money to treat you extra well--which automatically means you think they're treating someone else just a little bit worse. Not bad, just not quite as good as you, the "elite" customer.

But, more than that, some customers regularly make retailers' lives miserable, whether it's by wearing something once and returning it, or switching tags on items to try to get a lower price and then fighting with the cashier, or by bringing expired coupons or coupons that don't actually match the purchase and throwing a fit when the money is not discounted.

These people aren't only annoying to the retailer, they're annoying to other customers. They slow us down if we're suck in line behind them, but more than that, when they are given in to, we feel an injustice has been done to us, that the system can be cheated if we're willing to throw an embarrasing fit in a public place.

Almost everyone has felt wronged at one time or another by a "deal" that was just a sneaky bait-and-switch, or had a cashier overcharge you for an item. When that happens, by all means, speak up. I do.

But if you're one of those people who spend copious amounts of time thinking about how to game the system, I won't shed any tears for you when you're shown the door, put on endless hold, or shoved to the back of the line.