Believe it or not, your customers aren’t who you think they are. Television and the media would have us believe most of the population is young, hip, upper middle class and pretty good looking.

As of December 20, 2010 (the day before the 2010 Census was released), the estimated population of the United States was more than 310,950,000— or 310 million.

According to Martha Stout, a Harvard Medical School psychiatrist, as many as 4% of the population are conscienceless sociopaths who have no empathy or affectionate feelings for humans or animals. That’s MILLIONS of people, or, one in four people in your life or organization, that have no conscience and no ability to develop one. They’re not all serial killers, but they thrive on seeing other people in pain. They’re motivated by winning at any cost. As Stout (The Myth of Sanity) explains, “a sociopath is defined as someone who displays at least three of seven distinguishing characteristics, such as deceitfulness, impulsivity and a lack of remorse. Such people often have a superficial charm, which they exercise ruthlessly in order to get what they want.” Those who don’t fit the full-blown sociopath model show up on the narcissist scale—at least one in 6, according to some experts. If you’re not sure what a narcissist is, consider the alternative word for it—entitlement syndrome or “ego maniac.” No matter how you define them, they’re jerks. They’re not only jerks, they delight in winning and will go to any length to “win.” If you are rude, brusk or hateful with them, you just earned yourself a life of hell. It’s easier to get white off of rice than it is to shake a narcissist bound and determined to “win.”

As research psychologists Jean Twenge and W. Keith Campbell say in their new book The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement, “Narcissism, or excessive self-love, is marked by bloated confidence, vanity, materialism, and a lack of consideration for others. Yet narcissistic personality traits have become so pervasive in American culture that they threaten to transform us into a nation of egomaniacs.”

So why do we put up with them? Because even more of us are co-dependents, willing to accept abuse because we were abused.

It is estimated that there are 60 million survivors of childhood sexual abuse in America today (Forward, 1993). Many of them seek out or recreate their childhood, seeking out abusive partners and raising children who become victims as well.

Consider the disabled, the mentally ill, addicts—both alcohol, illegal and prescription drug addicts, mild to severe mental illness, veterans suffering from PTSD, baby boomers with a variety of health issues, cancer survivors and those in treatment, and the picture you have of America and the people running, working and living in the country is pretty scary and sad. We are a broken nation in many ways. Consider the homeless populations, those who are unemployed or underemployed, the millions suffering from temporary and permanent disabilities and the saying, “We’re all fighting something,” is more true than you’d think.

Even if you’re not old, sick or disabled, you may have other issues. The divorce rate in the USA is staggering: The divorce rate in America for first marriage, vs second or third marriage 50% percent of first marriages, 67% of second and 74% of third marriages end in divorce, according to Jennifer Baker of the Forest Institute of Professional Psychology in Springfield, Missouri.

It’s no small wonder that an act of kindness, of listening, of treating people with respect can go far. So why do so many companies fail to train their employees in HOW to be good listeners? Why do so many companies fail to teach basic customer service skills and then empower them to do good things?

A study some time ago found that nurses were less likely to be sued than doctors. Why? Nurses were perceived as trying to help the patient. Even if they made a mistake patients saw them as trying, caring and doing the best they could—making them seem more human. Those statistics are changing as nurses take on more autonomous roles and spend less time acting like nurses and more time acting like doctors.

The bottom line is, your customers are people who are already stressed, suspicious, abused, hurting and trying to have a good life. They work hard for their money and don’t like being bilked, cheated or scammed out of it. Don’t believe me. Watch the “Occupy Wall Street” movement.

When cops in California started beating up or almost killing Iraq war veterans they pretty much shifted sentiment for the movement to the people. Why? It’s not fair, or just, in most people’s eyes, to hurt the underdog, harm the weak, or attack those social icons we respect most—our military.

If you’re a company or business, think twice about angering your customers, or ignoring them, or thinking their voice doesn’t matter. Pre-internet and social media, maybe it didn’t. But it does now.