The real wisdom here lies in recognizing that customer service becomes *impossible* when isolated as a single department—the warehouse worker, the accountant, the product designer all have customers too, whether external or internal. When a company compartmentalizes service, it inevitably creates friction: the operations team doesn't understand why customer requests matter, the finance department balks at exceptions, and everyone blames "customer service" for problems that originated elsewhere. You see this collapse at any airline where the gate agent apologizes for delays they didn't cause but the scheduling department never considers—the service department becomes a shock absorber for systemic indifference. Hsieh's insight demands something harder than politeness: it requires every employee to understand they're part of a chain of decisions that ultimately reaches someone paying for your work.